Mashable’s post on the social media Sharepocalypse has caught everyone’s attention. Author Nova Spivak breaks down the issues social media users face in the sheer volume and diversity of sharing activity across our favorite social networks.  And comments on some of the resources and solutions that may be on offer if “social assistance” services can deliver effetively.

I was on a different topic recently, that of scaling and population, when I got to thinking about noise. Much of the sharepocalypse problem, I think, comes down to noise. Noise, because there are often motives behind social sharing. Motives that suggest that the act of sharing often means more than meets the eye.

This is interesting, because if sharing produces content, and if the sharepocalypse concerns an excess of content and content sharing activity, then it’s not just the volume of content that needs addressing, but the intentions of those who share. Sharing, after all, is a social act.

It’s all about sharing…

There would be no sharing if there were no friends, peers, colleagues, and fans to “consume.” And likely much less sharing if there were no measurement of sharing activities: no new followers, friend requests, comments, likes, +1s and so on.

Not to mention the meta message of sharing metrics, of which Klout is the best example. Our activity and the responsiveness of our “networks” are transformed into a meaningful number — an “influence” metric, or klout.

Point being that the act of sharing is not just an act of sharing content. It’s a social act, and social acts solicit some amount of acknowledgment and recognition. Receiving that, they can become communication (as happens when any two or more people engage in an exchange).

Content, then, is often the vehicle for a communication not yet established. It’s the opening move, if you will: the statement or expression.

The content is the vehicle

It belongs to human communication that we are able to distinguish an utterance from the thing uttered (the claim). We can tell the meaning expressed in talking from the actual sentences and expressions used. In the case of sarcasm, for example, we know that the meaning intended actually contradicts the the expression.

And this applies, to some degree, in online sharing. Knowing our friends, and less so our peers and online social connections, we’re often able to tell what a person intends when they share. The content is the vehicle, not the conversation. And in fact, content often opens up comments and exchanges permitting all involved to relate something of their own.

Content shared then is often just the ice-breaking move in social exchange. It’s the starting point, the springboard, and the context. And it’s fine, generally, if talk moves past the content itself to other things.

Noise is the problem

Which brings us to noise. Noise is the problem. Some hope it can be filtered out, say algorithmically. Algorithms may be written to anticipate the individual and personal preferences of a user. Or to collect information from aggregated activity. So individual vs a social approaches.

Noise might also be reduced by means of services that sit on top of sharing networks. This is the social assistance idea noted by Spivak.

But there’s still the matter of noise and why it is an unavoidable byproduct of social sharing. This has implications for the feasibility of noise reduction.

Social networking platforms can be viewed as social systems — a combination of mediating technologies and the practices that emerge around them. They’re self-reproducing systems: that is, it’s the constant social activity of users that keeps them going.  My thought is that if a social system reproduces itself by means of mediated interactions and communication, different types of noise are produced.

The noise of redundancy that results from distribution of activity across tightly connected social networks — a kind of noise that would not trouble situated and co-located “real world” interactions. Call this the noise of amplification. It exists because content and communication rapidly escape the site of their original production and “appear” elsewhere. (Face to face talk is governed by the physical distance in which your voice can be heard.)

The noise produced by an attention economy. This being noise resulting from the online social condition that only activity can get attention. One has to post and share in order to have presence. Here the act of sharing is what matters, less so what is shared, for the act maintains presence and creates the contexts around which others can engage.

The noise of system self reporting. This being notifications, which are system messages reporting on user activities but not authored by those users (Bill is now following you). Facebook was built on this (“Jill uploaded a photo” creates social activity by proxy, leading to more activity by those who respond to it).

The noise of bots and non-human accounts. Twitter is the most guilty of this, but wasn’t the first to allow it. (Remember Fakesters on Friendster?) This noise helps to circulate news, but results in a kind of tolerably false communication.

The noise of obligatory social etiquette. This is the noise created by adhering to online social norms and conventions, such as following back, or adding to Circles, reblogging, liking, and so on. (Social gestures — likes — have communicative purpose.) Many of these acts are simply baseline social etiquette and whether they pay off or not, are the online social equivalent of buying a lottery ticket: your chances of winning increase dramatically when you buy a ticket. A social act that has potential.

So given these different types of noise, what are the prospects for smart noise reduction? Content shared is hardly just content shared, but is almost always a form of social action. Can the social acts be separated from their contents? Should filters be designed to sift out bots? Why not then sift out users whose social media use is primarily promotional?

Or the reverse…

Or the reverse: sift out content that’s intended just to network and connect, but which has little news or information value? There could be so many further ways to tweak filtration, based on person, content, genre, timing, status, relevance, personal preferences, social preferences, recent activity, etc. It’s mind boggling.

Sharepocalypse is just the tip of the sharing iceberg. The flotsam and jetsam that drifts downstream in a medium that never stops flowing. But the currents beneath are deeply social and mean far more than meets the eye. It’s going to be hard to sort through all that noise. Because collect the empties as you will, more often than not, there’s a message in that bottle.

I know that brands want to figure out how to use social media to do their branding work. And being brands, and generally well-0versed  in the dark arts of marketing and sales, skilled brand professionals know that consumers respond out of psychological interest and not out of material need.

There’s nothing intrinsically loathsome about this — the arrangement is equally familiar to the consumer. Who, in his more lucid moments, believes himself to be playing tricks on the marketers, and to have figured out just exactly how the machine works.

Well then, I’m in a state of chronic nonplussedness when it comes to brand involvement in social media. For it strikes me that brands continue to look for themselves in this medium. A medium full of users — nay, of people who consume shit all day and even night long — and talk about it, too. With their friends.

It’s like brands want to change the channel. Dig that remote up out of the bowels of the corporate sofa and find, all lit up like Christmas in Vegas, the chromed shine of their own brand image shimmering on a screen like a hot desert mirage.

Brands have figured out why people want things. They’ve nailed the imagery, the messaging, even the copy. They know how to mediate desire, how to intensify it, raise it up high and with celebrity pedestal amplitude, work the seductive power of distance and altitude. Brands know why people like what other people like, and how to work this dynamic with Shakespearian precision.

So then why have they not figured out how to go social? What’s holding them back? Why the silly games, the useless rewards, the getting behind the stuff people do on social that’s only “as if” if meant something? A revelation of what’s deep in the brand’s heart and calculating mind — that it doesn’t matter, as long as the numbers come out right. Or fooled, perhaps, by the pitching gearheads whose claim to understand what the user wants is possibly doubly corrupt (for it’s bankrupt too). Shiny person, meet shiny object. Likey likey.

I don’t get it. Why brands would want to get behind the smallest shit that people do online, the little itty-bitty clicks of point-less-this and double-plus-ungood save-and-share-and-like… Because all that counts is what they can count? Why diminish brand value and fork brand equity by scrunching it into little votes and likes and points and badges and other diminutive things because people do them just because they’re in the habit of doing them. Why? Because that’s the best they can get? If, then, because that’s the best we’ve been offered?

It works, this social. It works for high brow purposes and just as equally for the trivial silly and the redundant banal. It works because it’s of and by and for the people who use it. Sell into the small acts, the ones you can count, and you get small branding. Yes it’s distributed, yes everyone gets it, yes it’s the hot thing on mobile and web and pad. But pack a brand into bite-sized activities and you’re going to get bite-sized brand messaging. Sound bytes the value out of brand equity.

Small acts and gestures, the lowest common denominators in a medium whose real value is its stretch and span — relationships on a thread, no distance, spanning time. Think small and get small. Acts, you can see. Just look. Activity, takes vision. Where is it then? Where, the new narratives? Stories we can put ourselves in. Forms of expression shared with friends and rich with meaning that grows. History, past, archives, memories. Or future, hopes, plans, promises. Where, brand people, are we the people? What we care about and find interesting. Not profit motive — real motive.

