Archive for Network Effect
by Jon Husband
September 3, 2009 at 11:40 am · Filed under
Collaboration, Enterprise Social Computing, Measurement, Network Effect, Social Computing
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Further to my post a couple of months back about the ROII (Return on Investment in Interaction), I noticed AppGap blog colleague Patti Anklam’s guest post on Dave Snowden’s Cognitive Edge blog wherein she riffs of a blog post titled "Enterprise 2.0 – Skip the Pilot".
Notwithstanding Michael Idinipulos’ claim to be committing heresy, in the past I have read any number of E2.0 pundits’ suggestions that value will be realized more quickly and more steadily when social computing is introduced to an organzation as "the way things get done around here" when it comes to dealing with and responding the need to beuild useful knowedge from information flows … rather than in small controlled pilots.
Michael adds his voice to that chorus.
Patti picks up on that point and adds to it the notion that the ROII may come from harvesting the output from increased numbers of people, increased numbers of interactions and increased diversity (of perspectives). These metrics are not as hard as past metrics used to measure work and effectiveness, but given that a number of well-known voices have coalesced around the same observable network dynamics, we can expect that they will come to be reference points regarding the effectiveness of adopting E2.0 tools and services.
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Piloting Social Media
A good blog by Michael Indinopulis, "Enterprise 2.0: Skip the Pilot" introduces a nice complex notion. His actual premise is that piloting (the sense that we pilot collaboration software, something I’ve done quite a bit of) is based on using small control groups. We introduce the software carefully, exposing it to only a few people, learn from them what the strengths and weaknesses are, work up required training, make the change management plan, and so on.
But social media is different from traditional software. As he says, "Traditional IT enables transactions; Enterprise 2.0 enables interactions." And interaction is fundamentally different from transactions, which are bounded and constrained. We can’t understand the power of interactions until there are many of them, going out in multiple directions, increasing exponentially.
And there is no value to any individual until there are sufficient interactions bouncing around out there. The solution, therefore, to a moribund social media pilot is not to shut it down and reconsider, but to "Make it bigger. Open it up. Invite more people. Tell them to invite even more people. That’s the only way you’re going to find out the real behavior and the real value."
One of my early lessons about increasing knowledge flow in organizations was the answer to the question, "How do you stimulate knowledge flow in a network?" Possibilities:
Increase the number of people
Increase the number of interactions
Increase the diversity
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by Rob Paterson
September 2, 2009 at 11:00 am · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0, Network Effect, Public Media, Public Radio, Public TV
Jeff Jarvis has fired the opening shot in what I think will be the most productive discussion so far in the media wars.
But I think Owens hit on it when he wrote this: “I realized I needed to flip the expense/revenue picture upside down. Instead of thinking about how to generate more cash, I needed to figure out how to create a news operation that could exist profitably based on a reasonable expectation for local online revenue.”
Everyone that I have talked to recently in senior pub media roles worries that they cannot find the gross from their web operations that they need to replace their 1.0 gross.
I think they are right – it seems clear now that the web revenues cannot be grown fast enough. So the costs are out of synch. Many are reluctantly finding themselves in the same kind of death spiral that the newspapers are in. So what to do?
I don’t think the Holy Grail is an attempt only to grow web based revenue. I think it is to use a new business model. The good news is that enough of this new model is now here. Our challenge is to “see” it and having “seen” it to build upon it.
So let’s “see” where we are now – “see” what is emerging and “see” what can be done to implement it.
Where we are now.
If we look at ourselves with outsiders eyes, we will see that we face the same problems as the papers do. Today a Public TV or radio station is a single purpose organization with dedicated staff organized to do one thing – to keep a TV/Radio station on the air. It gets its revenue by using a transactional appeal based on its content. All its costs are based on supporting this approach.
Each station is an island to itself. It has transactional relationships with other stations and with producers. It has transactional relationship with its staff as well.
As with newspapers – all of this needs to be unpacked and reassembled in a more personal way. So that it can release the power of the network effect.
What we can “see” emerging?
