Deloitte Declares We Are in a “Media Democracy”

January 4, 2009 at 10:15 pm · Filed under Enterprise 2.0

Dean Takahash at Venture Beat shared with us a summary of a recent Deloitte survey on the state of media. The report concludes that, “We’re living in a media democracy, where no single form of media dominates the attention of Americans. It’s also an age where everyone contributes to the media, not just traditional media companies.” The last part is old news but I find the first part more interesting. 

There has been discussion about whether blogging will continue in the age of Twitter.  I have mentioned, as have others, that they have different functions and complement each other.  Twitter may take away a few of the functions of blogs but there are many left that cannot be handled by Twitter.

There has been very few times where a new media actually completely replaces an old one. Each new advance in communication technology expands the possibilities for knowledge capture and distribution. In each case it took a while to understand the possibilities and the requirements to enable them. Take text or writing for example: the invention of the phonetic alphabet around 700 B.C. enabled a number of unforeseen and unintended capabilities.

In the pre-writing oral tradition, the conditions for the preservation of ideas were mnemonic. To promote memory, instruction and knowledge preservation made use of verbal and musical rhythms; however, these rhythms placed severe limits on the verbal arrangement of what was said, as in Homer, and the need to memorize used up cognitive energy that otherwise could have been devoted to learning. Because of the heavy memory load, the epic poets did not actually memorize content verbatim; they created new versions from a set of possibilities as they went along.

The concept of an original version that could be preserved did not evolve until after written text. This was critical to the development of modern science and essential for many forms of instruction. In many ways, the epic poets, chief knowledge distributors of their day, made up the details as they went along. Text made available a visual record of thought, abolishing the need for an acoustic record and hence the need for rhythms. Greek thought changed and such works as Plato’s “Republic” are described by some scholars as an attack on the oral poetic tradition of knowledge distribution (see Eric Havelock’s “Origins of Western Literacy” or his better known “Preface to Plato”).

However, the invention of text did not replace poetry, it just reduced the content it covered to what was more appropriate for the media. I think the same thing will happen with Twitter and blogs.

Each medium had its strengths and limitations. It was not until the development of papyrus that real literary and academic works could easily be recorded and transported. This technology was used by the Greeks and Romans from the 5th century BC until the 8th or 9th century AD. Papyrus was superseded by parchment beginning in the 4th century AD. Both of these new media were easier to store and transport than the clay tablets but they were also more susceptible to the fire of invading armies. The ease of copying and movement to other locations preserved more work on paper but perhaps many more original stone tablets still exist. Digital media has many advances over paper until your hard drive crashes with no backup.

 Returning to the present, the Deloitte study, Ed Moran, director of product innovation at Deloitte Services said, “A lot of media will coexist…We won’t see a massive extinction.” Looking across all generations, television remains the most influential ad medium for 88 percent of respondents. Magazines (49 percent) and online (48 percent) tied for second. Radio remained influential for 27 percent of the respondents. Only 5 percent — mostly millennials — considered cell phone ads to be the most influential. Roughly 70 percent of all consumers are watching user-generated videos. YouTube is no longer just a fad.  Google must be pleased with their purchase.

In my informal survey of two very plugged in Generation Xers (early 30s), they had only vaguely heard of Twitter, but were very heavy users of Facebook, text messaging, iTunes, laptops, and email.  I had to explain Twitter to them in the context of these other tools.  The rest of the survey is interesting. My main objection is the discovery that I am no longer considered a Boomer. This survey graduated me to the “matures” category.  Well, bl*ep them, I was born post WW2 and still have a lot of immaturity left.  

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The Emerging Math/Rules of Social Networks – Magic Numbers

January 3, 2009 at 2:48 pm · Filed under Social Computing, Social Media, Social Networking, Social Objects, Socialprise, Web 2.0, Wikinomics

If we are to use the power of the network effect to gain more leverage – I think it will be essential to understand the underlying math. For like all things in the natural world – such as say Gravity – there is a mathematical framework that underlies their operations. When Newton could describe how Gravity worked, the modern world took off. When we can do the same for social networks, we will be on our way to solving the great dystopia of our time – that we have succumbed to a machine model.

The power of the social world is like gravity or light. It seems mysterious. It is easy to wax mystical about it. But I think that what is emerging via observation – just like all good science – is the math. What is ironic is that this math is well known and has been part of human knowledge for millenia. It just has never been applied to the social world before.

