Trolls – Anonymity – A Better Web?

June 23, 2011 at 8:45 am · Filed under Social Media, Trust, Trusted Space

A key principle of the web is anonymity. But there is a dark side to this too. Here is a snip from an excellent article in the Australian on this topic that contains elements that I cannot post here.

Cyber-bile takes many forms: from people posting pornography or sexually explicit comments on Facebook memorials to murdered children, to the person who set up a Facebook site which promised the return of abducted Queensland schoolboy Daniel Morcombe if the page attracted one million members. To most right-thinking people this sort of stuff is unbelievably cruel, surely the outpourings of a small number of sick minds. Hoaxers regularly hack into Facebook pages, defacing pictures or spreading rumours that can cause untold pain, panic and embarrassment. And then there’s the constant background chatter that eats away at people – mostly women – in the public domain. It seems everyone has an opinion now, and they want to be heard. But when did they become so mean and, in some cases, downright terrifying?

Sydney newsreader Jacinta Tynan calls them the faceless brave. “When people want to give me a compliment, they tend to email me directly,” says the journalist and author. “Those who want to say really horrible things will go online and do it anonymously. They’re suddenly very brave when they don’t have to attach their names or their faces to their comments.”

Trolls have made it harder for the corporate world to enter social media. I think that this is why so many sites now ask for a Facebook or Twitter ID as part of the commenting process – pure anonymity is a call to Trolldom.

Why is this happening and what to do?

Why do so many act out as Trolls? Why did so many “Good Kids” riot in Vancouver? Might an answer be again part of the paradox of our way of life. So many have no role, no status and so no real voice. For is not a real voice always attached to your own personal authority? You don’t have to be a CEO or a Government Minister to have real authority either. You have to have real confidence in your self and be part of something that has meaning. Your name then has power and adds power to your words. Viktor Frankl found this power even in Auschwitz. His captors could kill him or abuse him at will. His life was not in his control. He was scum to them. But he would not let them take his spirit. This is what I mean by “Real” power.

In pre industrial society, you lived in communities where you were known by many. This might have been oppressive in some cases but this being known also gave you your name and place. On PEI where I live, people know not only you but your family back 3 generations. What they “know” about you is a part of you that you can control – they know about your character. Such a society is how humans have lived for all time – except for now. We live today in a society where most of us mean nothing to even a small group let alone to our wider community.

This is why I think there are so many Trolls. I think that Trolls are an expression of the despair of how lonely and without meaning life can be in Industrial Society.

Perversely, this is also why I am also hopeful. For the web gives us all a chance to start to find meaning in what we do in public again. It gives us a chance to be known for what we do and how we behave. It gives us back our name. We don’t have to be “important” we just have to be true.

It is best on the web to use your real voice. And this then leads me to my final point today. If you use social media for your employer and you use a “corporate” voice. You are in effect a troll too.  You seek to interact with real people but you are not present at your end. If you seek to have influence, you too must have a name and be you.

This is why people like Jordan Miller at Kotex and Baochi Nguyen at Boingo have such a following.

So what to do? Maybe a good first step for enterprises is to offer up a chance to have a real voice on your site – allow for opinion but don’t allow vitriol. Debate the issues with a real voice your self. It will be interesting to see how President Obama does this.

Be the change you seek. The more real you are the less place for Trolls. Few if any on the Kotex or Boingo sites.

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The Attention Economy and Klout

April 20, 2011 at 9:49 am · Filed under Adoption, Business 2.0, Business Intelligence, Business Model, Innovation, Innovator Interviews, Measurement, Media, Paradigm, Relationships, Science, Social Media, Trust, Trusted Space

In the old economy that still lingers you could buy “Attention”. A large advertising budget could force you into the minds of others. But we are becoming numb to this assault. Increasingly we only trust people that we know. “Attention” is shifting from the Institution with the budget to the “Person” with personal reputation or “Clout”.

This transition from the Institution to the Personal is surely one of the most paradigm shifting aspects of the time we live in?

Here is the “Godfather” of the idea of the Attention Economy – Michael Goldhaber back in 1997 explaining this shift from Attention that you could buy to Attention that you could only Earn!

