The internet changes over time. That the technology has evolved is obvious. But how we use the internet is also changing. So we have two conceptual distinctions — technology and people — that we frequently conflate into one idea of the internet. This post is about teasing apart the objective and subjective dimensions of social media, to examine what’s behind the relational economy we now live in, and its particular mode of production. All commerce and much personal and social utility implied by use of social media owes to the subjective value added to what was, previously, a mode of production of information (publishing).

I will try to demonstrate here the manner in which social acts and communication result in mediated social realities. And suggest that the relational connections and value-added associations which are the byproduct of social media use create a marketplace of content whose highest value, individually motivated subjective choices, we are only beginning to capture and mine.

Technically speaking, the internet distributes data. Data that is also stored. Data we also call information. Information being a very loose term used sometimes to refer to the contents themselves (words, numbers, it doesn’t matter) and sometimes to its social/cultural meaning (information is something meaningful, a fact). Technically speaking, information is the bitstream and lifeblood of the internet. It’s objective. But speaking in common terms, information is what we know. It’s subjective.

The world of the first, we might consider the “reality” of the online world. Information is the foundation on which a rich medium of presentation and interaction is constructed (it is a constructed world, it is a world produced and manufactured as are all media).

The world of the second we might consider the “subjectivity” of the online world. Interaction and communication, in which information is used and referenced, linked to and embedded, is now the most fascinating aspect of the online world. In this medium nothing exists unless it is connected to something else. Unlike the real world, the online world exists only insofar as it is navigable. That is, only on the basis of a connection.

The connectedness of the real world is material, substantial, and alive. Forces of change are natural and inevitable, in short: causal. Time moves all substance; all is in motion and change is a natural “causal” chain. Connectedness is simple causality of the world becoming, in time.

The connectedness of the online world is constructed. Connections are constructed by machines and by people, according to the logic and relations that exist at the level of information, and at according to the subjective choices (tastes, preferences) of people (users).

The old model for the online world was web publishing. Separately, there were communication tools and applications (email, chat, IM etc). The current model combines the two. In the old model, connections between bits of information might be made according to the relations that made sense for those bits of information: taxonomic, categorical, by genre, topic, what have you. The online world had more objectivity in that its production reflected “industrial” methods.

The online world today reflects a much higher degree of subjective and social use — connections are made not only as a reflection of these subjective values and interests, but as a byproduct of subjective relations and activities. Put simply, people create value when they interact and communicate online, often-times including ingredients provided by the medium (we can use words, which of course pre-existed the internet; we can also use the stuff found only here).

The online world is capturing more and more subjective choices. Selections made by people for reasons of taste and preference, motivated by others (for, because of, to attract…), reflecting individual identity, group identity, community, you name it. Social media permit online activity to reveal a vast amount of social and cultural preference as well as relational interest. And much of it is recorded, stored, and indexed.

The real social life?

But extracting meaning from the social web is a challenging proposition, let alone undertaking. When content is created, connected, distributed, embedded, or otherwise attached to people, their talk, or their interactions (activities), its meaning becomes ambiguous. Meaning may be obtained from the user’s intentions in using content, or from the content’s semantic meaning, from the relationship between users, the group, site, community context, application context, and so on. And I’m radically over-simplifying the interpretive options here.

Counting and quantifying by-and-large has served as our means of qualifying social web content. This is perhaps now going to change somewhat, as realtime tools like Twitter (and their practices) contribute ever-increasing amounts of “information” to the internet. When information first appears, when it is news and is completely new, it is distributed. This original flow of information creates connections, establishes content relationships, facilitates indexing by search engines, and will make possible socially-validating actions (comments, tagging, bookmarking, sharing etc).

The real social media life

There is a bias in this first flow of news. This bias owes simply to the fact that new information must be observed before it can become part of the online reality’s facticity. Information cannot be valued until it first has been observed. So the “first hit” if you will, in traffic, is relatively meaningless and belongs to the information’s coming into existence. It is merely the appearance of news in the realtime stream.

The second selection of that information is the first to reflect user interest — the second selection is not observation but action. It is confirmation of the information’s subjective value, or of its social relevance. This second selection, be it a retweet, a like, or some other act of “sharing,” transforms the news item (information) into communication, for it is now voiced not as fact but as an individual statement, or personal choice. This move transforms fact as facticity into social fact as subjective interest, and not only as individual choice but as a communicative expression.