It is of course the Fibonacci sequence – the sequence that nature uses to order all relationships if they are to reach their full potential. You may know of the key number that seems to be the limit of Trust for humans of about 150 – called the Dunbar Number after Robin Dunbar.

Many in the Blogosphere have been working on this. Many have seen the sequence emerge naturally in say Guilds in Gaming. Some like Stowe and Valdis are seeing this in the power use of Twitter.

Here is a summary post I made on my own blog 2 years ago that pulled together the field of knowledge that existed then. It is my hope, I am a Historian, that people with a sharper brain than I can add much more to this in the future. I am more convinced than ever that the true potential of the power of social media to get important things done will be revealed once our understanding of how all of this works improves.

Not just marketing and media – but the ideal groupings for work, for learning for health, for credit, for families and for all of our lives. A world reset to our natural design versus a machine world.

————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

Dave Snowden posted this recently – I could not get Cognitive Edge to accept my comment so I post them here after his post and then add some comments and list of useful links that add to the topic.

Log(N) = 0.093 + 3.389 log(CR) (1) (r2=0.764, t34=10.35, p<0.001)

Recognise it? Well of course, it’s the best-fit reduced major axis regression equation between neocortex ratio and mean group size for the sample of 36 primate genera taken from Dunbar’s 1992 paper which was popularised, and not unduly trivialised by Malcolm Gladwell into a natural limit on human group size of 150 (or 147.8 to be exact). The idea is a simple one. The human brain has co-evolved with social conditions and as a result there is a natural limit on the number of social relationships we can maintain. Dunbar linked the number to village, nomadic and military size over time. The number is exercising several people on the ever idea-stimulating value networks list serve. The argument there relates to if this is or is not a natural limit on a network or a virtual community.150 is not the only natural number.  There are two others, so I could have titled this post The rule of 5,15 & 150. All of those numbers, plus a need to think more about identity than about individuals, should influence either evolutionary or engineering approaches to community/network design.

What I plan to do is elaborate the numbers and their origins. I then want to look at the way in which the debate around Dunbar’s law is limited by atomistic ontology. This all too common assumption, found in the anglo-saxon world assumes self sufficiency and moral autonomy of the person, and sees communities as assemblies, voluntary or otherwise of individuals. Moving away from social atomism allows to take a different view on communities, their limitations and possibilities, but that will be tomorrow’s blog.

1. Five is linked to the natural limits on the short term memory. This was first put forward by Miller’s 1956 paper and relates to time more than items (it is a common urban myth to see it as items). This means that it will vary a bit by language, different languages can compress more or less data into a defined time limit. If you have ever spoken through simultaneous translation then you will know that it takes 30% longer to say something in Spanish that it does in English. Given that the Welsh generally speak english 30% faster than the norm, this can present problems! Translation aside, the number is useful and it relates to common sense experience (always helpful). Think about how many directions you can remember, or how we organise telephone numbers. Another way to validate this is to think about models, or lists and see how many elements they have. More than five and you need a crib sheet. One of the reasons I restrict models in my own work to five elements is because of this. Less then five and they pass the paper napkin test which means they are sense making models as they can be drawn from memory, which means they can be used operationally without reference back to authority.
2. Fifteen comes from anthropology and relates to natural levels of deep trust. I define deep trust here as the ability to tolerate a degree of betrayal. The number varies a bit based on the average size of the extended family in a society and is probably an habituated pattern of behaviour learnt during key periods of plasticity for the human brain. Now readers might be able to help be here. I got this number from two sources several years ago. The number was actually an upper limit of thirty but I reduced it to fifteen for alliterative purposes as well as accepting the realities of modern civilisation compared with the tribal systems from which the number originated. Unfortunately I have lost the reference and I am trying to re-discover it to reference in the book. All help appreciated! Again this manages a common sense test. Think about the social groups to which you belong and which pass the relaxation test. This test is a simple one, its who do you feel able to relax with, without worrying too much how your are seen. I realise that this does not always apply to families! However other than in pre or post divorce situations the ideas is that it should. The size there is definitely under fifteen, and more typically is a small number of groups of around eight or nine on average.
3. One hundred and fifty is Dunbar’s law and in effect is the number if identities that you can maintain in your head with some degree of acquaints that an individual can maintain. It does not necessarily imply that you trust them, but it does mean that you can know something about them and their basic capabilities. In other words you can manage your expectations of their performance and abilities in different contexts and environments. For the moment lets consider this in terms of individuals (the switch to identity is for tomorrow’s blog). Consider your work groups and the size of your organisation. How many people do you know by name? How many people would you invite to a party? Again you can see the common sense experience coming though in the number. Now the assumption in Dunbar’s working and subsequent writing is that this level of knowledge requires physical proximity. However we now live in virtual as well as physical worlds so the nature of interactions change. The natural limit is probably in place, but its form, and the nature of its creation will have new variants for a new environment

