Problems thus arise when we try to define what user experience (interaction design, experience design etc also) is. Where it ends, what it concerns, and what it can claim.

Nathan Shedroff touches on this in a good post in Boxes and Arrows. And suggests that we regard experience design in its larger form.

The way I see it, at issue is the question of abstraction. At what level, and on what basis, do we accurately abstract from the specific (situated, contextual experience)? What methods and what theories privilege our claims to understand our observations; and from there to recommend or even predict outcomes?

Experience design claims to know better both a user experience as well as its design. The paradox therein being that no experience is designed. Experience is either in the Now, in which case it is event. Or it’s in the past, in which case it is reflected upon and then retold.

Design, by abstracting according to principles, experience, tradition, and constraints, seeks to improve and master. It seeks to design what will be experienced later. It is already a projection forwards in time of something contemplated and designed now. There’s no escaping the abstraction of design from experience. Experience design abstracts its interactions with the help of concepts, models, and other factors by which we can better anticipate outcomes. Our entire disciplined is a forward thinking, and hopeful projection of future interactions and experiences in some correspondence to models and concepts with which they were thought through (designed).

Here designers seem to bifurcate in at least two directions. Those who seek effectiveness and those who seek pleasure. Experience design either measures its success on the basis of functional adequacy — a utilitarian model of the value of human activity. Or it seeks satisfaction and happiness — an experiential view of human activity.

Brands engaged in experience design practices will tend to receive advice according to the philosophical bent of the designer: use, utility, functionality, effectiveness, or satisfaction, happiness, serendipity, desire. Put simply, quantity vs quality. Or that value which is easily quantified (and measured) vs which is enjoyed (and appreciated).

These are a vastly over-simplified dissection of the discipline.

But it has struck me, over the years, that designers will tend towards the object of experience or the inner experience of the object. Towards the design and aesthetics, the functionality and objectivity of a “thing,” or the inner meaning of the thing, as experienced uniquely by an individual. Object and subject.

Both are needed, obviously. For a design practice to seek a full and holistic appreciation of its own field, it must have a well-articulated and descriptive language for what it observes. And it must have an honest and self-reflective understanding of how it organizes its observations and from which it draws its claims.

There is a vast amount of understanding of how people interact, of how interactions become organized, of how patterns (habits, traditions, rituals, pastimes, games, etc) form and persist over time, and so on.

I can’t see any reason why those of us interested in the place of technology, as object world and as subjective experience, would ignore the work of anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists and many others long working in the human sciences.

All design, at some point, must draw its boundary. How much does it claim and on what basis. Clearly we understand that the complexity of human affairs disguises a high degree of identity and repetition. Technologies sit within that complexity, and should not be regarded outside the context of their use if they are to be understood — as objective constraints on subjective experiences.

Unless we dig deeper and think harder about our own discipline, we risk losing the field to what much of design is, and always has been: a matter of taste.

In old school philosophical style, I will begin with my proximate enemy. My proximate enemy is the concept of “feedback loops.” Patina’d with a touch of the de riguer, “feedback loops” are often referenced as an accounting of social media’s virality. These loops describe the mechanism of social media participation. Feedback loops exist, in other domains, it is true. And feedback loops are a common feature of systems. But social media, and social tools in particular, are social systems, not mechanical, biological, climactic, or other operational systems. Social systems are reproduced not by system processes, but by meaningful exchanges among participants: in short, people.

Feedback loops

Feedback is an amplifying recycling of a source, say, a Fender Stratocaster in the hands of one Mr. Hendrix. It owes to the distance between two elements: a pickup, and a speaker. Close the distance between the two, and the signal tone amplifies itself, resulting in distorted feedback. Love it, but not an explanation of social media use, because it is acoustic.

Feedback loops fail as an explanation of social media engagement because they are a reproduction or amplification of the same: a single source. Social systems are reproduced on the basis of communication. And communication is dialogical. That is, it involves two or more participants in meaningful exchange. The common “feedback” features of social — likes, retweets, follows, comments, and so on — depend on the actions of individual users. The secret sauce, then, is in facilitating and amplifying not a single signal, but the coupling of signal. For one signal, a response. The response of an other (user).