Behind the choice of the like or retweet, in other words, is an intention taken up with an audience in mind. In this way our likes and retweets convey, indicate, suggest, solicit, and identify our interests in a social act that engenders further interaction. In the transformation of fact as news into social fact as choice, this second selection attributes new meaning (adding value to the information), as it is sent, shared, rated, saved, tagged etc. That added value is the subjective interest, and is the reason that in the world of social media, the news (facts) that matter are those that are most communicable; in short, tastes by means of which we disclose who we are, what we find interesting, and with which we identify.

Counting accrues over time, as content is validated/used in a variety of social interactions. Because connections may be counted without qualifying the type of connection or the kind of relation, a simple count is the most common way of validating information. This is a reality in which the number of connections to a piece of information is its volume or mass — it’s social reality.

More recent social web practices, however, suggest that qualifying these connections, and accounting for the variety in social relations, will be increasingly valuable if not necessary. For whom is information consumed; in front of whom is it shared or published; for whom is it told; who else chooses it? Where in the world of facts, validity is measured in terms of truth, in the world of social facts, validity is an expression of relevance. Relevance in a social sense is significance. Understanding the significance of information means understanding an act, a social relation, and the connection made with information embedded in social interactions.

The social act is far more complex, relationally, than may at first appear, and to date exceeds the capabilities of search and filtering to model and represent. For relational values attributed or attached to social fact as they are communicated across networks may belong to a number of meaning domains.

These relational values may be indicative, of personal interest. May be expressive, of personal feeling, state, or mood. May be solicitous, of recognition, validation, or some other acknowledgment. May be associative, as in similar to or related to some category of interests and tastes, values, events, and so on. May be inter-personal, as when they are intended to further interaction with a person or persons. And so on. All of these and other social actions may furnish the reasons for which we confirm and communicate, select and distribute, connect to and share, content in mediated social systems.

The social web grows by supplementing information with social significance, or what makes information socially relevant. The old world, the world of web 1.0, was a world of publishing. It was a one-column world. The new world, the social world of web 2.0, is a two-column world. What the double-entry method of book-keeping did for finance, inaugurating a system of debits and credits, and liberating capital from its exchange form, we need for the social web. Facebook is on this already, but still primitively, insofar as social content in feeds is liked and acted on within an inter-personal relational context.

But outside Facebook, the added value of so many one-click expressions or gestures is still lost in a system that captures action in a single column social model. Social needs to model communication, not just information, and for this it needs the equivalent of a two-column transactional model. Like markets run by brokerage and trading systems, the ask and the offer, the sale and purchase, need to be coupled. Only then are social expressions validated by the reciprocation, or confirmation, supplied by another (the audience). Value can then be assessed on the basis of its confirmation.

Communication is just communication as long as it remains observed only. But it calls for a yes or no, for acceptance or rejection. When that is supplied by another person, it becomes social action. Not information, but action, and what we need to capture it, measure it, relate it, and repurpose it, is the challenge facing us today.

Photo by malias

One of my favorite books about community is a work by Nobel Prize winner Elias Canetti called Crowds and Power. It’s a beautiful and thoroughly insightful study on people assembled in different ways and for a kaleidoscopic set of reasons. I turn to the book often when thinking about how social media both separate and connect us, using it as an imaginary frontier of sorts for what mediated crowds might or could do. A piece by Tim Leberecht reminded me of Canetti this morning. Got me thinking about converging streams and how conversational media sometimes produce that effect of being together at the same time.

Which is really a matter of paying attention at the same time, more than of being together, for the medium only connects across our individual spaces and times. The Germans have a nice word for the sense of being with others: “Mitsein.” “Being with” is contrasted with contiguity, or being “next to” or adjacent to one another. We’re not in one another’s stream of consciousness when we are just next to one another; we are when we are “with” one another.

There is no “Mitsein” online, but there is a sense of something that approximates it. But it comes not through being together. It comes through talk. Talk that indicates we are here and now, paying attention. The response is its signal flare.

In a medium so perfectly suited for a kind of self-talk, or talking aloud in front of others, it might be strange that there are occasions when we get a sense of Mitsein. Approximated, of course, in the medium’s own peculiar kind of proximity, or proximate intimacy. An “approximity” perhaps. A blend of the real and the imagined, of memory and expectation.

Verbal communication, not the language of bodies sharing space as in Crowds and Power, produces this approximation online. The kind of talk that appeals for a response. The kind of talk that runs out a line with hooks.