Now these three numbers, 5, 15 & 150 have an alliterative quality which helps us remember and use them. They also have some fairly immediate and practical implications for communities and networks. That is what I want to look at in tomorrow’s blog which will come from Hong Kong. I am shortly leaving for the KMAP2006 conference at which I am keynoting for the second year, and I will also run workshop on uses of narrative in knowledge management. Hopefully I will meet up with some old friends and make some new ones, the conference has an interesting mix and looks less academic that last year when it was held in Wellington, New Zealand.

Great to find more discussion about these numbers. My bet is that by thinking only mechanistically we have “forgotten” their power and organize without any socially valid reason. This may surely be why so many organizations are so dysfunctional such as schools with say 1500 kids and no sub units. Why hospitals that merely have shifts of individuals are so unhappy. Why there is so much “stress” in most workplaces when the work itself is mundane.

The military however still keeps to these numbers. They have to – the task before them demands the full expression of what an organized group of people can do – they tend to use 8 as the base (8 men in a tent in the Roman army = a section) Sections “shrink” to 5 very quickly in action. Below 4, they are not very capable.

My bet is that 5-8 seems to work as the core unit of intimacy. Most sports teams fit this range. It enables you to pass the ball to a space knowing that the person will be there. It enables uspoken flow. It must have been the ideal hunting size.

Dave talks also about the limits to memory. You can remember a 7 number phone number but longer numbers, unless broken into sections of 3 and 4, are very hard to recall.

I recall other material suggesting that most “Tribes” in the hunter gatherer world (our cultural base) were about 35. 8 men and 8 women plus 16 youths and younger children. 35 is the platoon in the military which is the core organizing unit to get any serious work done. The Company would be about 200 as an paper ideal but would shrink in action to the 150 number which is the operational ideal.

VC friends of mine tell me that they get very concerned when they see new companies reach these staffing milestones of 8 -15 – 35 – 150. The hardest one being 15 -35 when you have to introduce some formal communication mechanisms. Complexity obviously does grow exponentially along a log scale.

Other work on gene pools suggests that 500 is the optimal number to keep enough variety. Hence tribal meetings for festivals etc that acted as genetic mixers as well.

What if these hard social numbers were brought back into formal prominence? What would happen to organizations? We see this with blogging now. My blogging social world has settled out along this gradient of 8 close intimates – about 16 close – about 35 reasonably close and a maximum world of 150. My test is my bloglines aggregator. I pay attention along the gradient.

I have also found that I can be assured that those that fit inside the 8 really do fit. I have worked with 2 of them before we ever met face to face.

So is this just an interesting topic or might it lead to an OD revolution? I add some good supporting links in the follow on:-

• Here is Ross Mayfield with his perspective of how these numbers work in the world of social media
• Here is a link to Robin Dunbar’s book – Grooming and Gossip that expands on his paper quoted by Dave
• Here is a link to a piece on the maths of genetics – that we need a population of 500 to ensure enough genetic diversity
• Here is John Robb talking about magic numbers and how terrorist cells are best organized
• A link to a brief survey of mine on the work of John Pfeiffer, author of the Emergence of Man (Out of print) on the numbers of conflict – why groups over 150 have to drive friction
• Ton Zijlstra weighs in here
• Here is I think the most comprehensive summary by Christopher Allen. I find his comments on Guild size compelling

Chris makes the point that while guilds have these total group numbers, it is rare to have more than 40 online at any one time. More on guilds by Chris here

He goes deeper and deeper into the friction that we feel inside organizations today because we do not consider the fall out from not understanding how these numbers work. I find this diagram very helpful -

This confirm my VC friends observation that going from a group of 7-8 to 50 plus is exceptionally difficult. Moving beyond 150 is also a chasm -

I’ve already noted the next chasm when you go beyond 80 people, which I think is the point that Dunbar’s Number actually marks for a non-survival oriented group. Even at this lower point, the noise level created by required socialization becomes an issue, and filtering becomes essential. As you approach 150 this begins to be unmanageable. Once a company grows past 200 you are really starting to need middle-management, but often you can’t afford it yet. Only when you get up past that, maybe at 350-500 people, does middle-management start really working, primarily because you’ve once again segmented your original departments, possibly again reducing them to Dunbar-sized groups.