I observe many of the stations in the Facing the Mortgage Crisis Project, I can “see” that:
The best stations are using their reputation and trust to facilitate the strengthening of a powerful community network of partners who are all working to help the citizens of the city get through the economic crisis.
It has been the trust built up as a public broadcaster that gives them this ability. They a new role as a consequence and a new value that has NO DIRECT LINK TO its traditional CONTENT. Thousands of people who would never watch the traditional content are now attached to the station.
The relationship has expanded beyond content to include true public service.
Expanding from Content to Context – A vital aspect of this public service is to help co create the best Context for issues. Nearly all the debate in America today is lost in wrangling or in sound bites. Pub Media has come into its own with the financial crisis by not only doing a much better job of explaining what is going on but also in engaging with people where they live – in helping them help each other get through this.
Reinvention? – America will have to reinvent itself – we can all see how the health care debate is subject to the same forces that made the financial debate so fruitless. Soon energy, food, education will all come onto the table. The only way through the morass is to help people work through these issues on the ground with how they affect their lives and their communities.
What service? They are using their ability to tell stories and their ability to offer a powerful megaphone to the public. Again this ability has arisen as a product of their history as a public broadcaster. Their new relationship with the public extends therefore beyond showing them content but in showcasing the public’s content about issues that are vital to them.
Part of their new value is to give voice to the voiceless - when a station does this, it attaches those people to it.
It is the web that gives the stations the space to do this and gives the people the cheap and easy tools to use to have their say.
Over time the content mix can shift from 100% professionally produced content to maybe 15% professionally produced content with most of the new being on the web. Over all a major increase in content for much less cost. Most of the new content being for and about people who are New to the Station – a much broader “audience”
They are learning to use the web to support and enhance their offering on Air – the web has given them more flexibility, more real estate and better equity – content lasts for a long time there. The web is no longer just a new form of banner advertising but is not integrated into this new Public Role. The web offers an infinite amount of choice to the public – using an invitation and curation, the station has all but limitless space to fill and can fill it at very low cost. The core new skills – Curation and Facilitation.
They are starting to see signs of the impact of this work that can be used to make the case for this new value. A new way of measuring that goes beyond eyeballs to impact. It will be a stronger case to monetize impact than only content. Using the web and a much broader view of context and content, the station can offer any supporter a precise demographic that was impossible when only the air was measured. People whose lives have been affected will attach their own identity to the station. People who have been able to contribute to issues that are vital to them because of the station will attach their identity to the station.
Being part of true “Public Service” therefore expands and deepens the connection way beyond that great content alone could ever achieve.
Their non profit status has been essential in enabling it to have this role. Being a non profit seems to have a major influence on how much you can be trusted. Many are beginning to see that much of what is news and on the media has been shaped by those that pay the bills. When the public pay the bills the fears of conflicts of interest are mitigated and trust is enhanced. Trust is the most scarce of anything today and so in the end will have the most value.
It is hard for purely commercial media organizations to compete for the hearts and minds of people in thus way – this space of True Public Service is open to Pub Media.
Most important of all they have been learning how to run themselves internally as a network and also how to facilitate groups of outside partners. This – even more than the web tools themselves is the real new value.
Group Forming will be the most valuable skill that any station will have.
We have positioned ourselves to move beyond content – beyond members – to groups that we form. Group Forming is an exponential activity that drives out the value of the Network Effect.
So what next?
Here are a number of steps that they can take that will release the value in the Network Effect:
- Help the leading institutions in their community learn what they have learned. Many important institutions in every city need to use the power of the 2.0 world to improve their ROI as well. Museums, Universities, Performing Artists etc all have to extend beyond their physical walls and a 5 day a week 9-5 time slot. Who can help them do this best? Make a real business out of this. Become the social media/relationships tutor to the institutions of your community. Help them engage their community. Help them expand their “Real Estate” beyond time and space. Help them learn how to Form Groups and realize the Network Effect.
The old Underwriting relationship is transformed to a much deeper and ongoing relationship based on working directly with each other. They become us and we them.