I’d like to know. Companies have responsibilities on this planet. The people are not opposed. Such a shame, this business underwhelming.

The key to designing social media well lies in designing it for a user’s social interests. Conventional software addresses the user’s task-oriented needs and objectives. But social media succeed when they engage the user’s social interests.

Social interests involve two psychological insights: that users are interested in others generally (social activities, or what’s going on); and users are interested in others particularly (another user).

Each of these is doubled up by the self-reflexivity of social action: users are interested in how they themselves appear to others in general (one’s self image, impressions made, the stuff of “self-presentation” common in social media); and another particular user’s relationship to him or her (e.g. their interest in us).

From this we can quickly see that social media are not a matter of straightforward goal-oriented interaction design. As users, we are aware (if not consciously) of what and how social activities proceed. We become interested in ourselves, in how we are perceived, and in the relation others take up to us.

Thus the interest captivated by social media is twofold: it’s a self-interest and an Other-interest. And the habits that engage users with social media engage users are not just the interaction between a user and the site, but between the user and other users. In the course of using social tools, reciprocity by others, and our mutual recognition of each other, deepens our interests and interactions.

the interest captivated by social media is twofold: it’s a self-interest and an Other-interest

Because social tools use a medium that works by representing our identities and activities, representations themselves become interesting. Klout is an example of meta data used to create social reputation that becomes motivating in and of itself. Many other representations that have become meaningful (for better or worse) include follower numbers on twitter, being listed, circled, commented on; or being retweeted, cited, tagged, and badged.

Activities that would normally pass by unnoticed in the daily course of work and life accrue different meanings when they are captured and represented online. We become extended. These extensions of ourselves (our social media presences) reflect on us. In turn, we become interested in an externalized and represented “version” of ourselves.

This is possible, as a motivation of action and habit, only because we’re able to form and sustain the ideas involved in extended presence. The idea of friendship, the idea of relationships, the idea of popularity, of importance and attention are all motivating and interesting. Social media can seem to make friends count for more than friendship. In some cases this is positive. In others, it is undermining.

To the social interaction designer, this doesn’t matter. All mediated activities that users may take an interest in become motives and those motives become habit — the ingredient, if you will, of successful social tool design and adoption.

The task of social interaction design is to capture and sustain user interest, even if it’s an interest in the abstraction and idea of accumulating friendships, getting noticed, becoming popular, and so on. Doing that requires successfully generating and feeding interests.

the task of social interaction design is to capture and sustain user interest

To the extent that these might produce meaningful and valuable information in the form of commerce, viral communication, social marketing or meta data, human interests are critical factors of social interaction design. A site or system that fails to captivate these basic social interests will wither on the vine.

The user may become interested in any of the following. Note that in each case we are talking about the perceived status of an interest and relation. Social realities are all subjective, interpreted, and can only be validated to the extent that communication provides truthful and sincere verification. Social media require neither to be successful.

Social and interpersonal interests grow from Self to include an Other in person; Others as friends, peers, groups; Others in general (an audience); and online social activities and pastimes.

The user’s interests develop around:

• his or her own self image as represented
• his or her image and presentation as a reflection of acknowledgment by others
• a particular person the interest that person has in oneself
• a scene or social activitysocial position, or who’s who
• an audience or community
• news and social facts, as circulated by known people

These personal and social interests become habits of use. Habits form not around needs and goals, but again, around the deeper motives that structure individual personality and sense of self. Habits are supported and extended by the tools themselves, and are ever evolving with change in the industry and technologies. Social technologies are simply the functional application of individual and social techniques, applied to identity, relating, interacting, and communicating.

User’s activities can include:

• collecting socially relevant items (including friends)
• accumulating socially relevant distinction
• sself promotion, brand promotion, site promotion, profile promotion (social capital)
• appealing to others through requests, posts (bog, video, audio), and comments, etc
• participating in collaboration (wiki, lists, tagging)
• extending daily activities such as shopping, bookmarking, keeping in touch
• avoiding risks, embarrassment, social faux pas and failures (real or imagined)
• work and work-related successes (admittedly more or less interesting)
• social games, including socialized games, and gamified social
• small habits, from instagramming to music sharing
• influence monitoring, projection of persona and reputation

To conclude, then, social tools can never be grasped from a technical or functional perspective alone. Granted, they are designed, architected, built and extended by means of current industry technologies and standards. But their use, and use is the central orientation of any user experience or interaction designer, is explained not on the basis of what tools do, but why and how they are used. The uses of social tools are not utilitarian — comprising of tasks, needs, or goals. Rather, they are intrinsically psychological and social. And as such, comprise of the relational interests people take in their own self and relations to others as represented and communicated online.

Whether by design or by accident, every social tool is an instance of a generalizable social model. The model is defined by the types and modes of social interaction built into the system as enabling bias. As they are used over time by users, social tools become social systems — a necessary combination of both technical features and user practices. Again, over time, individual user practices communicate (to other users), and cause reinforcing feedback loops and iterative cycles within the system such that social practices emerge. These practices are stabilizing and binding, for they lay down tacit codes of conduct and behavior that facilitate the growing competencies of users.

As social tools develop over time, with their users, they become increasingly complex. Timed right, this complexity is embraced by users — it not only “enhances” user experiences, increases diversity and variety of features and functionalities, extends to other systems/tools, it differentiates the system. In systems theoretical terms, this internal differentiation is required if a system is to handle increased levels of activity and information. In social systems, this increased activity comprises of both mediated symbolic action and communication. Symbolic action takes the form of represented, normalized, and signifying activity: ratings, votes, likes, leaderboards, rankings, and many other non-individual, impersonal, generalizable forms of social differentiation and action. (A Like for one is a Like for all.) Communication is personal, individual, communicative and expressive, and is non-generalizable — thus unavailable to the system for generalized absorption. There is no “aggregation” or interpretation of user communication within social systems. At best, limited sentiment and semantic extraction (trending topics, number of communications (posts, tweets, @replies, comments), and user-supplied semantic declarations (#hashtags, tags, and supplemental sentiments such as ratings and votes).

Internal differentiation of a social system also results in greater social differentiation — a must for social tools. Users must be as able to distinguish themselves and others in mediating social systems just as they do in everyday life. Again, social tools avail themselves of the palette of symbolic media: ratings, votes, likes, +1, checkins, followers, and so on. For these can be normalized and thus easily aggregated for the purpose of system-produced social rankings, leaderboards, recommendations, and so on. (An impossibility in the old days of Myspace testimonials — hence no leaderboards for social rank.)

Social differentiation permits the system to increase its internal referentiality. That is, internal connectedness and the functionality of connectedness. Actions connect to reactions, confirmations, shares, permalinks, and so on — each nest of connections enabling greater access to system contents now and in the future. Emphasis by the system on real time connectedness speeds up system activity. Emphasis on horizontal connectedness increases the system’s navigability. Think twitter vs Wikipedia. The former is designed for realtime content consumption; the latter, for topical content relatedness.

A further and salient feature of social tools is their inclusion and exclusion of user actions and activity, communication included. The amplification, distortion, symbolic representation, and bracketing of social interaction is a universal feature of mediating social systems. Some acts and actions are amplified (distorted) by how they are made to appear online. Others are bracketed out. Users adapt to and become competent at how these mediation effects reflect on them, represent activities of others, and produce ongoing social interaction. Social systems become uniquely world-like, and each is as distinct a world as, say, genres of film distinguish themselves. What works in some social systems doesn’t work in others (we call this frames, or context).

It’s interesting, then, to compare social tools to tease out their interaction models. Let’s try a few, in brief.

Facebook is built on friend relationships, lacks social ranking systems, and has designed for a wide variety of interactions and communication. One might say that it has a tonal preference for mediated relationships — a design reflecting the psychology of its founder, perhaps, or simply a design born out of college-age socialities. Facebook friending is interpersonal (mutual friending), Likes have become a universal gesture of attentiveness, attentiveness is baked into algorithmic news item surfacing, and symbolic activity is related to people and to the personal. Facebook is about the “status of our friendships” — and offers a means to maintain friendship.