• Chris also asks in this age of social networking software “Is there an effective limit to the size of your personal network. He adds a comment by a VC friend of his -

Venture Capitalist Jeff Nolan relates similar concerns:

“It strikes me that the social networking theory holds that the more volume you have, the bigger your network will become by introducing degrees of separation roughly along the lines of Metcalfe’s Law. I disagree, human networks do not grow in value by multiplying, but rather by reduction. For me, it’s the quality of relationships that enhances my professional and personal life, not the sheer numbers.”

If you know of other good links please let me know.

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Twitter – the Leverage – where the ROI is found

January 3, 2009 at 11:40 am · Filed under Twitter

Doing more with less will be a goal of us all in 2009.

Twitter is going to help a lot of people to do more for less.

But how can you do this? Especially if you and/or your organization is new to the game? How can you get the reach that you will need to “see” what is really going on or get the help or information that you want?

A lot of the recent debate about Twitter has been about “Authority” who has the biggest megaphone. I won’t go into this except to say that what we know about social networks tells that it will be less about you and more about your inner circle.

It will not be essential for you to be the A lister nor will you have to have thousands of followers

Stowe Boyd has a powerful intuition about these things. His gut feel is that there is a sweet spot of about 100 in your Twitter group that gives you the best ROI – Time and Effort versus return.

I have suggested for a longtime that to ‘get’ Twitter you need to follow 100 people at least, for several weeks. This cursory recitation of stats suggests that there are thousands of users out there happily communing with a handful of friends. I don’t buy it. I bet most of those accounts with small use, small links, and small time online represent a fringe of uninvolved people who aren’t getting much value from the service, if they login in at all. The sweet spot is far north of the center of some bell curve, I believe.

The real analysis of meaningful trands will have to wait, but here’s some cross tabs that would be interesting:

1. What’s the distribution of perceived value? Does more use translate into higher perception of utility? My bet is yes.
2. What’s the distribution of use? Do people with few connections use the service less? My bet is yes.
3. Do people gain more followers based on hours online, and numbers of Tweets? I bet yes.
4. Where is the magic dropout number? A lot of users abandon services like Twitter, but I bet that once you have a network of size N, the likelihood of dropping out decreases dramatically. What is N?

Here’s a nasty freehand drawing of what I am suggesting:

On the left, the vertical access is some formula based on an aggregation or ratio of following, followers, numbers of tweets, relies, direct messages, time spent usign the tool, etc. The horizontal access represents perceived utility. I have drawn the utility curve as being exponential, but it may actually be more of an S curve, with utility tapering off after some psychological maximums have been reached.

Valdis Krebs goes further. In his view – it is the quality of your immediate circle that gives you the reach. He tells me that he follows 70 and agrees with Stowe that the sweet spot may be 100.

In a simple view of Twitter we may think that it is all up to us – this is how Valdis shows this idea:

This is the current reality I think of most pre 2.0 organizations – they have to use huge resources to get their message out or intelligence back from this perspective.

Here is Valdis’s view of the leveraged ecosystem that Twitter enables:

All the leverage comes from the system itself. Here is his summary that fits Stowe’s experience too

So, if many of the social circles above are already interconnected do I have follow an individual in each social circle/community on Twitter? Probably not. The trick is to find the people that reach many social circles and follow them. Of course, we need to find more than the minimum of people to follow — you want some redundancy in your network so that there are multiple paths to places of interest for you. Finding these key nodes is what social network analysis is all about.

And this is why I follow so few people on Twitter! For the time invested, I want maximum return. I use the redundancy of connections, between the many social circles I am interested in, to my advantage. I follow a select group of people that give me the same access as following someone in every group. Follow the few to reach the many!

Because I have chosen them carefully, I want to actually read the tweets of the people I follow. A small part of my “following network” is always in churn, but the number of people I follow on Twitter never exceeds 100. Those who follow thousands of people readily admit that they can not read the fire hose of tweets they get every day.

Can we be more precise? Can we know the nature of this “sweet spot”? I think we can and I bet that it is found in the Fibonacci sequence. Here are the numbers that support Stowe and Valdis that I posted back in April of 2008. I have posited that the Fibonacci sequence may give us the answers becuase it is the sequence that nature uses in ALL systems when seeking the most effective distribution.

So here is the data – based on the early part of the Fibonacci sequence and where I have assumed that the Circle of Influence may be to the Power of 4.