“.. money now flows along with attention, or, to put this in more general terms, when there is a transition between economies, the old kind of wealth easily flows to the holders of the new. Thus, when the market-based, proto-industrial economy first began to replace the feudal system of Western Europe, in which the prime form of wealth was aristocratic lineage and inheritance of land, both the noble titles and the lands that went with them soon ended up disproportionately in the hands of those who were good at obtaining what was then the new kind of wealth, namely money.

With considerable ease, the rising merchant and industrialist class could buy old titles, induce governments to grant them brand new ones, or marry into the old impoverished gentry. The parallel today, again, is that possessors of today’s rising kind of wealth, which is attention, and whom we label stars of every sort, have an easy time getting money.

But now let me point out that the other way round doesn’t work nearly as easily. Contrary to what you are sometimes urged to believe, money cannot reliably buy attention. Suppose it did work that way. Then you could have been paid to sit here and listen closely even if I were to read you something as boring as the phone book or an unabridged dictionary. Presumably it wouldn’t even matter if I kept repeating the same few syllables over and over. If money could reliably buy attention, all I would have to do is pay you the required amount and you would keep listening carefully through all that, not falling asleep en masse, nor allowing your minds to wander. In truth, even if you had been paid a huge sum, this would be most difficult, and if you did it, it would be a testament more to your own deep sense of principle than to a general condition in which another roomful of similar people could be expected to do equally well.

Someone who wants your attention just can’t rely on paying you money to get it, but has to do more, has to be interesting, that is must offer you illusory attention, in just about the same amounts as they would if you had instead been paying money to listen to them — which by the way is closer to the case here. Money flows to attention, and much less well does attention flow to money.”

Attention that people will trust – about an idea, a product, a service, a politician, will come from “Trusted” people in your life and in your network.

Defining and measuring Personal Clout will therefore be very important in the future.

That is why I wanted to speak to the CEO of Klout, Joe Fernandez who very kindly spent time with me on the phone yesterday talking about “Attention” what it is now – how it builds from Robin Dunbar’s research. We also touched on how today’s kids may be having their brains rewired to be able to use a much larger network than was possible face to face.

Here are some of the ideas that we batted around:

• It’s all about how you are as a person - Many newbies still think of Social Media as a big megaphone – they still shout out to the crowd – “look at me” aren’t I great!!!!” – But they most important aspect of the new world is what “Others say about you” and who those others are and how large your and their network is. To get their attention demands that you have something good to say and that you have also won their trust. This then is not easy environment. There can be no instant success.
• It’s all about how you are related in network terms – This is why Klout have set up their algorithms to measure True Reach or the value of your content -  Amplification Probability or how we you are related to the people in your network – how large and diverse is your network – do they find you interesting, safe, or a bore  - and Network Influence or do you influence people with influence. This makes a lot of sense to me. I think that Klout is trying to get a handle on the playing field. I also liked it that Joe kept reminding me that they are at the start of a voyage of discovery. That they may be ahead of others but know that there is so much to discover.
• The online world is likely larger than the personal world - Klout will fond out how much larger. The Dunbar numbers still operate in the personal world and for adults my age I think. But Joe made a case based on observation that he is seeing online Trusted Networks maxing out at about 500 (144 is the max Dunbar number) His own floats between 150 – 350 but he still relies on about 150. The really interesting point he made is that he is seeing a new world emerge with kids.
• Kids have a new social reality – they never lose a friend! – When I was a boy, we moved a lot. So at every move to a new place, a new school etc, I lost touch with 98% of the then friends. Over time they faded from memory. But now, a kid moves or changes school and stays in touch with most of  her friends. Even now as an adult, I am regaining touch with old friends long lost. Joe and I thought that decades of staying connected must have an effect on the wiring of the brain. After all print had that effect by making the left hand side more powerful. The brain is very plastic and can change very quickly as we see with say stroke victims. It is very likely that a child of 5 today who is a keen user of social media, will have a very different brain than I do when they are 25.

This new world is literally unfolding before us. Joe thinks that Klout now is about where Google was in 1997 – the key algorithms are in their infancy but are already able to tell us interesting things. Much more will be possible over time – especially when there is more data to observe.

But 2 things are clear to me – understanding how Clout works is core to the new economy. And that measuring Clout as Klout is doing is going to be very important.

Your reputation is your capital. You and not the institution will have the power.