Hooks are important for conversation. I much prefer dialog to monolog. Hooks, in the form of “and you?” strung out along the thread of a good conversation are what call me into the world of people. I listen, I pay more attention, when conversation is drawn by the two of us. I like interruptions and clipped sentences, finishing one another’s thoughts, and mutual effort of threading out a good line together.

I wonder if the brief moments of simultaneity that pass now and then across our webbed social spaces will result in stream convergence. If the community of talk media might lie not in distributing messages but in the sense of sharing time. And if the point of doing more to make streams — of messages and update and activities — more interesting is also to create more hooks by which to connect them. If streams, like people, not only want the greater flow of the river but also the shared flow of time.

Top image by Demi Brooke

I started wondering last evening what twitter would be like if in addition to followers we could also see who was actually being paid attention to. The groups many of us use in clients like Tweetdeck or Seesmic, for example. So in the midst all of our positive talk of transparency and authenticity, I found myself chuckling at the opacity we in fact rely on to make it through the day.There’s nothing wrong with this, and while some may see a cynical twist or twitter’s dirty little secret (nobody’s listening!), I see instead perfectly reasonable social media coping mechanisms…

Social media’s two audiences

Social behaviors are shaped and informed by design, but not explained by design. The obvious reason that none of us can see each other’s twitter usage (groups, or subsets of followers actually viewed and paid attention to) is that if designed into twitter, activity would change instantly and radically. This is not just a matter of privacy, but a deeply social matter.

Reflecting on this last night led me to thinking about the social and public space constructed across all social media. There are, in mediated social contexts, always two audiences.

• There is an audience we’ll call social, and which we describe in terms of proximity: it’s a internalized social world of friends, peers, colleagues: known individuals.
• And there is a second, anonymous public, which is not internalized but is imagined.

Any person known belongs in the social and is potentially present. Any anonymous individual, because we don’t yet know them (as soon as we do, they move to the internalized social world), is possibly present.

Potential and possible relations

Potential social relations become active relations, or interactions, when we communicate. Possible relations become actual relations, based on the action of following, when we are seen and found.

I think the doubling of audience could go far in explaining the power of social media.

We know, for example, that the probability of actually having a conversation is less in social media than it is face to face. There’s simply a lot more at our command in face to face situations by means of which to have conversation. However, face to face situations limit us, of course, to those in our presence. Social media may reduce the probability of having real conversation but increase the opportunities for creating conversation.

This seems, to me, the main reason we use social media. Not mass, but mini media. Or, “me”-dia, in the context of social, not mass audiences. The distinction between social and mass media being that relations are possible in the former, not so in the latter. (This is changing as mass incorporates social.)

The medium’s three modes: mirror, surface, window

Back then to attention, and the veil of nondisclosure from behind which we engage in social media. I like to say that the social interface has three modes: mirror, surface, and window.

• We see ourselves reflected in social media: this is it’s mirror mode.
• We consume content of all kinds off the screen — sites, apps, communication — all using the screen as a presentation layer: this is its surface mode.
• And we talk to each other through social media: this is its window mode

Modes of attention

Social presence, proximity, and attention are then each implicated in a mediated social context that has ways of seeing and ways of being seen.

Consider this, for example. We enjoy accumulating followers, seeing ourselves referred to, commented to, and otherwise being made visible. Doesn’t matter whether this involves acknowledgment, recognition, or validation; the point is that the medium does create a kind of social visibility. Call it, for simplicity’s sake, “being paid attention to.”

Well, attention doesn’t correlate with actually engaging in conversation. Many of us sometimes ignore a request for communication, for whatever reason. It’s part of daily life; in real life it’s called “civil inattention,” and is handled by acknowledging others in ways that also indicate to them “I see you, recognize you, but I’m not available to interact.” Simply put, politeness.

Now, consider the social media space. Attention paid to others may not be visible to them. But if it’s given, such as by taking any action recorded and captured by the medium and surfaced by design, then this action can have two social outcomes, not one. This is the power of the medium, and the net effect of the doubled audience mentioned above.

Social actions, social relations

One translates as the potential for further social action. The other translates into the possibility for social relation. For the social world already has relations but has activity only on the basis of user actions. And the public world has activity but lacks the connection until a relation is established.

• A social action has been made which can be picked up by any user who sees it: potential for further action
• A social action increases the user’s visibility: the possibility of being seen

The possibility of being seen is motive enough, for some. While communication is no more probable, the possibility is there. As they say of the lottery: your odds of winning increase dramatically if you buy a ticket.

