The Problem of Group Management
Visualization of my LinkedIn network, automatically generated through inMaps.
As I have been contemplating SXSW this year, one thing that struck me was that, unlike previous years, there wasn’t a clear “winner” in terms of a new technology or platform.
The reason for all the attention that the technology and advertising industries lavish on SXSW is due to the fact that, for the past several years, it’s been the site of the popularization of a game-changing technology. Twitter in 2007. Foursquare in 2009 (as a new idea) and 2010 (as a popular, extensible platform).
In 2011, there didn’t seem to be a breakout app or service, despite the best effort of what felt like thousands of startups equipped with flyers, schwag, and scantily clad volunteers.
Aside from their over-aggressive marketing tactics, one thing that several of these start-ups had in common was an attempt at solving a common problem: group management.
The way that human beings socialize in real life doesn’t match how software treats us online; I don’t really have 290 equally important friends in my life the way that Facebook displays them. Instead, I have a core group of friends who I socialize with on the weekends, a group of people who I work with, a whole bunch of other groups whom I’ve worked with in the past, friends from college, friends from high school, and family members - not to mention a few miscellaneous acquaintances I’ve met and lost touch with over the years. Status updates that are intended for my friends are sometimes offensive to my devout Christian cousins, and - like many people - I find my self second-guessing what I post, since I know it will be visible to my coworkers and boss.
This is not a new insight. In fact, Facebook tried to solve this problem with its introduction of Groups in October 2010. The project garnered a ton of attention from tech bloggers, but, 6 months later, it’s rarely mentioned (Facebook hasn’t published usage data, but anecdotally it doesn’t seem that many folks are using it).
Several companies at SXSW gave the group challenge a shot - GroupMe,Hashable, and Hurricane Party all approached the problem in a different ways.
However, as with Facebook Groups, none of these apps seemed to really take off. Real-life social circles are incredibly complex. Right now, it seems to be impossible for software to handle the fluidity and complexity of social groups without requiring users to manually maintain complex lists of membership rules - which no one has time to do. And even if such magical solution could exist, I’m not sure how comfortable consumers would be with an automated solution to something so important to the way that we socialize.
So is there a way to manage groups that’s not manual? I can’t think of a solution at the moment, but history is full of solutions to problems that previously seemed insolvable. This will be an interesting space to watch over the next few years.
One of the main points I make when trying to explain why digital is different from other advertising media is the incredible fragmentation that one must account for - both in terms of hardware and software. This graphic sums up that point pretty nicely.
Brands Will Learn By Doing. Get Over It.
Brands will actively engage on the social web by doing—and learn in the process. They can’t sit on the sidelines anymore. The social web only kicks in AFTER something is put into the space.
— David Armano, “Brands Will Learn By Doing. Get Over It”
Via Logic+Emotion.
Craig Newmark Unlocks the Secrets to Building a Community
Craig Newmark Unlocks the Secrets to Building a Community
Nice set of guidelines from the original master, Craig Newmark (of Craigslist). Key points include the importance of an ongoing feedback loop and the creation of a non-exclusive environment that encourages a wide range and degree of participation. It’s interesting that, in a time when so many businesses are looking for the secret to social media success online, Craigslist rarely figures into the discussion, when in many senses it’s a precursor to modern social media practices.
Via Aaron Rutledge.
Social Networking Will Become Ubiquitous
Social Networking Will Become Ubiquitous
Excellent article from Logic + Emotion about the role of social networking online. I completely agree that social features are best suited to be supplementary to a site’s primary purpose, as opposed to being stand-alone apps.
Crackbook
Crackbook — Excellent spoof on Facebook
From the site: “Crackbook is an addictive social utility that makes you feel that you’re connecting with people when actually you’re just not.”
Via House of Naked
I’m increasingly convinced that the only thing Facebook really has is critical mass.
I’m increasingly convinced that the only thing Facebook really has is critical mass.
Rather than forcing people to constantly update [our] blog with full entries, why not pull from the
Rather than forcing people to constantly update [our] blog with full entries, why not pull from the content they’re creating anyway? So [the aggregator] pulls in content from del.icio.us, Flickr, Twitter and other people’s blogs and inserts it right into [the site]. In my mind, it’s an example of passive activity, which I define as tapping into people’s existing behavior in order to deliver, rather than asking them for the information themselves.
Fixing Business Software // NoahBrier.com