Twitter is for speed, and is on the development path to recuperate and preserve content (tweets) lest it implode under its own velocity. Speed and volume of activity in twitter results in a social system that creates invisibility problems — further complicated by the fact that the counter to invisibility is repetition and redundancy. “Am I being heard” might be the catchphrase for twitter, because the tool is designed to fashion the illusion of conversation with users followed, when in fact tweets are read by followers. The follower model, which is asymmetric and unilateral, offers a solution for some: reciprocity. But reciprocal following is no guarantee that followers pay attention: this is twitter’s fundamental social challenge, and the greatest threat to its longevity. Perhaps for this, its current drive to build features based less on tweeting and more on the user/brand, on its platform as plumbing, and on “tweet this” as a global action available from any web page.

Turntable.fm is interesting in that it is a synchronous experience. If twitter is “am I being heard,” turntable is “am I being listened to.” That one is being heard is a given (for the most part). The site seems interested in developing towards greater social differentiation of users: this by points and followers for djs, and navigation not by sound but by visual representation of social activity (named rooms, number of listeners in room, proportion of dj spots used, etc). Liking (or not) a song feeds into points for djs, allows a room to fall into synch (the visual of bobbing heads), and of course qualifies “am I being listened to” (do they like what I’m playing). The manner in which turntable.fm transforms and extends the user’s ego online is very compelling — music users like that others like, too, creates a strong social affirmation because it persists for a stretch of “shared” time.

Empire Avenue, one could say, is about the “sum of me.” The majority of user actions and thematic activities on Empire Avenue involve numbers and the peculiar world of magnitudes. I say this because it is not just numbers, as increments or proportions, or even as relative numbers, but also the culturally-informed numbering quality that is “magnitude.” (Magnitude is a numerical quality meaning “great,” “greater,” and “greatest” and is the property of a type of number that has all three of these in social form — it’s a socially meaningful, or socialized number.) Empire Avenue might appeal to those who relate to and enjoy counting and being counted, who get a reward from quantifying, and who grasp numbers as a substitute for Self worth and an attribute of Self worth. Of course, the game references the stock market, and so numbers are expressed as prices. The core social activity in Empire Avenue is not content creation, but the symbolic transaction of buying/selling other users. Not surprisingly then, reciprocity becomes a social tactic — effective but ultimately merely a means of iterating game play.

Google+ is brand new, and so it is early yet to say what it’s interaction model will become. But interestingly, Google+ Circles makes a metaphorical adaptation of a social concept — that people do not relate to each other socially across one graph equally. That people’s relationships are asymmetric, unequal, dynamic, and non-transferable is of course a social fact. Google+ has chosen to make this lumpiness explicit, allowing users to assign people to named circles. The catchphrase for Google+ might therefore be “in or out,” for this is the social dilemma friend circles poses. Circles are not transparent among users, so social solutions (other than reciprocation, which is based on trust and faith, for there is no social norm possible until there is transparency and a means to hold users accountable for reciprocation) are hard to come by. Furthermore, Google’s emphasis on personal utility over social system design is reinforced by the fact that Circles are for content/feed consumption more than for talk amongst Circles. They can as of yet not be shared, overlapped, or properly targeted and addressed. There’s on other peculiarity of circles:  they do not include the user. Why Google chose the circle, which is for “a group of others not including me,” rather than a hub, I’m not sure. For a hub is a more accurate social relationship model — and in its metaphor, is more inclusive and socially group-like than a circle (which is more a grouping than group-like).

Social interactions emerge within social systems in the shape of socio-technical competencies and practices. Each system is unique, technically and socially. We are still only learning how technical, feature, and system architectures result in varying social dynamics, interactions, practices, and outcomes. But it should seem clear from this comparison that differences between systems are indeed real and profound, each resulting in social dynamics that express the particular social milieu a system’s design supports. Dynamics that in turn shape not only a company’s future prospects, but in many ways those of the industry overall.

One of the most interesting aspects of Google+ are the Circles. What could be the idea behind this? What’s the social function? I am trying to find out.

Twitter’s follow/follow back

Of all social tools still going strong today, Twitter’s use of the follow/follow back as a means of launching and gaining traction has been the most copied. I can’t think of a faster way to populate a new social service than to connect new members by means of following/following back. And it’s genuinely useful: users don’t have to think of who to follow — they are shown who they follow already, and asked to confirm or ignore.

The follow works so well because it is gestural. It places no obligation on the user followed to reciprocate, but is rewarding if reciprocation follows. It’s a social solution to a bit of technical awkwardness: how to initiate, invite, solicit, and communicate a connection request without doing so verbally or explicitly.

Google+ introduces Circles

It’s interesting to see, then, Circles in action these past few weeks. Circles are ostensibly a means of organizing friends and colleagues into groups that make a bit more sense of the social graph. Given that the social graph is already in many ways an imperfect and inaccurate representation of one’s social connections. (The social graph is flat. Social relationships are lumpy.)

But Google+ notifies Circle activity. What then might have been kept private becomes social. My act of adding people to circles notifies them of the fact, and the system notification by Google+ to those people in effect becomes a standardized follow notification. This works well for Google+ insofar as it quickly ramps up not just the user base, but also the activity of circling, and the connectedness of members.

Member connectedness is essential to any feed-based system. For connectedness is the filter on feeds. It’s what initiates the subscription to member activity (posts).

Ambiguity

What is perhaps unintended, however, in Google+ Circles notifications is the follower phenomenon, as well as ambiguity about the transparency of Circles. The follower phenomenon suggests to me that Google+ aims to make use of social capital, influence, popularity, and other social effects of a user base differentiated by quantity (number of followers/connections). The ambiguity around Circles utility stems from the invisibility of Circles to anyone but their author: notifications do not state what Circle I have been added to by somebody; nor do members of a Circle know about each other.

Google+ may have opted instead to preserve the personal social utility of friend grouping that seems the most obvious benefit of Circles. In which case, Circle notifications are already introducing the popularity bias that’s intrinsic to a public social follower model.

Google+ may also have intended to make visible shared Circles available, in effect offering groups. In which case, it will be interesting to see how well this works with the openness of the present feed model.

Flat social differences

Social technologies flatten social differences, providing access to people unencumbered by social boundaries and distances. To wit, Zuckerberg is Google+’s most followed user. Circles seems to have been designed to increase utility in a social networking world of easy access and flattened social hierarchy. But the reciprocity and mutuality of following/back that acts as a soft social norm in follower models commodifies relationships in the service of social capital, or popularity. So it will be interesting to see how the team navigates feature and design evolution, now that the floodgates are open on some social practices that to me, at least, seem possibly at cross-purposes.

I very rarely write about what I do. My work is germane and practical; my writings, reflective and theoretical. But I would like to pen a few thoughts about my work as a freelance and independent contractor, both for the benefit of clients and for other freelancers out there.

As service providers, we are in the business of facilitating change. Some of this is concrete, and takes the form of deliverables and “works.” But some of it is more ineffable — is process, communication, relationships, and understanding.

The contractor, faced with a new client opportunity, occupies a unique position. We are outside the organization yet soon to become a temporary resident. We are tasked with responsibilities (for which we are paid) and yet given a greater freedom of movement than employees. We have the capacity for driving change but our success is contingent on the organization’s flexibility. We have been hired based on reputation but are, in each and every new situation, given an opportunity to shape and move the client according to our own skills and abilities.

I choose independence because I enjoy it. I prefer the new and the fresh to the long-standing and ongoing. I am turned on by the challenge of unfamiliar people and problems, and I am drawn into the world when it is rich and complex. For me, contracting delivers the possibilities of the open, of the future, and of the ability to act as an agent of change.