Social action is awareness

Social engagement is built on social action. Social action is action of users aware that there are others. Not all social action solicits direct responses and replies, but all social action has in it the appeal to a response. In face to face situations, a look of acknowledgement suffices much of the time. But in mediated social contexts, there is no unilateral means of securing acknowledgment. Social media are built on separation, absence, and deferral. So the intrinsic appeal of social action — a feature, if you will, so fundamental to human social interaction that it must be accepted as a given — always remains. It is residue, ambiguous and unresolved, and it is the first key ingredient of our special sauce.

Social action is dead unless taken up by somebody. All of culture, all of language, and all of speech is “designed,” if you will, to make the improbable more probable. That is, to make communication more probable. Familiarity of meanings, use of a structured form of expression, norms and etiquette and innumerable practices all conspire to make it more likely that we are able to communicate with each other. So then, the challenge for any social tool is to make communication more probable.

Given that in mediated social systems, users sit at small backlit boxes reaching through the wire to share their thoughts and activities, the “design” of the application through which they engage necessarily structures and organizes their experience. But all of our socio technical systems harken back to original forms. Social tools are still part telephone. Part telegraph. Part radio. Part television.

You wait for a reply. The phone rings. It calls you — you are being called to answer. You place a phone call. The phone rings — a voice calls out: “It’s for you.” This is the system coupling of social action: action – response. And it is what becomes more challenging in social tool design, for unlike the phone, social tools are designed for asynchronous use.

Asynchronicity is distance. Distance not in space, but in time. Nearness, closeness, and immediacy are the human experience equivalents of space. This distance is inserted into social action and comes to separate action from response. The appeal — our first ingredient — is now at work. For it takes the form of waiting: urgent, distracted, compulsive, patient, or forgetful waiting.

Communication is a type of action system that by its nature is open-ended and ongoing. As it is how we maintain our relationships, it serves the purpose of allowing us to always resume interaction. And provides means by which to handle the gaps in between. Social tools, then, are built on action systems that are open-ended. They have no ending or conclusion, and are literally never finished. (Which is why it’s not really stories, but narration, which best describes social sharing activity.)

Communication wants to be probable

Given that communication wants to be probable, and given that mediation makes communication improbable, social tools use features and action designs that increase probabilities of communication. The Like, the retweet, the vote, and even the follow are system elements that serve as proxy communication. They are indirect symbolic expressions and actions. Same for all, but meaning something unique to each user each and every time they are used. These symbolic social actions in other words enable communication by other means: technical means, symbolic means, and within a social system that has ways of presenting these social actions to others.

Because these social systems are networked, any action taken that is captured and represented by technical form (like button click > “username liked this”) is displayed to others (a user’s friends), according to context (feed, page, etc). This leaves us with something very unique. A form or medium of communication quite different from the directly coupled ancestor of the phone, or the broadcast ancestor of radio and television. This unique property is distribution: propagation of a social action throughout the medium, if you will, according to “sharing,” display, privacy, and other design rules baked into the social system’s logic (just think Facebook timeline).

We saw earlier that the residual feature of social action is the appeal; the unspoken, if you will, of all that is said. Now this is complexified. For mediated symbolic action has a functional dualism: it appeals, and it propagates (distribution). Here we have the fundamental amplification of social media: a social action taken is visible (heard) in many “places.” It is a kind of action dislocated from space and place, and instead reproduced by system logic and rules in “contexts” “elsewhere.”

Social action is split

Now given that all social action seeks acknowledgement (directly or indirectly), mediated social action is split in two. The appeal is split from the action itself. For each additional context in which a social action is represented (say, a Like that appears in many friends’ feeds, on pages, in notifications, on phones, etc), its author’s intent is lost. For it’s a given that the author has not intended to “like” in front of each of his or her friends, to be seen in their feeds, or notified on their phones. A new form of communication is thus born — and all users must develop skills and competencies with which to interpret and handle what their friends mean, as well as what’s going on.

The dual function of the symbolic social action, an appeal split from propagation of the action’s represented form, complicates communication further. For there is but one possibility for communication as a kind of social action, and it is the response. But responses no longer mean what they did, when communication is unmediated and direct (as between people talking face to face). Furthermore, any response is itself a new social action, itself now with an appeal, and itself now propagated to contexts elsewhere.

Distribution

And so we have the second ingredient of our secret sauce: distribution. We are far from the feedback loop. For we have neither the closure nor the recycling that make up feedback. Rather, we have a much less efficient system of communication. What might be considered noise. And not just the noise “generated” by the propagation of social actions, but the meta noise, if you will, of all the lost intentional signals.

