Social Networks
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Contents |
Virtual Worlds
The Theory:
It is less than a decade since the Web became a part of everyday life. That is a very short time in computing evolution. We are in the early days of building online environments and understanding how they will shape our activities. In the future they have the possibility to change the way that we conceive social networking in a huge way.
How they will affect the future:
People and place:
First of all, we can assume that progress in all sorts of virtual environments and will be continuous and dramatic, creating the ability to link physical spaces across the globe to support rich and deep experiences for social and business purposes. At the same time, we should see this as going hand in hand with the shaping of physical space to support such interactions, and the continued human value of being together. A profound effect of the online world is the way it expands our sense of the world we belong to, and in which we find our identity (Meyrowitz, 2004). People increasingly build the Web for themselves through new forms of social media - wikimedia, blogs etc - and environments in which they are embedded, and create new communities of interest unconstrained by place. We will certainly use all of these possibilities to make many more choices about where we need to be, and when, but it would be unwise to subscribe to a myth of physical transcendence as a basis for planning.
People and things:
Secondly, the online world is a great enabler of choice, with it getting easier every day to choose between suppliers, and to have whole bundles of services configured for our personal convenience. Behind the scenes, standards for web services enable applications to be woven together in real time among many different providers. Agent technologies bring additional layers of sophistication to such services and will combine with steady advances in human interface technologies.
No dramatic breakthroughs are needed in speech technology and language understanding for us to give ever more effective instructions to the smart services and artefacts around us. These technologies fit into a growing discipline of interaction design that brings all the available modes together through humancentred design processes.
These powerful interface technologies will be able to draw on the full power of the information grids and utilities and will come together in what we might call 'life-serve environments' which offer intelligent support to mediate and support the choices we make. We are already becoming used to the power of intelligent search to bring us the information we want just when we need it - this power will grow substantially in range and sophistication.
The Benefits of emerging social networks and virtual worlds
First, it is demonstrably true that each new form we give to remote communications allows us to experience a richer set of relationships that are independent of where we happen to be at that moment. This means that we can bring together many more relationships beyond our immediate confines and can weave them around our daily activity. Meyrowitz (2004) coins the term 'glocality' to describe this sense of 'being inside and outside at the same time'. It is also now common experience that this extended online presence allows us to substitute many face-to-face meetings with some form of remote collaboration.
We are just at the beginning of this revolution. The forms of extended presence 50 years hence will be so far beyond what we know now that it is futile to speculate on them, except perhaps through science fiction.
However, the first and mundane but inescapable fact is that we are always somewhere, and that most of the things we want to do have to happen somewhere, even when communicating through a virtual environment. Our most basic needs must be met in a particular place, the here and now. There is a physical setting to everything we do. But, beyond the mundane, there is the broader value of place.
If we think about it, we realise that we are using the freedoms created by new online presences and mobility to make choices about where we live, and how we work. It is precisely because we care about places and what they represent to us in terms of communities and activities that we value mobile communication so highly - it frees us to be in places we like.
Second, as many people have experienced, the notion of substitution is misleading. The more we communicate with people, the more we will find reasons to get together with them. While we can displace some reasons for travel, it is well established that increasing connectivity drives an increasing need for face-to-face communication. Relationships that are sustained by telecommunications usually create reasons to meet in person. Indeed, we use a huge amount of electronic communication to co-ordinate and plan travel and physical meetings.
It is now well understood that in many ways the use of telecommunications is to reinforce our relationships within their existing settings. Certainly, in the long-term flow of the relationship, many things that might have required a meeting might be accomplished remotely, but this is offset by the new opportunities that are created for shared activity in the real world.
Third, the notion that we are transcending our physical selves does not stand up to observation and analysis. Our bodies will always be somewhere, we cannot actually be in two places at the same time, and co-presence brings with it the full depth of human culture (Meyrowitz, 2004). Co-presence is thick with information, and Co-presence is so information rich that we feel a need to have it to know what is really going on. Thus, coming together is one way to manage the very ambiguities and complexities that are caused by our increasing 'glocality'. Indicating that the dominance of the idea of the death of distance has obscured the positive relationships between urban economies and the information economy.
The Practice
Many current virtual worlds exist and the ways that businesses are using them vary greatly. Current virtual worlds (Second Life, There, World of Warcraft etc..) have evolved considerably from their predecessors ten years ago (Habitat, Dreamscape and WorldsAway). The way that people interact with these worlds has also changed, with experiences moving away from being predominately gaming orientated to embracing more social qualities such as networking.