But I recognize that this is not a conventional position, and my methods may be unconventional. The business of independents, and in our industry particularly, attracts “experts,” leaders, and consultants whose knowledge and ability is often attached to personal brand, to ego, and to a self-centered basket of self-promotional practices, online as well as off.

I just want to say a few words about this, for I want to offer some tips and advice from the other side.

Try to disappear

I seek the invisible. I aim to disappear. When I have done my job well, and with impact, I have unemployed myself and become irrelevant. My knowledge belongs now to the company; my insights, to the stakeholders who make them actionable; my change agency has transferred to restructured relationships among employees and management; and my recommendations, now absorbed into the client’s mission and roadmap. If I begin by leading, by the time I am done I am a bystander.

We sell the invisible. We are hired for an engagement. We may attract work on the basis of reputation, but it is not about us — our egos, brands, or business. For that, we are paid. I think too many self-appointed experts make the job about themselves. Seeking to impress, the job or contract becomes an extension of their business. It accrues value to them, where it should be accruing value to the client.

We sell the invisible. We are hired for an engagement.

It’s only understandable that our business culture is biased in favor of branded independents and self-acclaimed experts. But the true expert has no need of self-aggrandizing engagements. The true expert knows what and how, and back burners his or her own ego in order to be effective and impactful. The true expert becomes the client, embeds with the organization, uses his or her skills in observation, listening, and understanding to find and leverage opportunities for change.

We are change agents

Change is dynamic. It is unstable. It involves risks and unknowns. It unfolds when the organization flexes, and when its employees are in motion. When functionalities and business processes are malleable, reconfigurable, and adaptable. As change agent, the independent becomes a hinge.

This comes with experience, and takes time as well as success. The newly independent expert and contractor still seeks confirmation and proof. His or her professional engagements still involve a deep personal investment. And for this reason, occasionally (or frequently), their observations and recommendations are colored. Colored by the tint of the lenses through which they see the job. That is to say, as an extension of their skills and value.

But the greater impact and more lasting effectiveness in contracting is never that which centers on the expert’s knowledge and know-how. It is that which works from within — from within the organization, in between employee positions, and amidst organizational dynamics. To mediate the latent and intrinsic strengths and capabilities of a client’s people and processes: that is the method of the artful independent.

The greater impact and more lasting effectiveness in contracting is [...] that which works from within

It’s all about the people

It’s all about people, always has been and always will be. It is we who act, who see, who spin our observations and work to realize our efforts. Rules, roles, positions, tasks, functions — sure, they belong to organizational definitions and to the nature of business. But employees are just people organized by the structural requirements of the company.

To create change, you have to get into and behind the structure, and in and among the people whose individual personalities and character carry the load. This is why the expert cannot succeed on the basis of expertise and knowledge alone. Every client is a new structure — its capabilities and opportunities defined not by the org chart or by job descriptions, but by the relationships of its people.

To create change, you have to get into and behind the structure, and in and among the people whose individual personalities and character carry the load

The deepest change comes from knowledge transfer. Transfer not only to those who need it, but to those who can use it effectively. That means a transfer of insight and learning to individuals whose own individual talents will make the most of that knowledge, and whose realtionships with colleagues will extend and leverage it with the greatest internal organizational impact.

This takes skill on the part of the independent, and a willingness to subordinate ego to the subtle art of intervention. An art that is martial, albeit in the Eastern sense, not the military sense. Art whereby the independent’s ideas become those of the organization, whereby communication is not ego-centric but client-centric, whereby the proud disposition of the teacher-expert is exchanged for empowerment of client learning.

Insights should feel to the client that they are and have been their own. They should befit the client, should be such that the client’s abilities and potential are enhanced and augmented, in ways that strengthen the client — not the independent. The independent is friend, not expert. The expertise is in the skill and talent that the independent uses to always become other, become the client, join and collaborate with ever new and different organizations.

These are my thoughts on the matter. A good musician can play many styles.

So they say the LinkedIn IPO has created a bit of a rush to IPO for the rest of them. If it’s true that we’re in a new market now, and that LinkedIn’s IPO was the beginning of a rush of IPOs for valid social networking candidates, then the next few years could be interesting for the Valley.

Market and economic conditions are not as they were in 2000. So If, and this is still only an “if” at this point, investors want to shepherd their best to market now, there will be pressure on companies to tighten up. Increase traction and retention among users/customers. Improve brand loyalty. Differentiate from close competitors. Focus in on what makes them different. And so on.

The inventive years, then, may be drawing to a bit of an end. *If* we have entered IPO season. Time now to refine, polish, and perfect the product. To hold on to the team and to begin eyeing the exits for opportunities. And to watch the competition and get the ear to the ground to listen for the rumble of oncoming industry rollups.

Interesting times, then, for a lot of companies, *if* it is that time. For the geo-local and local-social and social-deals marketplaces are far from being done. Groupon has only just declared its intent to socialize deals. Gowalla, SCVNGR, and Foursquare continue to find the most extensible and leverage-able social practices with which to integrate merchant offerings (loyalty, dynamic deals, real-timeliness, etc).

Social games are not yet through — if anything, only just beginning. Narrow social gamification based on badges and achievements (Gowalla, SCVNGR, Foursquare) stands in sharp contrast to the more open gamification of social represented by EmpireAvenue.

Both hint at the possibilities of connecting online or offline merchant business, customer relationships, and to some extent the social graph, to interaction models. In the case of Foursquare/SCVNGR/Gowalla these interactions are incentive based and hew closely to actual user activities.

But EmpireAvenue shows that you can go meta on this. Game the game and with use of a transaction engine, create new connections and thus new channels and relationship opportunities. (The question “so what” and “what for” stands — but this is not a phenom to write off as silly gaming. Players are real, brands are real, and therefore inventiveness will be real, too.)

It will be interesting to see what comes next. If there’s a mad dash for the exits, and companies in the social networking space spend the next couple years not on whiteboards but with lawyers, then a pity, perhaps, for things will simply not be as interesting. Startup founders will shift focus, necessarily, inwards and towards company well-being. Innovation will take a back seat. For success in an IPO rush is measured at the open, not by innovation.

Interesting, indeed. Let’s hope that the rush is not on for everyone now. Let’s hope that it’s not that time yet. When the Valley reveals its secret Vegas. When the ‘ad’ separates from the ‘venture.’ When silicon turns green.

I view social interaction design as a field that seeks user-centric descriptions of experiences and behaviors on social media, with an eye on emergent social practices. I see user interactions as occurring between users, mediated by social tools — not as interactions with the tools only. Social practices, in the view of social theory, involve users who know what they’re doing, what’s going on, and how to participate. Not on the basis of what’s on the screen, at the level of the interface and its design, but in terms of the social activity in which they are involved.

Social theorists usually refer to cultural norms, traditions, routines, and so on to explain the reproduction of structures and systems of daily life. Macro structures are reproduced by means of these daily repetitions. (See: Anthony Giddens, Constitution of Society). I borrow this idea and apply it to social media: individual user actions add up to social activities and practices. Users produce and reproduce the social reality of social media. Social tools in which users are engaged can be construed as social systems.

The Paradigm Shift

I view social interaction design as a paradigm shift in design thinking for two reasons. First, because descriptions and explanations of user activities focus on user experiences, not on design. Second, because the model involves two or more users interacting with each other, not one user interacting with a software application. (It will be said that UX focuses on user experience, and it does, but often as a reflection of design, or as behaviors “influenced” by design. When I anchor social action in the user, I really mean that; and both psychology and social theory are as helpful to the designer in this respect as design skills.)