Which is where design comes in. Design of social must answer to the needs and interests of social action, not just the needs and interests of individual users. But social architecture has a growing portfolio of plans and blueprints at its disposal. And accompanied with an understanding of the dynamics of social activities, a sense for how to lay out social designs for increasing complexity over time.

Closure, still, is the first order of business in social interaction design. Closure makes communication more probable. In so doing, it decreases noise (noise being a form of redundancy). And so the social interaction designer asks not “what feedback loops do we build into this?” but “how do we facilitate social closure through other users?”

Closure is closeness

We mentioned earlier that distance in human experience is closeness. Closure is closeness. Jimi’s guitar feedback was closeness — proximity to the amp. But as speed of feedback. And in mediated systems, because they are technologies, closeness is a factor of speed (or time, as duration). The notification increases speed. The realtime feed increases speed. Speed reduces waiting time, and accelerates the process of communication.

Temporality

And so we have our third ingredient: temporality. All human affairs take time. Time not measured in minutes or hours, but felt and experienced: as tedious, dragging, plodding, or urgent, impatient, distracted time. Time has stretches, and spans; it has rhythms, cycles, and repetitions. It becomes habit, and pastime. And is lost in distraction, ephemera, and its own passage. Time, as we know it, has past and future. As past, it is recollection; as future, it is anticipation and expectation. No time, in human terms, is entirely unorganized, and all time, as we experience it, has meaning.

So the real real time revolution is not the revolution of speed alone. It is the revolution of im-mediacy. Approximation, by proxy of proximity, of immediacy in mediation. Design of socio-technical systems making increasingly running claims upon our awareness and attention. In short, getting ever closer to the presence in absence of that open state of talk which is the normal condition of everyday life.

Now many social systems designers have gone at the abstraction of social into design forms and rules. Gamification is one example of something interesting gone badly wrong at the hands of abstraction. Game mechanics, too, are oft but a shell of something compelling dislocated from the eventfulness of games and reified into codified sets of rules and recommendations. Design like this gets nowhere close to the grist because it takes its abstractions as real. Soon the map precedes the territory.

Designing for social makes use of much simpler factors. All social action appeals to others. All social action communicates. All communication is coupling. People understand the appeal of social action as acknowledgment. People understand the action of communication as response. People engage in communication through reciprocity and reciprocal action. All occurs over time, in order, and the more synchronous the experience the more present it feels.

To design social tools you need only to understand the distance at which you operate from the realities of human experience.

Some time ago I met with a potential client to do some work on crafting promotional tweets and Facebook status updates with the purpose of sharing commercial offers across social networks. This might not seem to fall within the purview of social interaction design — the job being more of a marketing copy writing contract. But as I dove into the challenge, it soon became clear that even writing tweets and Facebook messages involves a type of social design.

• The design language or form is language itself;
• The medium is communication;
• The system is social networking and distributed messaging;
• The content is branding, sales, and marketing;
• And the interaction is the social and conversational call to action.

Advertising: from image to talk

The old (mass) medium form of advertising is the image. It is versioned for multiple broadcast media and addressed generically to appeal to the greatest number of market segment customers as possible. Messaging will often make lifestyle references, appeals to value and utility, price and quality, aspirational imagery, celebrity endorsement, and so on. Decades of fine-tuning supported by market research and results tracking have provided marketing with a virtually scientific sense of purpose. As simplistic as many advertisements and campaigns may seem, marketing writers operate with a great deal of confidence and awareness about what they are doing.

What then of the conversational style of messaging and promotion now so important in the age of social media? Branding, marketing, and sales function differently in this medium. They eschew the image for talk. Their appeal is more personal and is often targeted. Message distribution occurs not through media buys and placement but through the distribution facilitated by customers themselves. Success is attributed to virality — but in fact communication is far more nuanced and subtle than viral transmission. The call to action is not just an appeal individual action, but is an appeal to social action (sharing, liking, forwarding, recommending, tweeting).

The matter of crafting promotional word-of-mouth messaging for effectiveness across social media is completely unlike that of broadcast messaging. For it relies on the engagement of end users, and depends on their willingness to repeat the message or share the action in their own words (even if it’s just a matter of quoting, or retweeting), to their own peers.

Here, then, is a brief overview of the social interaction design considerations of writing promotional copy.