The power of this second audience, the public, which creates infinite possibilities and which is motivation for much of what we do, explains a lot of how the attention economy works.

Perceived and transactional influence

Attention, interestingly, is described in economic terms: paid, spent, given, taken. Note that the first two are zero sum and involve the temporality of attention. Paying attention takes our time. The second two are non-zero sum and transactional.

Giving and getting attention is the simplest social action. Nothing yet has to be said or communicated verbally: attention can be given a person, and that in itself, is socially meaningful.

Now consider how we attend to the attention economy in social media. Brands, as well as users, watch and attend to it. Brands, as well as users, transact in it.

• Social capital, the perceived value of a brand or individual, collects attention paid and spent on that brand or person. Call this perceived influence.
• Social currency, the transacted value of a brand or individual, is attention given and taken by the brand or person by means of social actions. Call this transactional influence.

Unfortunately, perceived influence, which is just social observation, is grossly under-rated. It’s much more difficult to measure because there’s no action taken. Brands can’t see the value in it for it’s not in the numbers provided by metrics and analytics tools. For it lies behind the veil of personal social media use, in the activity of paying attention to twitter, or more specifically, to the users we actually follow.

I say this is unfortunate because i think much social action is preceded by long periods of social observation. Consider the difference it would make, to brands and to users, if all social media were split screen interfaces: what I see and what you see. Real life social situations are like this: I see you looking at me, and can see reflected in your face something of how you see me (what you think of me).

Motives explained by the social and the public

The dual public also helps to explain many of our motives in using social media. Again, our actions can lead to potential further action, and if not, are at least possibly seen. Tweets, like comments, reflect these motives.

For example:

• Tweets or comments intended to get attention from the author
• Tweets or comments soliciting or appealing for direct response
• Tweets or comments that are a direct response
• Tweets or comments that continue a conversational run or thread
• Tweets or comments intended to garner attention to their author

We could break each of these down and show that for each, the user’s motive may be to appeal to the author’s attention, to get visibility in front of the public, to solicit a response, or to respond. Tweets and comments, in other words are not just that: (Nothing is explained if we describe social action by its form of content.)

Summary

To conclude, then, I think that the fact that any use of social media can have outcomes in two distinct audiences may explain its uniqueness as a medium, and its use by brands and individuals alike. That the attention economy involves both looking and being seen, posting and responding, would explain why motives for participating in social media reflect to the “presence” of two audiences. These are properties particular to the sociality of the medium, and to the sociability of its uses.

Although social networking sites have become the commonplace over the past eight years since the introduction of Friendster in 2002, designers have not yet explored two important notions: 1) What kind of social experience do social networking sites foster?; and 2) Do social networking sites encourage community?

Introduction

This past year social media, and social network sites in particular, have reached new heights of popularity and adoption. It is no longer unusual for clients to request that designers “add Facebook” to their respective sites, mainly for the purpose of increased engagement and community building for their brand as a part of a greater social marketing strategy. Although social networking sites have become commonplace, designers have not yet explored two important notions:

1. What kind of social experience do social networking sites foster?; and
2. Do social networking sites encourage community?

The Anatomy of a Social Network Site

The Facebook wall

Although many of us utilize social networking sites on a daily basis, it is important to step back and understand the various components that make up a social networking sites, as well recognize that social networking sites are fundamentally different from other social software. Social network sites differentiate themselves from blogs, wikis, and social tagging sites, by three distinct features: profiles, friend lists, and comments[1]. According to Rosen[2], unlike the “proto-social networking sites of a decade ago [that] used metaphors of place to organize their members: people were linked through virtual cities, communities, and homepages,” today’s social networking sites “organize around metaphors of the person, with individual profiles that list hobbies and interests.”

The fundamental feature of a social network site is the profile. A profile is constructed through a pre-defined web form that each member completes for the purpose of describing themselves to other members of the site. The most basic profile fields include demographic details such as age, sex, and location, followed by relationship status, educational level, political and religious affiliations, as well as tastes in music, movies, and books, a photograph, and open-ended descriptions. These fields exist because Friendster – originally designed as a dating site – was the first popular social network site and was subsequently emulated by newer social networking sites.

Once the profile is created, members are than encouraged to look at others’ profiles and add those people to their Friends list. The creation of a friends lists is what makes up the “social network” component of the sites.