When social interactions are mediated by software, design is structuring and organizing. Experiences are organized in terms of content and information, navigation, interaction and communication, symbolic actions (think gestures, use of tokens, games, etc). Time and temporality are organized, too, as in the feed revolution and realtime media. (Realtime streams: now and then) I liken social interaction design to urban planning: the use of architecture for social purposes, aware of the tendencies architectures have to produce social outcomes. In short, architecture as social system constraints. At the micro level the user experience may still involve individual user interests, needs, goals and so on. But taken together, social practices correspond to macro effects of individual “uses,” or activities. (I just killed a social game mechanic)

Social theory has been addressing the “instrumentalist” perspective on use over the past decades, expanding concepts of action from rational and goal-oriented action to social action. Social action is action in which the “other” is addressed in the user’s acts. This seems to me the right way to approach social media. I don’t think user actions are explained as interactions with an application, its design or interface, but are rather social acts that explicitly or implicitly, directly or indirectly, intend social consequences.

Communication & Social Theory

Communication theory then comes into play when we realize that most social interaction on social media is communication. But there are mediated acts, using tokens, design forms, social objects, and rich media as elements of communication. (What’s Up With Social Objects?) Things can be said and done online that do not require use of words, or “utterances.” I view this as a rich field for interaction designers for two reasons: first, these elements need to be designed, along with the activity contexts that help to stabilize their meanings. And secondly, because these elements create new ambiguities, new possibilities for both expression and for interpretation.

Interpretation has a special place in social media. Social theory has a long history in the practice of interpretation, dating back to textual interpretation and then through to the interpretation of not only texts, but acts. Interpretation involves meaning, not information. I like this also because I think the best approach to social interaction focuses on the production of meaning in meaningful acts and “exchanges,” not information, data, or “content.” (Social Interaction Design: Leaderboard)

All social action, social theory tells us, is doubly-interpreted. “You know that I know that you know…” and so on. Two subjects in interaction are involved in what’s called “intersubjective” communication. In social media, this communication is mediated not only by language, but by media themselves. As users, we take the medium, or rather the “application,” into account when interacting with others. The medium fundamentally dislocates action and communication from face-to-face co-presence, so it loses both its “situatedness” and its context in place and time.

Social theory uses the concept of “double contingency,” and I find this very helpful in breaking down the two-sidedness of user-to-user interactions. Double contingency is used in meaning-based systems, where the actions of one take into account the likely interpretations of the other. In fact, I believe interaction design for social needs a two-sided model, based loosely on double-sided accounting (debts and credits), or to use linguistics, speaker-hearer. (Re-framing the problem: SxD) For every user action there is an equally valid user reaction (interpretation of action). (I develop this as an argument for coupled activity streams in my proposal for action streams: Action streams: a blue sky proposal)

Context is an issue for all designers, and in particular context of use. The concept of context implies a constructed-ness of experience and of activity. In face-to-face interactions, this is provided by the “situation.” But in mediated interactions, there is no situation; so we have to deal with loss of context. True, contexts are constructed and reconstructed to a certain degree by the application, how it works, what it’s used for, and so on. And these social contexts inform and shape what we do and how we behave, or act. As well as how we interpret the acts of others. The dislocation of action from place, or situation, is accompanied by a discontinuity in time. Because we experience time in terms of past and future, repetition, habit, and routine emerge as organizing forces in our individual experience of how something works and what to expect of our mediated interactions of others. So where context is lost, the meaningfulness of online activity is explained by the user’s own intentions and interpretations. This meaningfulness translates, in psychological terms, as “expectations.” Expectations of the meaning and consequences of online actions.

These expectations are helped out when we have relationships with others, be these friendships or peer connections. Relationships offer a further constraint on social action, and are again a factor in the social interaction model not directly manifest in design. Some relationships are long and lasting, but many, if they can be called “relationships,” are passing and transient. We might just refer to this as communication &mash; as in the “relationships” we can maintain on twitter. Psychologically, the potential for relationships subsists in all communication, and operates sometimes to motivate, other times to discourage, communication. The point I’m making here is that relationships are a structuring and organizing constraint on individual and social interaction conceptually equivalent to design constraints.

Communication theory plays a profound role in my thinking on social interaction design because so much social action becomes or wants to become communication. Acts of communication that are not picked up are not yet action, even if they have that intent. In fact, “social observation” is under-appreciated. A lot of social interaction occurs only after periods of observation. However, observation alone is not captured by media systems and leaves no result (who’s reading those tweets? No pageviews!). This is one of the reasons that so much of the activity in social media involves getting attention. (Social media: the attention economy explained) Attention that is paid but not shown makes no direct contribution to content on social media. The system is biased to an over-production and redundancy of expression; users are required by lack of social and system feedback to put in more, as compensation for the absence of a return look (of recognition and acknowledgment).

Communication that is taken up by another is action. Action has its own structure and organization, and social situations have been observed and described in great detail by many social theorists and psychologists. Social action clearly sits outside the domain of conventional user experience design. But it operates through the applications which facilitate it, and so design matters. But the design approach should consider social practices and outcomes, not only individual user experiences.

Every action captured in social media involves a selection of some kind. This selection is an act involving an item or element. The act may have user intent, but this intent is lost when captured by the social media system, and so the meaning of these selections, or acts, can only be interpreted by others. Social acts online depend in part on the system’s capture, storage, organization, and re-presentation for their likely meanings. Social activities can supply thematic structure, convention, and much more, but ambiguity and noise will always be amplified by the medium. (Is Clay Shirky on complexity too simplistic? )

Meaning and context of use

Much of the richness in designing for social media involves the wide range of meaning possibilities of the elements and selections offered up for social interaction. (Eleven tips on how to apply social interaction design thinking ) We can borrow from social theory in identifying some different core types: signs, symbols, icons and graphical representations, statistics, objects, words, images, and more (i.e. rich media). Skipping over the distinctions between these design elements and their systems of meaning, we should note that these all have two dimensions of meaning: their “objective” meaning and their meaning in context of use (inter-subjective). Or, what they mean, and why they are used. A four star rating may “mean” something, but it’s meaning differs from why a user chooses to rate something. Again, the use in terms of social action is distinct from the meaning as designed into the element. Ambiguity is again amplified by the two possible ways of interpreting the element. Object worlds and action systems offer up divergent explanations of meaningful action; designers work in both. (SXD: The construction of objective relations and operations)

Time is an interesting dimension of social interaction design because it is hard to represent. Action has a serial order in time: not only chronologically, for one act follows the next, but in meaning also, for each act suggests responses and is a response to previous acts. Social media are discontinuous and the user experience of time is individual and separate. This disables some of the seriality of social action but opens up possibilities for re-sequencing and rearranging the content of communication. This reordering is what we do with search results, lists, filters, and many of the other data sorting techniques and can be applied to conversational content, too.

Conversational media create a huge number of opportunities for social media designers, and we are only scratching the surface as of now. Many twitter-related apps are feed readers and facilitate content consumption but not conversational participation. The open space here is in relationships, use of the social graph, user interests and group affinities, and of course the navigation and representation of conversational activities. The temporal dimension of social interaction design can be explored much further, along two axes: the flow of user experience and experience of time (sequence, order, seriality, chronology, but also navigating time periods, snapshots of time, etc); and the linking up of stream items to connect and merge streams for new results. The former involves user experience solutions, the latter, interactive representations of time-based content and interaction.

Linguistics here is an interesting theoretical source, for linguistics, and pragmatics in particular (speech and performance of communication), have long examined the order of linguistically-mediated meanings. One such use of linguistics available to social interaction design is the distinction among different kinds of linguistic expression. We have, for example, differences among requests, invitations, questions, answers, greetings, statements of fact, opinion, recommendation, and many more. All of these come into play, and some efforts have even been made to codify them with microsyntax (in the tweet), activity stream tagging (tagging the feed item), even twitter’s codification of replies and retweets. Important to note here is that language is structure and speech is structuring (of activity and communication). Quora is an excellent example of a simple modification of feed-based communication taking advantage of the structure offered by language (to wit, the Question and the Answer, or more broadly, statements and responses). Quora is an answering machine. (Answer services: satisfying two user experiences)

Social media not only produce interesting possibilities for novel uses of language (its production and consumption) but also for how language and communication reflect the mediated social space. Social media create a kind of “second public,” or audience, one that the user may have in mind even if communication is directed at friends, or at nobody in particular at all. This aspect of the mediated social and public space can create a sense of being seen and of being visible. It is in part responsible for the attention economy and perceptions of influence, status, and “social capital.” And it is certainly a deep motive at work in how and why social media engage users, for it is based on absence, dissociated from situation, and dislodged out of time.