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2011 – The 2.0 Tipping Point – Trust not Tools alone

December 20, 2010 at 9:57 am · Filed under Adoption, Trust, Trusted Space

My dear colleagues at FFB have brought you the research to show you that 2011 promises to be the Tipping Point for 2.0. Mckinsey shows that at last the performance is there. The tools are there. Employee advocates are a great way forward.

But what really makes the difference? I think that it is in CEO’s accepting the shift in polarity from telling to listening. It is their behavior that sets the culture anyway and it is this Copernican shift  from push to pull that is the real bifurcation - not the tools – nor the acceleration of processes time.

To listen and to be human is the key. Why? Because if you tell listen – if you tell the truth – and if you engage – you win Trust. And Trust is the way to value today.

Some examples of the 2.0 CEO’s different kind of listening and more human information environment might look like this:

A Customer Listening review – summary daily – discussion weekly

• This happens at Boingo – Dave Hagen sits feet away from Baochi who ensures that he sees everything that she hears on Twitter and Facebook that might be meaningful and has a weekly review with him and the senior team about what she has heard – Dave Hagen has his customer feedback in real time – customers get heard in real time too – a perfect match. Here is what happens when you have a problem and tweet for help. A human being gets back to you.  Bad things happen. How you hear about them and then deal with them is helped immensely by making this ability to listen and respond human.

• Got to be able to be reached and talkes with – you 800# is not good enough! Travel is a big thing right now - Air Canada has no way of listening and conversing with its passengers in a human way – Its Mobile App is quite good for data but not right now with Europe shut down for uncertainty – Their Help number is overloaded - here is a plea! No one can have a conversation on human terms with anyone at Air Canada right now. Even if they don’t know or cannot know – a human acknowledgement will help. No one has any trust in Air Canada. It’s not their fault that the weather is bad but it is their fault that they cannot be trusted. They will pay for this.

Westjet are not perfect but here they are holding the hand of a passenger that has lost their luggage. Westjet have problems. they have customers that don’t like them – but they work hard to keep trust. By being Human!

As all men who have been married a while know – sometimes you cannot fix the problem but hearing the problem out is key

See what I mean? Your customer people have to be able to listen and to converse and in a HUMAN way. This is the challenge culturally.

Truth trumps brand puffery!  In this age of real transparency - if you have a problem – as Air Canada does with its customer service  - then it will be found out and widely broadcast. Your brand is not in your control anymore. You have to get real about you really stand for. Here is the best example that I know. Having your period is not a fun thing – but all advertising for tampons and pads had taken this line. Kotex pre-empts questions and asks the hard ones for you about the reality of why you use a tampon – no more “Twirling” but being human. The truth is that having your period is not the best time of the month for you and is also a time filled with doubt for many girls and younger women. If you don’t tell the truth – how can you be trusted?

Want to find out how your employees are and how your key processes are doing – really – then listen in to all that is going on as happens at Zappos.

A CEO that listens can have his/her finger on the pulse all the time.

With Trust, happy clients now become your best advertising and brand enhancers

For me – this is the breakthrough – not that you have shaved time off a process. Not that you have cut meeting times. All this is good but not going to put you ahead of the pack.

Trust is the scarcest thing in the world right now.

By being truthful, listening and engaging with your customers and your staff – you create trust – with Trust comes value.

So – Good for you if the tools are getting accepted. That is the easy part of 2.0.

The hard part is to use them to build trust – trust inside and out. So what are you doing?

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Robin Dunbar Ends the Stupidity of Endless “Friends”

November 23, 2010 at 10:34 am · Filed under Chaord, Network Effect, Organizational Design, Robin Dunbar, Social Networking, Socialprise, Trust, Trusted Space, Work 2.0, Workplace

I saw another piece of stupidity the other day when a “Social Media Expert” claimed that his thousands of friends on Facebook and Twitter made him such an expert and that he could teach you how to have that many friends as well. In other words that having lots of Friends was the goal!

Of course people like him make these claims based on nothing.

A few of us do read and those of us who do have long known of the work of Robin Dunbar. Those who care to do some work, know that there is a lot of science that underpins how humans live in social groups and that there is an underlying math that is well known.