Social networking sites also provide a means for communication among Friends. This is most commonly done through comments posted on “The Wall” in Facebook or the “Friend’s Comments” section in MySpace. The comments are publicly displayed and viewable to anyone with access to the individuals’ profiles. According to a survey conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, “the most popular way of communicating via social networking sites is to post a message to a friend’s profile, page, or ‘wall’.” [3]

The Social Experience of Social networking sites

According to Jenny Preece[4], “an online community is first and foremost a social experience that changes according to who is present, the number of people involved, and the type of discussion that occurs.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, social networking sites tend to foster an narcissistic experience, where users goals become to collect friends, feedback, and attention. There is very little sense of being part of a larger group, and little motivation for establishing connections with strangers. By following the daily activities of “Friends”, people do begin to feel, what Leisa Reichelt [5] coined as “ambient intimacy”, which is a sense of a stronger connection to weak ties, such as long lost school friends, dispersed colleagues, or relatives. However, the binary friend/not friend designation found on social networking sites often collapses all relational contexts, turning the semi-public space into a broadcast medium, where others can voyeuristically observe interpersonal interactions.

Some of these experiences are dependent on the design of the friendship mechanism in social networking sites. Sites like Facebook which require reciprocal approval from both parties to become connected, encourage users to limit connections to people who they already know, and don’t particularly dislike. In essence, Facebook truly is just for friends. Sites like Twitter, where a reciprocal connection is not required, people are much more likely to follow strangers that may be of interest. However, there is a proliferation of spammers and bots which often clutter the stream and diminish the experience.

For all social networking sites, the temporal aspect combined with an ever growing connection list creates a significant strain on attention. People often find it difficult to follow individuals of interest because they get lost in the stream, especially if there is a particularly active individual. The situation gets even more complicated as people join more than one social networking sites. In this instance, individuals often pick a primary social networking sites, which they will check and interact with frequently, while others will be visited occasionally.

Social Networking Sites and Community

Multi User Dungeon

Over the years, as technology has progressed, so have community designs. Moving from text-based MUDs (multi-user dungeons) and MOOs (multiuser object oriented technology), to threaded discussions such as usenet groups, listserves. and bulletin boards, and most recently social network sites. According to Preece, online communities are made up of three parts: a purpose which is supported by technology and guided by policies. The purpose of social networking sites is generally thought of as creating connections, or building up the social network through friends list. This purpose is fairly generic compared to community sites of a decade ago, which ranged from interest groups to education, business, and health support.

The community sites of a decade ago were explicitly situated within the context of the domain under discussion, while individuals and their relationships with each other were invisible. In social networking sites, the individual and their relationships are explicit, while the community becomes invisible or imagined. The interaction is centered on individual actions and reactions, with little sense of a larger group. Currently, social networking sites are designed to increase the strength of ties between individuals, instead of fostering a sense of community.

Looking Forward

Google Reader's Like functionality

As we look into the future, we should not forget the lessons we learned in the past. Community designs such as threaded discussions, provide for rich content, a sense of being part of a group, feelings of support and belonging, as well a common interest upon which new relationships can form. Perhaps social networking sites, although incredibly popular, are not always the answer to increased engagement and community in every context. Designers should think about ways of combining the rich context of threaded discussions along with aspects of social networking sites. Is there a way that we could surface content, but at the same time provide pointers to individual contributors? Google Reader is currently taking first steps to this approach with their “Like” functionality, which allows all Google Readers users to mark a post they like, and also view others who liked the same post.

I challenge designers to stop emulating designs that have not changed since 2002, and take the concept further through the creation of context appropriate designs which balance the larger community and the individual. The next time you are designing social network features, think carefully about what kind of behavior and social experience you wish to encourage. Do you want people to connect with their existing contacts, such as found on TripIt? Or do you want them to discover resources from strangers, such as found on Delicious? Additionally, think carefully about the value proposition of your social networking sites. Why will people choose to use the features on your site versus the several other sites they are currently using? What personal benefit does your site provide aside from social networking sites?

References

[1] Boyd, d. and  Ellison, N. B. (2007). Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), article 11.

[2] Rosen, C. (2007). Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism. The New Atlantis, 15.

[3] Lenhart, A., and Madden, M. (2007). Social Networking Websites and Teens: An Overview. Pew Interent & American Life Project, January 7.

[4] Preece, J. (2004). Designing and evaluating online communities: research speaks to emerging practice. Int. J. Web Based Communities, 1(1).