Psychology

Psychology enters the picture here, for social media not only capture action and communication but create representations of the self, also. We can think of the social interface as having three modes: mirroring (the self), surface (on which is content), and window (through which we interact with others). And related to these three modes we might identify three core user types: Self-oriented, Other-oriented, and Relationally-oriented. In short, people who talk, people who comment, and people who like a feeling of something going on. Psychological factors come into play in how we relate to the medium, to others, to content, and to mediated activities. Relations, not relationships, come into play here in psychological modes of identity and identification, as well as reflection, projection, introspection, internalization, and triangulation. (“You’re OK. How am I?” Reading through twitter.) Some, no many, of these can be applied to social dynamics.

The social dynamics which emerge around social media may be attributed to different kinds of user personality types and behaviors, as these are facilitated by the medium. Experts and their fans, stars and status seekers who want to be around them, critics and their peers, inviters and socialites… There are many social couplings and social formations that bring a social site to life, and whose participation can be served by smart social design. An agile approach to social architecture may come in use here, as a model for design planning as well as product execution and iteration. Social practices can be anticipated and iteration need not be a matter of tweaking, for all interactions are contingent on design, and design can do better than launch and see what happens. (Connections: A reflection the development of social tools)

Just a few suggested readings

• Anthony Giddens Constitution of Society and Modernity and Self-Identity
• Erving Goffman Forms of Talk and Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behavior.
• Jurgen Habermas On the Logic of the Social Sciences and On the Pragmatics of Communication
• Niklas Luhmann The Reality of the Mass Media
• Alfred Schutz The Phenomenology of the Social World
• Jean Baudrillard The Ecstasy of Communication
• Don Ihde Technology and the Lifeworld
• Francois Lyotard The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge
• Vincent Descombes Modern French Philosophy

Do you know the story of the stirrup? The stirrup was introduced to horsemanship alternately by the Central Asians, Chinese, or tribes in India more than 2,500 years ago. But it was not until combined with the armor-plated knight and a saddle with a backrest that it rose from toe-hold to game-changer in the murderous game that was then medieval warfare. Norman shock combat, featuring riders on horseback with couched lances, high-backed saddles, and stirrups, mounted their charge against faltering Saxons at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. England has not been the same since.

The story of the stirrup is not without debate — equestrians lay claim to the lance and archery work sans stirrup — but it is an oft-cited example of the role technology plays in social change. The stirrup not only produced a new war machine, in the mounted knight, but was a part also of an emerging social class: those who could afford the supporting needs of knighthood. Chivalry, nobility, glory in warfare, and the crusades all owe a relation to the stirrup. This simple invention was not alone responsible for these social changes, but was a notable and critical element.

I am not a technological determinist. I think culture paves the way for the use of certain technologies when it anticipates their use in that particular fashion. A similar point is often made about guns — whose introduction in some cultures was met with the unenthusiastic reception of warrior cultures for whom killing at a distance was ignoble.

In more contemporary times, technologies launched too early (the apple Newton), or out of synch with cultural practices and social needs (the video phone), serve as more recent examples of the same relationship between the social and the technical. Cultures invent needs and uses, and technologies fill them. It is unlikely that a technology, requiring the design commitments and resources that it usually does, comes along and out of the blue invents a new and popular way of doing things.

Connections

I recently was enjoying Connections, by James Burke, one of my favorite documentary series and in some circles a bit of a cult classic. In the series, Burke traces a dotted and dashed line through history, connecting inventions, discoveries, accidents, and events to trace the lineage of several modern-day technologies. Explosives, electricity, the gasoline engine, television, computing, money, and plastics all receive fascinating treatment.

Among the numerous tales of coincidence and serendipity that footnote the romp through the history of science and technology that is Connections, one recurring theme remains a narrative constant. It is the importance of relations, of the relationships that a new technology had with practices and possibilities, with needs and opportunities, problems solved and new futures created.

And in that not insignificant observation is the more emphatic point that no game-changing technique or technology (for that’s really what technology is — application of a rational technique) would have had the impact that it did were it not for its having leveraged and amplified existing relations.

Likewise, today, no social tool makes waves unless it levers and extends current practices, makes implicit connections explicit, surfaces the hidden and renders visible the latent. Relatedness is all, and online more so than “anywhere” else, for the online world has no “material” or “temporal” persistence beyond the connections and relations that weave it together.

Relations, subjective and objective

Two kinds of relations matter in the world of social technologies. Relations among data elements, digital objects, and the operations possible around them. And social relations, including those between a user and his or her social user experiences, communication with others, and social relations made visible in different ways on our many social sites and services. Objective relations and subjective relations.

It used to be that in computing, objective relations expressed a sort of subjective consensus, a choice given computing’s constraints, to operationalize and represent functions and interaction in a particular way. It might now be argued that an increasing amount of computing, that behind the social web and related businesses, at least, reflects a subjectiv-izing use of objective data relations. That the relations that matter in social web use are those that socialize the world of information, that renew and re-contextualize the static or objectively-structured world of data.

I am over-simplifying the computing industry and professions here, of course, but for the purpose of extracting the kind of truth that makes its point best beneath the arc-light of exaggeration. In social media use, individual user actions provide subjective taste and preference; communication between users supplies social relatedness; and social interaction among users animates social activiities and practices. Social uses connect the dots and dashes of a multi-threaded world of otherwise binary bits and algorithmic processes.

Social media connections

There are, in Connections, a number of connections made. They vary in their composition and so I thought it might be interesting to tease out some that bear relevance to us. In the vein of a “what if” sort of viewing — an exposition of what a BBC documentary aired in 1978 might have observed about the socializing world of today’s internet.

First of all, for a few of the big categories.

• Identifying, locating, positioning, indexing, and categorizing. Historical examples: astrolabe, gridlines, compass, star charts, triangulation.
• Improving the efficiency, effectiveness, application or extension of a process, method, or technique. Historical examples: plow, loom, water wheel, coal-tar, american manufacturing system
• Inventions the revolutionize, change, transform a process, method, technique, or pastime. Historical examples: money and credit, steam power, chemistry, car
• Methods, insights, techniques that give one an advantage over and against competitors. Historical examples: longbow, lateen rigging, gunpowder, synthetics, radar
• Creative innovations that lead to new markets, services, production, and demand in the marketplace and more broadly, socially. Historical examples: printing, double-entry book-keeping, electricity, plastics, wireless

In each of these types of technical innovation, a number of social relations were transformed. These run from the seemingly modest — but in fact transformative impact — of the chimney on dwellings and living spaces (one hall becomes many rooms, social classes divide, intimacies are enervated) to the more obviously revolutionary such as gunpowder, electromagnetism, or the combustion engine. In some cases an invention threatened a change of world view (the telescope and proof of heliocentrism); disruption of social order (industrialism and the worker); competitive dis/advantage (marine navigation, empire, and imperialism); or global repercussions (the atom bomb). And this is but a gloss.

So what do social media amplify?

I hope that I have not strayed too far from the trail, but the force of historical references is far greater than any argument I might muster on behalf of social theoretical insights. That, and Connections is simply such a darned good program(me) that I relish the mental replay.

So, to the point I had in mind to begin with: what power to leverage and amplify social relations might social media represent? And if that’s the generic version of the question, the more particular version is aimed at the startups and social tool vendors out there: what social are you changing?