Social media messaging is relational

The crux of broadcast advertising and marketing is the impression. Messaging seeks, through its claims, its use of image and references, and its aesthetic or style, to make an impression. Audiences are expected to tell a commercial from fact, and so the entire form of communication is bracketed: it’s understood by all that a commercial is fiction. The aim, then, is to make an impression upon audiences such that consumers identify with the message, enough so to form their own mental associations and ultimately recall or even act upon the message broadcast.

This may just involve brand awareness, but more often seeks action: a purchase. The challenge in broadcast messaging is thus the production of messages that make their appeal most effectively to the greatest number of consumers in such a manner that their response to the messaging extends company sales and awareness. The “relationship” is between the brand and the consumer.

Social media messaging is different. The medium is personal, and so messaging arrives within the context of a social tools (twitter, Google, Facebook, etc) used regularly for personal purposes. The messaging is direct, insofar as it appears as a statement received by the user in a medium used for direct communication (again, twitter, Facebook, etc). Image and brand personality references are crafted with words, and so brands may avail themselves of imagery and motion story-telling (tv ads) far less than they are used to. Creative is invested completely in the two axes of social tools: language and speech. And distribution is not controlled, but is rather given over to the audience to execute according to the the message’s appeal.

Social media messaging is appealing

This matter of the appeal is a critical distinction between mass and social media. The appeal of mass media messaging is anchored on the impression made. The appeal of social media is anchored on the user’s acceptance of the message. More specifically, the distinction is between a broadcast message invested with meaning, and a social message whose meaning is invested by the user. Power shifts from the brand to the consumer. Expression (branding) is replaced by Interpretation or Reception. The broadcast message may seek to make an impression; the social message seeks the user’s engagement. From a communication perspective, the operation of commercial promotions is reversed: brands do not supply the meaning, users do. Only then may they be expected to pass it along. Only when they accept, like, and see themselves in the messaging do they make it their own and share it.

The construction of social messaging requires a shift from objectively-framed communication to subjectively addressed communication. Broadcast messaging creates a fictionally objective claim (seeking to make an impression, an image). Social media messaging seeks to address the end user and relate directly by means of a pseudo form of speech: speech by proxy, if you will.

Addressing the (message) envelope

This means that the writer may employ objective claims, as in writing headlines and news-like statements. Or may “speak” more personally, making use of I, You, We, They, and Us. Those are linguistic elements rarely deployed in broadcast media. Most community managers and social media managers do this without thinking about it. We talk without reflecting on the constructed-ness of our speech. But that’s not to say that there’s no order or design involved in speech. All speech employs the order and construction of language, in both its form and content.

Speech is addressed, to somebody, to everybody, to a group, or even to oneself. The use of “I” is unnecessary on twitter and in Facebook updates, because the medium implies it. But “I” can still be of use, to change both tone and appeal. The linguistic effect of using “I” or “I” references (me, my) changes effect. For example: “Support relief efforts in Haiti” vs “I would really like help in supporting Haiti relief efforts.”

Similarly, use of “you” directly appeals to the reader/user. As in, “I would really like your help in supporting relief efforts.” Use of group references, such as to include by suggestion, makes use of the addressing of speech also. As in, “We should really get together to support Haiti relief efforts.”

These kinds of addressing functions of speech are used with risk in broadcast media, but are less risky in social media. The use of addressing (I, we, you, they, us, etc) in broadcast makes an implication that many in the audience may reject. There’s no personal relation in broadcast, and thus the appeal is risky. But in social, it extends an offer of relation and when appropriate (to the brand or claim it makes), can succeed precisely because it is relational — it’s personal, where broadcast can’t be.

Message content and linguistic expressions

If addressing involves the envelope of communication through social tools, then content is where references and claims are made. The message comprises of a statement or expression within which a claim is made. Here, the medium offers a greater range of differentiation than broadcast. First of all, a brand or company may craft many more messages, providing many more claims, than in broadcast. Claims can thus be made to appeal to the interests of a greater number of consumers/users. Claims based on price, utility, value, timeliness, and much more. Claims directed at personal interests, social values (causes), cultural affinities, news, and so on.