- Expand the Community Partnerships so that more can be done to reinvent the community. Health, Energy, Local Food, Education are all going to move into prominence. There are community partners that exist already in these areas just as they did in the Mortgage Crisis. Again help them learn and do what we are doing.
This will enable us to continue to expand our relationships with and so support from with people that normally would never watch our conventional content.
- Become the “School” for the networked world in their community – The most important new literacy and skill set of our time will be how to use the web and how to facilitate rather than direct. Who better than Pub Media Station to set up such a learning centre?
Tie the young (hence their parents too) of the community into both the station and to our other relationships. We become a vital new factor in the lives of families
In effect set out deliberately to learn build and operate an off ramp where the bulk of the offering is available on the web – where public, local and national content and community involvement all take place
- Create a real Network with other nodes in pub media – Public media itself can shift from a series of entirely independent and single purpose stations in TV and Radio into a real network where many assets can be truly shared and the real power of the network effect realized. Work as a true partner with the local stations and with many other stations and producers across the system. Here the web enables much better curation and sharing of content. Here space can be leveraged as can support services.
Create regional support hubs where common services can be centred and offered out to members. Reduce overhead systemically not piece meal.
I will post more soon on a number of practical steps that flow out of these principles.
by Jon Husband
June 16, 2009 at 2:09 pm · Filed under
2.0 Design Thinking, Emergent, Interaction, Network Effect, Platforms, Social Computing, Social Media, Social Networking, Twitter, User Revolution, Wisdom of Crowds
For the most part I have been ambivalent about Twitter for most of the past two years (I’ve used it on and off since November 2006).
I’ve read much of the pros and cons (not all) and understand why some people consider it the best thing since sliced bread, and why others consider it a massive time sink and / or an invitation to get bombarded by unwanted marketing activity.
What seems clear to me is that it can often function as an effective means for searching for pertinent information. To my mind, Twitter replicates the experiences I have often had after blogging for some time … because of my social networks mainly focused on issues, and people who are paying attention to those same issues, there is a regular experience of ”synchronicity”. When something is on my mind and I start searching for information, I mre often than not “stumble upon” it, almost as if by magic (why do you think the web service Stumble Upon came into being ?).
When we use Twitter, we make decisions about who we follow, and so I think we invoke a social-network-of-purpose-driven filter that we apply. Yes, we can follow thousands of people, but by and large we interact most with those concentric rings of trust and connection closest to us. Often, the innermost rings of connection and trust are people that we have already connected with (through blogging or or professional / interest-driven networks), or whom we are learning to trust and to whom we come to pay attention.
This selection of people with whom we interact (the innermost concentric rings of connection) provide context like no algorithm can (I’d love to know what the FAST search experts think of that assertion on my part). The people with whom we interact most frequently on Twitter are paying attention to the same or similar things (and different things) as are we, and we are reciprocating. So, when you push a question out into the twittersphere, those who are paying attention to you or notice your tweeted question may well have something to offer you that may be directly or closely aligned with the search you are carrying out. There is the “ambient intimacy of context” that comes into play.
Now for the “on the other hand” … there’s an awful lot of noise to churn one’s way through to get to the signals. I know that there are various efforts underway to enhance the relevance and pertinence of finding one’s way through the mass of content that’s in the daily twitterstream, but I suspect that there’s a long way to go yet for such efforts to take new Twitter-related capabilities beyond the purview of the early adopters.
I also think that as large masses of people take to the newest socially-connected-streams-of-content to engage in purposeful activities, rather than trying to drive or acquire attention for attention’s sake (or to make money), we will find that Twitter-like capabilities or Twitter clones will be built into most, if not all, social-network platforms and collaborative-work platforms.
I suspect that this emerging concentration of attention and time allocation onto purposeful activities is what is behind the thinking in this extract from a WebGuild piece by Daya Baran titled “Twitter Will Be Obsolete In A Year“.
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Twitter Will Be Obsolete In a Year
[ Snip ... ]
He says Twitter won’t be as important as some think. He points to Friendster and how it was surpassed by MySpace which in turn was surpassed by Facebook in a shorter time doing the same thing.