So for those that don’t have time to read here he is in 16 minutes on Youtube offering you the science that shows why:

• Our social personal limit is about 150 people
• How this came about
• That we have layers of intimacy inside this limit
• That there are layers beyond it but that are not intimate
• That meeting face to face – is crucial to maintaining these relationships and that they degrade if not enhanced with face to face
• That men and women use two very different types of social grooming to maintain their networks – women need to talk and men need to do
• That the folks who claim to have thousands of friends are nearly all men with poor social skills in the real world

So for all you Social Media Experts and HR professionals and Organization Design Folks here is Dunbar:

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Boingo Part 2 – Using the power of the network effect – Superfans

September 27, 2010 at 10:34 am · Filed under 2.0 Business Model, 2.0 Design Thinking, Adoption, Barriers, Community, Connected Enterprise, Customer Service, Disney, Energy, Interaction, Interviews, Management Theory, Marketing, Network Effect, Organizational Design, Platforms, Relationships, Robin Dunbar, Social Contact, Social Media, Social Networking, Social Objects, Socialprise, Trust, Trusted Space, Twitter, User Revolution, Web 2.0, Wisdom of Crowds, Work 2.0, Workplace

What would it be like if your business had a sales, marketing and support force that was 1.3 million strong that you did not have to pay for? What if you could source this leverage with a tiny central force? Sounds impossible? Do you have any idea of how this could work?

Now that everyone is using Social Media – what I am seeing mainly are people who using the new tool in the old way – trying to shout above the noise – “Look at ME!” “Aren’t I cool!” “Aren’t we good!”. I am seeing a Dilbert approach – “Let’s have a Facebook site” “Let’s get on Twitter”.

Most do what most do when a new technology arrives – they apply it in the old way and so get nothing in response.

So what then is the power and leverage that you can harness by using social media well?

Boingo are on their way to finding out how to do this. Oh yes and I am one of the people that are part of this and oh yes I am not being paid and nor do I in any way work for them. I am living the theory.

So how might this work and so how might you do this too?

Boingo have a class of people that are deeply committed to the enterprise that Baochi calls her “Super fans”. They and why they are connected to Boingo and each other is the core of the leverage potential. We will meet 4 of them in this post who agreed enthusiastically to be interviewed by me. As you will see, these Super Fans are attracted first of all to Boingo by the obvious:

• The service – easy one stop access to Wifi in Airports and Hotels – is now no longer a nice to have for travellers but an essential
• The support for the service is outstanding – got a problem – you get instant personal help

But a great product is not enough. Nor is good service. What is the differentiator for Boingo is the human nature of the relationship that Boingo has with its customers. Most organizations do not allow their people to be human. Service people are often ciphers working from a script. Boingo have set up an environment where their key point of contact is a real person who is allowed to be herself.

She has a name and a face and we are all in awe and a bit in love with her. We all feel her presence watching over us. It is way more than getting her help when we can’t sign on. She watches out for us. Have a problem – A quick tweet. In minutes she is there. She is like the guy who runs the old corner store who holds your keys when you go away, keeps an eye on your kids in the street, helps you find a new roommate.

As Nuno Montegro, a customer in Portugal says – It is not what she says but how she says things that is the difference.

Nuno is like me, a customer who actively refers others to the service.

Most of Social media is all about Weak Ties – They are very useful but Weak Ties don’t get people to do much – or risk much – or commit much – that is why they are Weak – they are easy.

If you want to do something – Civil Rights in the US – you need Strong Ties. (Nice new piece by Malcolm Gladwell that explores Weak and Strong Ties in depth)

The key to attracting Strong Ties is being human. It is NOT PIMPING your product. It is instead to show that you really do care about ME. It is instead to show that you can indeed be trusted.

How do you show this? Nuno makes the point that every service and product fails at times. The key is to offer the best possible response to the inevitability of a problem. The best possible response is to know from experience that if there is a problem, you can reach a real person quickly and that they will go the distance to help you get it fixed. “I felt as if I was the only customer in the entire world when she was helping me” Nuno told me. I had the same experience.

Attracting Strong Ties is all about “Giving”.

Aaron Strout is the CMO at social media agency, Powered Inc. and is also Super Fan. “Boingo is proactive and they don’t expect a direct return – they are not selling all day – so if they want an inch, I go the mile back. It’s Karmic! I know if I have a problem that they will look after me. If people are good and do good, then good comes back. Not necessarily directly but good gets attracted back. We talk about a wide range of things that affect me not just the product – which is great too – have to have that – they listen.”