So a circle of 8 – the ideal Trusted Space – can attract, affect and influence 4,096 people. If I have 144 in my circle we can reach just over 400 million others. BUT my bet is that just as the reach goes up, the gravitational pull goes down.

2 – 16

3 – 82

5 – 625

8 – 4,096

13 – 28,561

34 – 1,336,336

55 – 9,150, 625

89 – 62, 742,241

144 – 429, 981, 696

Notice anything? As we look at the sequence we see a Pareto or power curve – it’s the Long Tail.

So what do I also “see”?

I think that there are two power curves here. One is reach and the other is power or gravity.

The greatest gravitational pull is at 2 – the most effective reach is 144. There is likely a “sweet spot” along the curve where reach and pull are best found in concert.  My bet is that it is in using the circles of 8 – 13 – 34. You can reach more than a million people with 34 and you can really attract 4,096 powerfully at 4.

If my intuition is correct, then the full power of social software might be revealed as we explore these numbers and their meaning. Does this not put a new face on marketing? Does it tell us how we will find and attach to content in a universe of infinite content? Does this say something about how to organize anything?

We are just starting to see the power of Twitter and I think it is that a very modest investment in your time in effect opens up the world to you. The 1.- world was based on brute force. This brute force was money. It, like a team engine looked impressive but was very inefficient.

Twitter’s tight connection to the reality of our social networks will I think unlock an entirely new opportunity to get messages out and in that will help all of us – from people like me who work alone at home to the largest of organizations.

If you want to check out the nature of your network – Twitter Friends is very easy and helpful.

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Twitter and Newspapers – How we at Fast Forward Blog can help you use Twitter better

January 3, 2009 at 10:51 am · Filed under Twitter

One thing is clear for sure now – Twitter is the best way to follow breaking news – whether it is a political campaign or convention, a natural disaster such as a fire or earthquake or a terror attack such as Mumbai.

So if you are in the news business and don’t use Twitter well – well you are not in the game are you?

Here is a comprehensive review of the state of play with Twitter and Newspapers – who is doing it better than others – check to see your paper.(Thanks to Graphic Designer)

Learning how to use Twitter well will I think be important in 2009. I don’t think it is enough to have a geekie person alone using it for your new organization. This deceptively simple tool has enormous latent power to help a news organization – or for that matter any organization.

We are going to do our best to help you. Our little team here on Fast Forward Blog has written a lot over the last 2 years about Twitter – we have also linked to many who are not good but brilliant on this topic.

Look for a short booklet from us in late January on how we see Twitter – our hope is to offer a comprehensive view of

• What it is – the nuts and bolts
• Why it has the power to help and has such a huge ROI – the science behind the “social” – going beyond “authority” to seeing the “leverage”
• The Twitter Ecosystem – the better tools that augment its power
• Who it is helping now and why – media, marketing, branding, research, customer service, those of us who work alone
• What its potential may be in many fields

Our hope is that we can aggregate the insight of this blog into a series of Booklets that will enable you to have a document – with all the links – that you can use to help you and your team as a learning tool. For, while reading good posts online is helpful, having good ideas pulled together in one place is better for learning about the new.

We hope that we can end up with “The Best of Twitter” and later the Best of any Social Media Topic.

Happy New Year

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Bears and Bulls Ride Social Media into 2009

January 1, 2009 at 11:52 am · Filed under Enterprise 2.0

 For my first post in 2009 I will share Peter Kim’s Social Media Predictions 2009. Now Peter did this two weeks ago and I am sure it has been commented on. I learned about it through Susan Scrupski who posted in on Knowledge Plaza. I will not repeat the details.

However, I am struck by the mix of bears and bulls on the social media market and presence for 2009.  There are more bears than bulls. That might not be surprising in a down market. However. I am hearing from a lot of enterprise 2.0 vendors that sales are up. However, this is a small, and likely biased sample.

There seems to be only one real bull – “Dwindling budgets suddenly make low-cost social media look like the pretty girl at the ball.” – Ann Handley – who was consistent with what I am hearing although she used a different metaphor.

In addition, there were a number of people who were somewhat positive but said that more accountability and ROI are needed. I would certainly agree with them. I also side with Ann against the bears. 

Last year at the time I went out on a limb and said I would lose weight. I was right but I did not like that fact that this applied not only to my body but my retirement funds. I hope I am right again for 2009 on social media. I think they will become common place over time. It is a matter of when not whether in my mind. 

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