He says as with any internet “gold rush,” as soon as others demonstrate success, everyone moves in, and the “next big thing” is born.
“All I have to do is mention QuickBooks, and I have 30 QuickBooks “experts” following me in hopes of getting business. How long will it take to wear people down dealing with these kinds of requests?… I predict Twitter will find its social media and marketing niche, but I cannot see it being nearly as important as some marketers are making it out to be.”
He also points out the retention rate of Twitter is ONLY around 30 percent, which means seven out of 10 people try it out once and don’t come back. So to get users the hype must continue and the process it becomes overhyped.
“Twitter seems to be proud of the fact that it has no profit model. I’m imagining that the company will want to keep the hype building long enough to sell the company for a few billion dollars… I also cannot foresee Twitter’s user base growing too much higher than it is now.
The simple functionality of Twitter will also lead to a glut of competition in the next few months, with companies duking it out for the best implementation of the microblogging model. There’s not enough to Twitter to keep it on the top of the heap. Being first in this case, as we’ve seen, is not a guarantee that you will have longevity.”
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I’d love to learn what you think.
by Jon Husband
May 25, 2009 at 8:17 pm · Filed under
FASTforward'09, Interaction, Measurement, Network Effect, Social Computing, Social Networking, Trust, Trusted Space, Twitter
The Return on Investment (ROI) with respect to the use of social computing is a hot topic these days, as more and more organizations and business sectors are realizing social media and social computing are here to stay. Indeed, I just finished co-authoring (with Jay Cross) an article for CLO Magazine laying the groundwork for a new approach to making decisions about investing in social computing capability and dynamics in business environments. I’ll share an abbreviated version here in the next several days.
A number of other practitioners and theorists who pay attention to networks and their dynamics (such as FASTForward’s Jevon Macdonald and Joe McKendrick, Dion Hinchcliffe, Valdis Krebs, Matthew Hodgson, Patti Anklam, Jessica Lipnack, and others) have covered the same or similar ground. It is becoming more apparent that the returns from network activities are found in intangibles that do not fit well into the industrial era concept of Return on Investment (an accounting concept used to make investment decisions in stable, time-defined, typically single-purpose use cases). New assumptions and methods for assessing what to do are needed.
So, I’d like to use the reporting in a ZDNet article that caught my eye titled “A Real ROI From Twitter ? The Start of Social Medical Networks“ to discuss several of the key issues about whether or not to use social computing to achieve purposeful goals and objectives..
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There may not be a big enough return on tweeting yet to report it to your CFO. But it won’t be long before there’s a clear, return on tweeting to report it to your doctor.
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At the Autism One Conference in Chicago, a Web-based program for collecting data on individual cases of the brain development disorder will be unveiled. It’s called ChARMTracker and is designed, at the start, to help ease the burdens of each parent trying to keep track of the drugs, nutritional supplements, physical therapies and dietary tacks being taken to treat their sons or daughters. They will also use it to keep track of any observations about their behaviors that might seem pertinent and how their children are performing academically, as a result of the constantly changing constellation of combinations that are being applied to the still-mystic condition.
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Horn has, for instance, collected 60 two-inch thick binders of observations, medical and supplement records about Sophie, over the last 11 years. Those records would be available to Sophie’s doctors and health care aides, in an instant, if ChARMtracker had been around from the start. They would also be part of a growing mound of evidence on how drugs, supplements, therapies and diet affected autistic individuals, as they grew and evolved.
[ Snip .. ]
Pramila has founded another company, MedicalMine Inc., which will take what she has developed and try to extend the approach to other chronic physical conditions and forms of disease management.
If all goes well, parents and patients will not just be collecting and sharing data through sites like this on the Web. They’ll be communicating with doctors and providing real-time evidence of results, through tweets and other instant messaging technologies. In some cases, sensors will provide constant streams of data that will be put into the record and analyzed, for individuals and the group, as a whole.
These social medical networks could wind up being “the most fundamental IT app” that a family or its friends need, when desperately seeking answers about afflictions suffered by anyone they care about.
For that, every data element – and every tweet – will count.
And, over the long haul, produce a calculable return.