[5] Reichelt, L. (2007). Ambient Intimacy. Available at: http://www.disambiguity.com/ambient-intimacy/

Incentives are a commonplace to game designers and developers. They are a means of designing activity to support goals and to motivate users. They are not events, which are those things that happen during game play and to which which users must react. We tend to think of incentives as those design elements that draw out, or appeal to a user’s interests, reasons, and motives. Design aspects that the user can anticipate, expect, and organize his or her activities around. We think of incentives as designed into a game, site, or service. But they are really, actually, in the user. They work because they incent (incentivize) the user’s incentives.

This is important, lest we think that incentives exist purely and simply in design. Incentives work by providing a reason that relates or connects to an existing interest and which is motivating to the user.

There are many incentives used in games to make multi-player game play more interesting. In social games, incentives will include both straight-up game play (leveling, collecting, tasking, etc) and social play (using player partnerships, allies and allegiances, teams, roles, for collaboration, competition, involving trust, betrayal, loyalty, etc).

Are incentives used in social media the same as those used in conventional media? Do the same rules and design approaches work in social media as in game design? The answer is probably not.

Frames

An incentive used in a game provides a reason to act: it is a fictional reason or cause of action and behavior that makes sense and is adequate in the frame of game play. It doesn’t work in “reality,” or outside game play. A game-based incentive is a fiction adequate to ground behavior within the game context. Games are a framing of experience outside the stream of real and everyday activity.

In the game-play situation, the player agrees to accept the fiction of the game and the rules that make that acting within that fiction possible. Games are framed “outside of” everyday reality, and often involve persons not belonging to one’s everyday world. Accepting the fiction — its rules, players, activities, events, powers, and time periods — is part of what makes games “fun.”

Rules & relationships

Another reason that games are entertaining is their transformation of relationships. Game rules do this. Rules change not only the nature of the relationship, but the roles or positions held by people involved. Participants or players may now speak and act differently, exercising authority provided them by the rules. And rules not only create and make new kinds of authority possible: they change power dynamics among participants. They give behaviors new reasons (because this is how the game is played): participants can now do new things with (or against) one another.

In social games, the transformative effect of rules on authorized behaviors can lead to compelling interactions, as well as unintended consequences that can be engaging precisely because they confuse game fiction and real-world relationships.

If the effectiveness of game-based incentives in social play is reflected in the power of rules to transform relationships, thus enabling new actions and behaviors, it would seem that game-based or game-like incentives should work well in social media. At the design level, common features and elements would make this transfer quite easy. User interface elements common to games and social media include:

• some kind of direct messaging and some kind of public messaging
• social objects to own, trade, share, pass along, compete for
• gestures for self-expression and communication
• social units built around groups, friends, teams
• personal or player profiles or representation
• technology-specific features, functions, and actions
• and more

Games and social media also share in some experiential aspects: mediated communication, action, competition, status, and social presence, for example, which belong to the social architecture and interaction design of each.

Differences

But in spite of some of these similarities, essential differences exist. Differences not specific to design or architecture, but to the framing of the (user) experience.

The incentives that work in games, work because they are supported by game rules. Those rules structure a fictional reality or transform an everyday reality. Incentives designed for games, in other words, use this fiction as their reason. Things a person might not do in the everyday world can have a reason within a game.

Games frame a stretch of time during which participants interact with each other in ways that create possibilities unavailable in the everyday world. But social media serve purposes of real communication and interaction. Behaviors that might be common in the gaming world such as wagering, collecting, promotion, competition, rank, and winning aren’t exclusive to the domain of games. But the incentives that work in the everyday world do not have to be constructed on game rules. In fact, they rarely refer to any rules whatsoever.

Constructedness

It belongs to the everyday world that its “constructedness” is not a theme; we go along with reality as it is. Any rules, codes, or forms of behavior that one might call organized have at best a tacit or implicit basis. This means that in the case of social media, it doesn’t work to articulate how users are to do things, how they should behave, interact, communicate, compete, and so on.

Social practices emerge as an outcome of participation: they are a sign that certain kinds of trust, commitment, interest, presence, and so on, exist. These things cannot be forced because it is up to each of us, as participants, to reach a level of comfort and routine with mediated interaction and communication. Since experience on social media is neither framed like a game (with a beginning and an end), and since it is purely voluntary, incentives don’t necessarily incentivize on the basis of rules.