An example, first.
Foursquare awards badges (think Knights — the lineage of liege lies latent, looming largely!) and points for checkins. This creates social visibility out of individual action. It differentiates socially by means of recognizable distinctions (badges). It locates individuals and renders them available by means mobile and in realtime.

• So it extends the position/location series arcing back long ago to maps, star readings, and the astrolabe. Does it extend the navigation series? Yes but not significantly (it’s not about going someplace with others as being or having been there).
• By combining places with visits and short messages, does it extend the knowledge/classification/indexing series? Not so much — we still use Yelp for that.
• It is mobile and has messaging — does it extend the signal/communication series (lighthouse; morse; wireless; phone) — it may be on the cusp of social location signaling practices (I’m here, yes, come say hi) but norms are still a check against location-based intrusion. A tweet, (meeting request) is often expected first.

And there are other social relations surfaced, rendered, connected, and amplified by Foursquare that I haven’t mentioned. We could run through Buzz, ChatRoulette, Plancast, Quora, or a host of other social tools to tease out the changes they help to introduce. And around which social practices may be forming or might form.

Chain of events

In the series Connections, each chain of events has circumstantial, if not questionable, causal relation. Author James Burke readily admits the numerous chains of connection he might have drawn otherwise: historically, socially, technically. In our universe, that is, the world of social media, we must admit that our chains are not causal, but social. That is, they are signifying chains.

Now I borrow here a bit from 20th century philosophers, and cultural semioticians in particular, but the gist of the signifying chain is quite simply that social media use means something, socially speaking. It goes without saying that nobody but nobody would check in with Foursquare if he or she were the only one doing it. In any given social media tool or application, success is begotten by the social significance with which the technology is met. The greatest power, the most paradigm-changing and transformative social impact, obtains to those services with the greatest social significance.

In Connections, there are moments in history when a certain discovery creates a myriad of possibilities. And moments when a combination of simultaneous but partially-useful discoveries produce something greater than the sum of the parts. In social media we see a similar phenomenon. The browser was game changing, as were the modem, the PC, and the internet. The iPhone, however, is more likely a device whose genius of market timing allowed it to leverage existing social web practices, (mobile) application developer community (some surely with Facebook apps on their CV), and established smart/phone audience habits.

To return to the our example, as the iPhone is helped by twitter, it also helps Foursquare. And it remains to be seen what Foursquare can do to amplify the most out of geolocal social practices. For if history is any fair measure, a host of subcultures and practices might yet take wing on the Foursquare model. (Question for Facebook Places: does the social graph enable or constrain location checkins?)

Or take, instead, Google Buzz. Buzz meant to extend the one-to-many email communication model (itself a time-condensed form of correspondence combined with one-to-many broadcast aspects). Buzz lifts the 140 off short messaging and threads responses for tighter conversationality. But socially it already can’t avoid resonating with public social media cultures and practices (high profile users). And with search just an algorithm away (to say nothing of social search), the DNA in Buzz must already be plotting its next evolutionary leap with a small step along the knowledge/indexing/categorizing series. Buzz, after all, was raised in labs more digital Gutenberg than twitter, which is more Edison.

Anticipating the social

All of the technical and social narratives told in Connections involve breakthroughs whose impact spread out like ripples, often far beyond the innovator’s original intent, and usually beyond the problem immediately solved. These secondary effects exist because things are related. Territory is related to navigation is related to exploration. Constellations organize the heavens and account for earthly events, setting expectations for the future. Credit mitigates risk which permits investment, thus begetting financiers. The curved plow and scabbard were more efficient, which led to surplus, and thus leisure time.

Technologies amplify along an axis, if not several axes, of relation. Each relational axis may be developed along a series of related and extensive tools and techniques, and corresponding social and cultural practices. Value accrues as a result in areas previously left out of administration. These amplifications may involve the extension of an existing method to new practices within a social group; may connect these new practices to new populations; may complexify and differentiate the domains of action and communication possible along a series; and so on.

Consider, for a moment, some of the series in play with social tools today.

• Personal to social: The differentiation of personal habits and real-world separation of private and public spaces and places is extended in “worlds” (experiences) developed online. Not only Facebook and Google, but all social networking and communication tools extend the personal-social series. Here issues are of containment, separation, mobility, visibility, privacy, intimacy, mediation, image, and so on. Issues concern the increase in options for play and use of personal and social distinctions in tool design as well as its uses; and the protection, respect, and containment of normatively-regulated social practices in which lines between the private and the public are understood. Communication, intentional but as often unintentional, easily leaks between and across today’s mediated “spaces” and networks.
• Action and its Consequences: All social actions are coupled to likely and unlikely consequences. We take these into account (consciously or not) in our actions. As tools become more complex, a greater number of actions are coupled to a greater number of consequences. Communication posted in one context but re-contextualized elsewhere (tweets, comments, shares). In some cases the consequences of an action seemingly taken in one domain (use of a webcam to stream a room-mate’s private activity?) have consequences transcending the domain in which action was initiated and taken. Inadvertent exposures result from the many audiences through which a recording may travel.
• Associating and signifying: Signs of social status and position are a focal point of today’s massively mediated culture, and are developed with great care and precision by our image-makers. Versions of these kinds of image-based distinctions, be they signs, icons, badges, points, or some other kind of representation serve to distinguish people online, too. But insofar as they are used by an audience, not just broadcast through mass media, social signifiers online may have a wider range of ambiguity. Do they mean what they appear to mean, or what they were meant to mean by the user who earns or transacts them? With ambiguities come interpretive skills. Users today possess the ability to read the nuances of meaning not only from signs and their original context of use, but also according to friends who use them, groups they belong to, sites they use them in, and more. There is an enormous amount of design possibility in the rich field of social signifiers — from virtual currencies to leaderboards and even enterprise incentive systems.

And that’s just a canvas. Additional series could be found in social tools along axes including: finding and re-finding; discovery and exploration; search and information; trust and loyalties; personas and reputation; mobile and place/location; and so on.

Social media amplify personal and individual uses and practices; extend and connect social practices, and often produce unforeseen common wealth. But how they do so varies, and not just by tool but by insight and foresight. Socially fertile ground can dramatically enhance the impact and spread of a new tool, service, or application. It’s not just about api’s and scalability, but about social api’s and social significance. Did Gutenberg anticipate that within 40 years of his new printing press there would be eight million books in circulation? Or the Vatican foresee that the press would present a real and present threat to the very Church itself? It’s all there in history, and changes afoot today portend as remarkable a shift in communication and social and cultural practices as did the printing press more than 500 years ago.

We in the social media industry are given to talk about the fortunes of our leading companies. Twitter, Facebook, and Foursquare are our brands. They are the characters in our story, legends of their own making and in their own time. Their decisions and strategies involve us directly and shape the very media we use daily to stay connected and in touch. But their futures and fortunes are just as much in our hands, so much so that we are as much a factor in their destinies as they are a factor in our experiences.

Lately it seems as if the plot-line has wavered between real and industry-shaping news and events, and a sort of complacency if not underwhelming reception to where social media are headed. I have the sense, personally, that news greeted with the initial round of applause and attention social media engender, is followed by a pause. As if, upon reflection, we realize that we have been here before. That the news is not really that new, though it may be news for the company. That in terms of experience, much of it still adds up to more, though different, advertising and marketing; more gaming; more tweets and updates; and more search and filtering with which to wade through them.

The technology industry promises to improve and enhance our experiences, and to meet our needs — be they about information, communication, answers, or social activities. What’s interesting about social media is that these needs are shaped by industry brand leadership choices and by our social media practices at one and the same time. Tools, and what we do with them, are inseparable.

All of this begs a pretty obvious question, and one that concerns us all: funders, entrepreneurs, engineers, marketers, experts, and users alike. The question pertains to the tools and industry landscape we get, and what we can do with their products. It is: “How do we innovate?”