These content claims can be presented or expressed in social media messaging by means of objective statements or personally and socially addressed expressions. Here we encounter some basic linguistic types of expression. We have:

• statements of fact;
• requests;
• questions;
• answers;
• invitations;
• offers;
• announcements;
• recommendations;
• and more…

Message content and the claims of content

Any of the claims you wish to make, as the informational content of your message, may be expressed differently by use of the above types of linguistic expression. Consider:

• “We (the organization) would like your support of our Haiti relief efforts,” (appeal for help and appeal to include self in organizational efforts)
• “Our relief efforts are getting underway. Help us now!” (announcement plus direct appeal)
• “Relief efforts make a difference with the help of twitter” (factual statement, no direct appeal)
• “Join in our relief efforts today” (invitation)

In addition to the addressing and informational, or content claims, of social messaging, there is the call to action. All internet advertising and marketing works by call to action. But in social, the call to action is social — it hopes for personal response, yes, but seeks social engagement. The social call to action is unique in that it asks the user to personally repeat or distribute the message to his or her peers. The commitment hoped for is greater; net effectiveness is supposed to be higher. Because the message is distributed by means of the highest authority there is: one’s own relationships with friends and peers. Personal relationships, not media, are the backbone of this kind of marketing.

Completing the message: call to (social) action

The call to action is often a link. It may be accompanied by information that provides reference and context, or not. But the call to action may be the expectation of retweeting. Or, in the case of Facebook, of liking. Brands often want users to complete the call to action based on the content of their message. But the user completes the call to action only if his or her interpretation of the message resonates and agrees with his or her interests in it. Again, the power is reversed, from expression and image-based messaging to interpreted communication. Actions are taken by users when they feel like it. When they feel like acknowledging a message; when they feel like being seen to acknowledge it; and when they wish to include others in it.

Here, then, commercial messaging wants to be as least commercial as possible. Many call this “authenticity” and “transparency,” but lets not fool ourselves. It’s commercial, and everybody knows it. So use either great creative, compelling narration, use news, or values, or discounts and package them communicatively.

Take, for example, the discount or offer. Social media are rife with discounts and offers, and companies such as Groupon, Yelp, and Foursquare (to name but a few) are heavily invested in the value proposition of social shopping and social commerce. The challenge here is to make the act of shopping a communicative act. It normally isn’t. In some cases, the challenge is in fact to make the act of window shopping a communicative act — as when companies hope that users looking for products socialize their efforts and solicit participation from friends or peers.

Transformation of this act into a social and communicative exercise demands use of the medium’s communicative possibilities, in short, the messaging variants we have described above. If I purchase flowers online, and am given a message after the purchase to share it with friends, the more effective use of messaging would focus on giving, reaching out, sending greetings, bringing a smile to somebody’s day — not the more conventional but commonplace “Save 30% on flowers today.” That doesn’t communicate beyond the value proposition, which is unlikely to be of interest to most of my friends at any given time. More likely to communicate personally would be a personal expression to which the purchase of flowers is simply a reference: “I just made somebody smile. Guess who? (link)” And so on.

Summary

In summary, the creative work of commercial social media messaging extends beyond the craft of broadcast advertising and marketing. The medium used is a form of mediated speech, and its success depends not on its image appeal but on its personal reception by users. Action is solicited on the basis of claims that engage a user’s interests and which are communicable. A number of forms of linguistic expression are available as means of “designing” the message envelope and contents. And the informational, or value propositions contained in the message may be highly differentiated for the purpose of targeting and reaching different types of audiences and their peers.

There is order, structure, and design in all things. In the facilitation of social interaction, and communication, too. Especially when it’s commercial.

Imperfect and unfinished as any project on contemporary products will be, my Principles of Social Interaction Design is now available for free download. This project has taken a couple of years, and in places bears the marks of a theory worked out over time. Some of my core concepts appeared in my blog posts first. These include the idea of frames — for both conceptualizing interactions, as well as for design thinking. Concepts of mediation, of symbolic tokens, of realtime streams may also be familiar from topics I have blogged about over the years. I have developed these into simple logics.

Now, as always, I believe that mediation is real — mediated interactions should not be understood by their simple reference to face to face situations. Mediation makes a real and measurable difference. And this difference is experienced and produced as a mental engagement, by means of which users fabricate, imagine, project, internalize, and much more, their interpretations of others and of social worlds in general.

As always, I believe that any designer of social tools should appreciate the multi-faceted manner in which these experiences become motives; orientations; activities; and ultimately, social practices. The user experience is, in social interaction design, both more necessary, and farther from reach.

Many sources were drawn upon for this project:  from contemporary designers/thinkers/bloggers to canonical sociological, psychological, and linguistic frameworks. My effort to pull together theoretical and conceptual architecture from outside the design world, in order to accommodate the needs of both mediated user experiences and emergent social practices, is unorthodox. Hence I am calling this an essay. I am excited to see it develop over time.

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.