Interests

Better than “incentive” is perhaps the term “interest.” Each of us has interests, takes an interest in things or people, and becomes interested. Each of us has self-interest, an interest in others, and interest in social experiences. We satisfy, protect, and share our interests. What’s more, interests, unlike incentives, are used and negotiated by people during normal course of interaction; whereas incentives structure activity towards achieving a goal, and have but one object or value.

Some social media elements depend on the effectiveness of shared interests to organize content and navigation: think simply about tags and the long tail. Common interests are indeed the basis of a great deal of social interaction and content. (If anything, it is more difficult to articulate differences than it is to represent commonalities online.)

Interests are a better concept than incentives when it comes to action, too. We tend to do things online that we want to do. And we assume that this goes for others, also. Being interested, having interests, acting with interest, taking or showing an interest normally suggests personality, character, and taste.

Interest explains individual and social actions and behaviors. It does not explain game behaviors: rules and roles do that.

Because we can often relate to the interests of others others, if not by sharing then by at least recognizing and validating them, interests form the basis of social competencies. Competencies in being interested, having interests, showing or taking an interest — all of these are more likely to serve as a basis for social interaction and engagement than incentives modeled on games or fictions. (The exception of course involves people interested in games!)

And there is another reason that interests, not incentives, play a central role in the social organization of social media. Incentives are reasons that come from the outside. They are not in or of everyday reality, but are supplied by game rules or what have you for the sake of providing other reasons (to act, choose, behave…). Incentives undermine reality: people can do things differently, alongside or even against their personal interests and beliefs, if adequately incentivized.

In social media, encounters with other people include some degree of interest in getting to know the other. This may be ever so small, may be one-sided, or may be mutual. Our behaviors are taken at face value, as signs of who we are, what we are like, what we do, and what makes us potentially interesting (to somebody). In other words, it’s through interests that we relate to one another, and this interest is a common, everyday, and natural incentive that comes from within the social world, and not from outside of it.

Note: This post was inspired and provoked in part by Amy Jo Kim at GoogleTechTalks.

Alfred Hitchcock used to say that he never made a “Whodunnit” movie. His movies were “For whom was it done?” In fact a lot of his movies begin with the crime. In some, the victim of the crime turns out to be the criminal himself. What does this have to do with Johnny Holland and experience design? Let’s find out.

In all of Hitchcock’s films, we the audience witness some aspect of the crime. And because Hitchcock was a master of camerawork, and used his camera to let the audience in as a witness, we’re usually in on something that one or more characters don’t know. Jimmy Stewart’s neighbor leaving his apartment in Rear Window, as Jimmy reaches for something he has dropped. The killer’s shadow on the shower curtain in Psycho. A vertiginous zoom in on Kim Novack’s curled hair — an audience reveal that winds up the plot’s second, and formal spiral in the mystery Vertigo.

Hitchcock’s films were as riveting as they were not only for his splendid choices in casting his lead actress, but for his singular talent at subordinating characters to formal puzzles and logics. He is credited as being the first to involve the audience in solving, or “creating,” the film. He was notorious, too, for glossing over his actors’ needs and for attending instead to the visual narration of the particular puzzle at hand. It mattered more to him the direction in which his actors were looking than capturing their motivation.

Hitchcock knew that a mystery thriller could become endlessly suspenseful if actions were not simply as they appeared, but were instead motivated by another, for another, or on behalf of another. This allowed him to continuously shift the “guilt” and “suspicion” from character to character. We in the audience had the job of figuring out who was who, and who was who to whom.

The solution to the puzzle, and to the crime, always came out when relationships among the characters could be resolved.

Action is more interesting when it is a matter of interpersonal motive and relationship, rather than the accomplishment of the task itself completed by the action. It’s a pity there are few good imitators of Hitchcock. (Although there are some; and social films like Crash, Amor es Perros, Red, White, Blue, Babel, and others in which relationships form out of coincidence and chance in a way capture the state of social fragmentation endemic to contemporary society.)

Social media can learn from Hitchcock. We can learn to ask not “What did the user do” but “For whom was it done.” Was it done for his/her own self-image and repute? Was it done for the attention of another? To solicit reciprocal interest of another? To gain notice by a group, club, or circle of peers? To obtain status in front of an audience, or to receive the validation of peers?

I wonder what kinds of social media Hitchcock would design, if he were in our industry. How might he use his “camera” to show the audience something that was off screen to the actors involved in a situation or social interaction. What kinds of relationships he might put people in if he were designing social games. And how he might reveal clues and thread his plot points. Whether the audience might be involved in passing that thread through the warp and woof of a networked social fabric. And how interesting and engaging some of his creations would be, designed not around Who said something but For whom was it said?