What Aaron is talking about here is a very old model for an economy that was the centre of all tribal economies – the Gift Economy. In the Gift Economy, the Big Guy is not the man who has the most stuff but the person who gives the most.

This is the power in networks – this is how Open Source Works too.

Cliff Bremmer is a programmer who works for a company called Carley Corporation that bids on government contracts to develop instructional CD base/computer based training for the US military.  ”In my spare time I help companies understand and navigate the social media spectrum in a professional yet interactive way.  The company I’m currently helping is the one my father works for called the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel“.

The Gift?

Not only is he a fan but in interacting with Boingo he has learned a lot about how to use SM media well. “If there is anything I’m proud of lately it’s that I helped the Pegasus Hotel promote their brand with the help and support of @Boingo and other companies to become one of the most popular brands in Jamaica.” Boingo is  not only helping him with his travel and Wifi but is talking with him and helping him help his dad in his business with advice and Tweet Up prizes such as free access and bag tags. The Gift in action!

He can see the flaws of how most use SM – “They are stuck in self promotion versus communication. I can see through it all – it’s all about them.”

In the Gift Economy that drives Trust and so Strong Ties, the starting point is YOU. In the non network economy the starting point is ME. No small difference!

Shelby Rogers is a flight attendant, a serving soldier (in the active reserve) and the wife of a serving soldier. Travel is her life. When she is not working, she travels. Access to Wifi has made her travel better – “I now know more than the Gate Agent does about my flights!” and it has taken away much of the loneliness that travel brings with it. Who has not been alone eating room service and watching TV in our room? “I can stay in touch with my husband on Skype and every city seems to have a friend in it.”

For Shelby, Boingo is a service that truly meets her needs. But it is how Boingo is connected to her that has transformed a pleased customer into a Super fan.

How often has your service provider taken you out to dinner? “We have even had dinner recently. I am now a walking billboard for Boingo with winking bag tags!”

So what does this mean? What are the lesson for both Boingo and for you?

• Baochi is no accident – the Boingo senior leadership have created the role and given it the space to enable someone who is naturally humane to be herself inside it. This new way of using Strong Ties to be the centre of a network is all about culture. In most cases senior leadership is too scared to let go. But if you do let go and create this safe place then the power of the network effect can be yours
• A really powerful network has to have an inner core bound by Strong Ties. This is where the leverage is. One staff person like Baochi can without too much trouble have close ties with 34 people. That gives her an outer network of 1.3 million. If she can handle the Dunbar limit of 144 that creates an opportunity of 400 million! You can see that with the right person, you can have a vast reach – provided you realize that your goal is not to have thousands of relationships but a few Strong Ones
• The secret is the math of social leverage. Many of you know about the “Dunbar Number”. Some of you know about “Magic numbers – the hierarchy of trust in human groups. If you don’t here is a quick primer.

So what now?

I think that the next stage would be this:

• At the moment all the Super Fans have a strong relationship with Baochi – I think that the best next step might be to find a way to connect them to each other
• At the  moment most of the dialogue is still about the obvious and excellent service that Boingo provides – I think that some of the work that the Super Fans could do might be to deepen the conversation – Shelby touched on this in her interview with me – What is it that being easily connected while travelling does? In her case it helped her deal with isolation and loneliness – it helped her do her job better – it kept her in touch with her husband – these are deep issues that I think connect all of us who travel a lot

As I think about networks, I think about the laws of physics. All systems have order and attractors. Some force is needed to keep systems coherent.

Think of the Sun in our own local system. It has mass that provides a gravity that holds all the planets and asteroids and stuff in a pattern. It has energy that creates life in the system. I think that any healthy human social system has to have gravity and light.

At the very centre is the “Right Space” a Trusted Space created by the leadership. In this Space, the Right Person – Right being a person who as part of her natural persona truly cares about others. Connected to her is the fuel and the mass that makes up the Sun – the Super Fans. The closer they are to the centre and the closer they are to each other – the more mass and the more energy. The more mass and energy, the larger and more healthy the network of Weak Ties that form up around the Sun.

What gets in the way is our fear about losing control.

At Disney the surface of the Brand Icon never changes but inside the mask is a person who changes all the time and so is never allowed to speak.

But in the new world we have to take off the costume and let the person inside have conversations with the public – HARD to do.

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