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So, to begin measuring increases in effectiveness and value in a networked social computing environment, please consider the concept of Return on Investment in Interaction (ROII), which we have derived from the principles of Metcalfe’s Law of Networks (as have many of the others cited above). Why, you may ask, do the above excerpts portend being able to identify and / or assess Return on Investment in Interaction ?
Identifying and Measuring ROII (Return on Investment in Interaction)
The focus in purposeful networked environments is to do what’s important and involve those who know what’s important, why it’s important and what they know (or know how to find out) about a problem or issue.
Let’s define some core assumptions about ROII :
- Continuous flows of information are the raw material of value creation and overall performance,
- Information flows are carried by links, alerts, RSS feeds, search engines, aggregation and filtering of content, etc.
- All leading social / collaboration platforms now feature social networking, search and computing capabilities,
- These platforms’ architectures facilitate purposeful cross-silo communications and exchange.
Social networking pioneer Valdis Krebs has outlined four generic metrics that are becoming widely accepted as leading to observable, tangible, measurable outputs:
- Increase in size of network
- Increase in internal network connectivity
- Increase in connection to valuable 3rd parties
- Increase in number of projects formed from all three factors above
It’s important, we think, to note here that we are not proposing a definitive answer but rather the need to debate and clarify the issue(s). However, an attentive read of the ZDNet article referenced above clearly aligns with Krebs’ four principles:
1. Increase in size of network: As The CHARMTracker database grows and the volume of families’ data it holds increases, it’s utility to doctors, other health care professionals and the families themselves increases. And, as the article points out, if and when the data begins to be (appropriately) used by those networked around the health issues, the value of the interaction will increase in an (likely) exponential fashion.
2. Increase in internal network connectivity: Again, as suggested by the paragraphs excerpted from the ZDNet article, as more and more participants are networked into the CHARMTracker information and begin to use the dynamics of social networks to seek for and circulate pertinent and useful information, each time a piece of information is useful to someone there’s a tangible return on the intangible capacity offered by the flows of information and knowledge.
3. Increase in connection to valuable 3rd parties: As more information fills the CHARMTracker database, and more doctors, health care professional and families use it, the apparent value will become clear to others with expertise or value to provide to the social medical network that will have grown up around autism issues. Expect to see both volunteer and for-profit services to be added to the growing ecosystem of knowledge and attention.
This expected outcome reminds me of the core argument of Shoshan Zuboff’s book “The Support Economy – Why Corporation Are Failing Individuals and the Next Episode of Capitalism”, wherein she argues that the complexity surrounding many issues in today’s society are such that all sorts of people (consumers, families, professionals, and so on) will need “support” that can be designed, built and delivered via the digital interlinked infrastructure we know as the Web.
4. Increase in number of projects formed from all three factors above: It’s pretty easy to imagine that as the CHARMTRacker database and its use(s) take root, there will be other clever and useful projects that grow out of the experience and the learning it affords. Doc Searls, of Cluetrain Manifesto and VRM (Vendor Relations Management) fame once sagely noted that one of the critical outcomes of operating in purposeful social networks was the “scaffolding” (building in layer upon layer) of useful knowledge.
That’s how circulating pertinent information and sharing useful knowledge works .. we don’t go backwards, we build on what’s useful and what works. That’s how Return On Investment in Interaction will work and will deliver value to organization and groups who decide to use social networks, linked information and data, and social computing dynamics to accelerate their effectiveness towards achieving their purpose.
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by Rob Paterson
August 31, 2008 at 9:02 am · Filed under
Andy Carvin, Emergency, Gustav, Mashups, Network Effect, News, Ning, Public Media, Social Computing, Social Media, Social Networking, Twitter, User Revolution, Video, Videos, Web 2.0, Wikis
Social Media came of age after the Tsunami. It showed its power to provide vital information very quickly when the official channels could not.
With Gustav a day away from landfall many of the most experienced people in the field are coalescing on a Ning site that will aggregate as much information as possible in one place. Wiki, Twets, RSS feeds from Blogs, Video – everything.
Here is the address of the site
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