Some time ago I was thinking about an essay Michel Foucault once wrote about two competing concepts of the Self in major world religions. In this essay he compared two views of the Self: the Self that is discovered and known through some kind of religious quest and search. And the Self that is created, invented, through free will, action, choice (and so on). What if we would apply his view on today’s social media?
It’s been so long that I don’t now recall which essay it was. Foucault is known for theoretical “archaeology” of western thought. And for his work on the birth of the “Subject” (read: individual). As in, when did the subject, the sovereign person, emerge in thought and culture? And more specifically, when did the Subject become the locus of truth? (He read this through the inquisition, the practice of confessions, and so on).

It occurred to me that a similar bifurcation exists in social media. We have a lot of discovery engines and techniques. Techniques once used to find related documents and data, but now often used to find compatible or similar people. This is an approach that ascribes attributes and qualities to the identity (person, user). They might be interests, demographic data, age, gender, location, even social graph/friend relations. It’s an approach used ultimately to help us find people we might like. Based on the idea that when two things are alike, their shared likeness might lead to further relationships.

But there’s an interesting flaw in the logic. That two things are alike might be liked by one person is fine. But that the two people who like those things might like each other, makes a leap of faith. It rests on the idea that the relationship between two things can be extended to the two people who relate to those things in like ways. We don’t know that this is an extensible logic or idea. Do similar people automatically like each other? Really? If so, aren’t the similarities that would make us compatible, make us friends and friendly, just as likely to be something other than what interests us — our style or personality?

I’m reminded of the logic of dating sites — that a match is a basis for meeting. Anyone who’s tried online dating knows that the first meeting is where chemistry either seals the affair, or dissolves the whole run up into an awkward and disappointing mess.

The logic of long tail can work on objects and things because they are stable. Attributes used to describe them are values that can be shared. They belong to each thing (a movie is documentary) because the two things each share that attribute. The more attributes in common, the more alike they are (these movies are documentaries about penguins).

But is the approach extensible? Do we like each other because we share attributes?

There’s another approach taken in social media – the social graph. This version uses Granovetter’s weak link theory and suggests that the friend of a friend is the most important relationship – because it can introduce us to people who are not one, but two or thee degrees away. We get access to people who aren’t our friends but are closely linked. It’s assumed that trust is extensible from the first degree (I trust you) to the second (I trust someone you know). Not the most convincing idea, but good enough to make friend recommendations.

But in each case, we have only a system of things and attributes.

Human relationships aren’t build on similarity or identity of attributes. They’re a result of interaction, of understanding, of the things we do that move us and by which we move one another.

Our industry needs a richer understanding of the creative acts and the productive aspects of social media use. Of what is required, and what happens, when a connection becomes meaningful to the people connected through what they do, not have in common, with each other. We need to think more about drama. about stories, about conversations and pastimes. About the things and people we anticipate, expect, and wait for. About what time is like, and times are like, online — short and long times, ongoing times, choppy and interrupted times, rhythmic times and times that are over. About how all the dynamics of interaction are transformed but somehow retained and adapted to the way things work online.

Yes, discovery can be produced by searching among common attributes. But the really productive stuff comes out of social practices. Social media may be a means of production. But we are still the production of means.

Everybody hase very different experiences of social media: in our sense of connectedness, visibility, popularity, in what we think it is for and why we use it. These differences ought to matter not only to any user experience or interaction designer, but to any business interested in commercializing or profiting from social media. I’ve attempted to catch these differences in personality and put them in a slideshow. These personality types are an attempt to distill out just some of the different user experiences had on social media into personality types..

It has always seemed to me that the conventional market segmentation of user types (influencers etc.), while perhaps identifying broad categories of users, fails to account for the user experience. Surely, influencers do not relate to social media as influencers; followers as followers; and so on… These definitions aren’t grounded in a framework of motive or intention, and therefore fall short of explaining behavior based on the user’s competency as a social media participant.

This slideshow attempts to sketch a view of users based on personality differences that takes mediated communication and interaction into account (I don’t know of any personality models that have been customized to non face to face interactions). This means adapting personality types for the unique ways in which social media represent us to ourselves, represent others, present and facilitated social activities, and so on. It means taking personality types and anticipating what, in social media, would engage them, motivate them, and compel them. As a sketch, it is incomplete and intended to kick off discussion.

Photo by: ThisParticularGreg