If social tools address both technical and social issues, when are we truly innovating, and when are we just cleaning up the mess we have created for ourselves? When are we making genuinely resourceful and constructive contributions to communication, social, or informational needs? And when are we just scratching away at an ever-growing river of people, ideas, and communication? If social tools help us to do things together, then it seems fair to ask the question: which things should we be doing?

Current trends

The development of social tools is always in flux, and subject to innovations and changes on the technology and social ends of the spectrum. Tools enable uses, but with constraints. Uses develop around tools, and are reinforced as common social practices. Innovation occurs at inflection points, when tools make a functional leap, industry standards facilitate rapid growth and adoption, or when the user community starts doing something new. So before looking more closely at the causes of innovation, let’s take a stab at some technical and social trend-lines.

Trends: companies

Facebook continues to dominate many practices. In spite of missteps, the company gets social and knows how to do it very well. Any paradigm shift in the social media landscape would be recognized and assimilated by Facebook almost without question.

Google continues to dominate information-rich experiences, but is not as comfortable with mainstream social utilities and experiences as Facebook. Neither Wave nor Buzz have mounted a serious threat to twitter or Facebook, and it seems likely that Google’s social ventures will continue to take second place to its search and advertising commitments.

Twitter has recognized its shortcomings as a platform and intends to incorporate functionalities proven in the third party marketplace. It continues to serve purposes that neither Facebook nor Google can satisfy, and has enough headroom yet to grow its adoption while improving its platform.

Trends: social practices

Social tools have taken a conversational turn since twitter’s rise to popularity two years ago. What was once done on the page is now often done in the tweet or status update. Blogging and even commenting appear to be off, while status messages and tweets are on the rise. Both of which make sense, given that the time many of us spend online is now more continuous, connected, and mobile; and given that our social networks, too, reside not on the page or site but are indeed a burgeoning social infrastructure.

Much of social networking, in fact, could now be handled around messages instead of on pages and sites. (This is the impetus of my action streams idea.) Messages categorized into functional types, with accompanying buttons, could take the place of some of the sites and services that currently structure linguistic types of interaction (question/answer; quizzes; recommendations, invitations, classifieds, etc). A kind of super twitter could accomplish much of what we currently do with Yelp, Evite, and Craigsliist, etc.

If messaging is now a serious complement to the page-based social web, and if we can now do with short statements what we have required sites and serivces for in the past, what other practices might we envision for social media? What forms of communication lie between Youtube and Chatroulette? Between Yelp and Foursquare? Where are current trend-lines headed? And more to the point, how do we innovate What’s Next in social media?

Opportunities

Opportunities pursued and taken in the social media space reflect current economic and market conditions. The industry is naturally now more sensitive to run rates and exits than in the past. Few would attempt today to build a new twitter, Facebook, or Youtube. Instead, robust, highly competitive industries have sprung up around these mainstays, forming ecosystems in which smaller but leaner companies can still turn a profit (if not just eke out a meager but defensible existence). Many of these company fortunes relate to “hole filling,” and are for the most part well-defined and opportunistic businesses.

So what of the innovations? What is the industry’s current outlook for innovation — technical and social — given market inclinations? Do we have ways of innovating social practices? Can we do better to draw on inspirations from elsewhere outside the technology industry? How much of what we can do with social media are we not yet doing?

Innovation in social media wants not only to make incremental strides but to furnish new practices. Innovators want not only to successfully launch a new tool or application, but to cultivate new online habits. And as users, we are interested not only in improvements to the applications, but in doing something new. The “eureka” moment displaces more water, the more of us there are in the tub.

Consider, for example, some further questions about innovation:

• Do we appreciate the importance of creative, interesting, compelling and entertaining communication?
• Do we invest too much in the efficiency of information and not enough in the many stories and narrative forms available for packaging content
• Have we done enough to explore the uses of different types of linguistic statements and performances — forms of speech that are already structured and whose uses are organized?
• Do we rely too heavily on users to invent social practices, not realizing that as users we will often do what everyone else is doing — even when it is no longer novel or inspiring?
• Do we rely too heavily on mass media and commercial culture, where there are many other cultural practices that might be mined for ideas of activities and pastimes?
• If this is lego-land, what year is it?

Lines of evolution

Besides random and individual acts of innovation and creativity, there is another way to approach our search for sources of innovation. It is to look at the industry as an ecosystem of sorts, in which the evolutionary paths of applications and practices point to likely future developments.

We can identify several evolutionary lines. These are paths along which social media grow and develop, as articulated by the intrinsic coupllng of technology and media with individual and social use. Social media permit content production and consumption, distribution, communication, and interaction, all the while facilitating relationship maintenance through use of light social interactions. Thus the lines of development include incremental technical improvements, paradigm-shifting industry moves, changing social practices and the diversification of modes of communication.

Evolutionary lines run through social media applications, articulating uses served by those applications. They include:

• Lines of relation: isolated, loosely-coupled exchanges to complex and role-differentiated social order
• Lines of experience: non-disruptive and simple activity to deeply participatory and compelling engagement
• Lines of interaction: transient actions and transactions to sustained exchanges and structured activities
• Lines of content: short-form posts and updates to collaboratively produced “living” documents
• Lines of temporality: brief and interruptive distractions to discontinuous but ongoing engagement
• Lines of communication: slow and stretched, open communication to fast, fleeting transactions
• Lines of the social: small and closed group phenomena to emergent and public social trends
• Lines of production: simple messaging and gestures to rich media self expression
• Lines of distribution: monological and short-lived posts to conversational, threaded, and brand-loyal subscriptions

Forces of evolution

Ecosystems have not only the evolutionary paths along which “species” develop, but forces of change and adaptation (also invention), too. Together, these forces contribute to development of the tools and applications we use in social media, activities enabled by common interface and feature sets, the individual, social, and cultural practices that guide user adoption and sustain interest and engagement, and finally, the periodic industry events that create change and inspire innovation.

Insofar as social media require technical development of tools and applications as well as adoption by an increasingly diversified social field, technology and culture push forward hand in hand. Technologies constrain what we can do with social media, but developments create new possibilities. Cultural practices firm up around uses of social media, but shape the grounds on which new developments are adopted and used.

Among the forces acting on the evolution of social media, we might identify the four primary forces.

• Technical trajectories of development
• Organization of social systems
• Accepted user experiences and social practices
• Intersections of influence, such as those created by shared standards, apis, and so on

Future forward

Is there a line of development along which tweets become games? Along which Foursquare checkins become recommendations? Or along which Facebook does social search? Not at present. But if twitter accommodated structured tweets, if Foursquare were more like Yelp, then quite possibly. The limitations are specific to the tools and their user cultures. But who is to say which path is worth taking, use case worth developing for, or feature worth implementing?

There is an entrenched tendency in social media to hew closely to best practices. This limits risk of rejection by users, and is a pitch that is easier to sell and to design. Co-opting the competition’s features and functionalities promises the possibility of retaining, if not accruing, users. It is a way to keep a tool up to date. But does it also short-change the user, and possibly even the industry, by reducing the diversity of social media experiences overall?

Perhaps it is in the very nature of the industry that market forces act as strongly on development as the technical and social forces cited above. In which case, it is not difficult to see that market forces might be more fundamentally risk-averse than users and their tools would like. It might be that that the design of social tools lies too much with technologists and with the use cases common among technically-minded users (read: geek culture?). Television programming is not up to television designers — should social media companies employ more content and creative types?

The challenge ahead of us will be to innovate social tools in ways that continue to capture and expand audience and uses. Somebody, somewhere, will always have to take a risk — with technology, design, functionality, and social practices. It’s my hope that we can mitigate these risks with smarter thinking about what works for people and why, supplementing our design choices with educated guesswork, relying less on market forces and business-minded entrepreneurship.