According to Cliff Dennett businesses are using virtual worlds in innovative and exciting ways in order to attract, recruit and retain the best young talent; convey complex messages to customers and employees; generate new ideas; better utilise IT and training budgets and reach more customers better and faster.
Businesses are creating presence within virtual worlds through a variety of means, Product Placement (Toyota and Adidas within Second Life); Sponsored Promotions (The American Cancer Society's 'Relay for Life' within Second Life which raised over $5,000 for charity); 'Adverworlds' (Coke Studios, Virtual Magic Kingdom) and Co-Branded Spaces (Wal-Mart within Coke Studios).
The Battle in Japan: Mixi vs Myspace
Japan's Mixi is emerging on the market as a real competitor to US's Myspace. Mixi has a 6 million strong empire that is built around 900,000 virtual communities. In Japan such communities have become so strongly linked to the real world in recent years that they now can affect the behaviour of consumers of everything from pet shops to noodle bars. According to the Financial Times,
"MySpace is determined to muscle in on this scene 'a paradise for advertisers' and hopes to use its strong global brand and the weight of its 125m worldwide members to do so. In November, MySpace announced a joint venture with internet and telecommunications group Softbank in a move that should see a fully localised PC-based version of MySpace operating in Japan in March 2007. It remains unclear when the service will reach mobile phones, and the whole project is understood to be bogged down in negotiations between MySpace and the Japan Society for the Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers".
Apparently the Japanese are naturally drawn to communities, and when they are online they are even more attractive. Housewives use this site to help each other. Working people use it as a pleasurable entrance to their favourite hobbies. Japanese as a people love the concept of harmony, and in a way they use Mixi to achieve that by forming these community groups. - Niche Social Networking.
Via what some have dubbed 'social commerce', Japan was engaged in the building of social networks before the software of Web 2.0 made it a global phenomenon. The online communities that thrive within Mixi's site are also the high-tech descendants of the thousands of so-called 'keitai clubs' that existed online and were available via mobile phones before MySpace had even been conceived.
According to the Financial Times, 'since it began operating as a social networking site in March 2004, Mixi has carved itself a dominant position among Japanese websites. Its ranking puts it second only to Yahoo. The invitation-only social networking site receives more than 750m hits per month from PC users, and nearly 2bn hits from Japanese accessing the service on their mobile phones.' Social Networkings Second Coming
By Jen Suanders from the The Blanc & Otus Weblog:
As the famous saying goes, "out with the old, in with the new.†Nowadays it's the rising popularity of virtual media company Second Life that has people wondering if social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, and even blogs like this one, are 'old' in the world of social media platforms.
Growing concern about the corruption of social media sites and blogs, as noted recently in The Flack and Business Week Online, has many folks' panties up in a bunch (well, not Britney's, but that's a whole other story...). 'Astro-turfing', self-serving, and fake posting, oh my! As blogging and social networking becomes more and more prevalent, credibility and authority attributes at the very core our PR profession tend to fall by the wayside. Those who corrupt forums of information-sharing for their short-term personal gains undermine those of us who aim to leverage these mediums legitimately.
Perhaps we're growing just a little bit tired of social media sites. According to Nielsen/NetRatings, traffic to almost all popular social networking sites fell between August and September: MySpace's audience dropped from 49.2 million to 47.2 million; Facebook from 8.9 million to 7.8 million. It appears that the effort it takes to maintain active social or business relationships on the Web is beginning to take its toll. Could it be the incessant advertisements and solicitations? A shift from what was once straightforward information-sharing and relationship-building towards self-serving interests? Maybe the novelty is gone and we're just plain bored?
Enter Second Life, a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents. There is so much you can do with the site, it can be hard to grasp at first. Second Life takes the basic social networking concept introduced by MySpace and Facebook much further. You can create a virtual identity, join groups, write for a newspaper and even build a home. Second Life also incorporates a virtual economy where you can purchase land and make money by buying and selling items. One user even claims to have become a real-life millionaire. As a recent Forbes piece points out, marketers are eating this stuff up. Companies like Sony, Dell and IBM are already beginning to tap into this virtual world. The possibilities for both individuals and businesses really are endless.
We need to consistently be thinking one step ahead of the masses: Are social media sites and blogs beginning to run their course? What challenge does this pose as we try to expand our clients' footprints? Perhaps all of the buzz surrounding Second Life and similar 'virtual' communities are right on? Who knows. What's next, a virtual blog?
How Social Networks are affecting the way that Business is done?
The advent of online social networking has huge consequences on the way that business is undertaken. Companies, regardless of what products or services that they offer, are changing the manner through which they communicate, make decisions, and develop and market products, due to the new means through which they can express themselves through online.
First-generation Web sites were all about human-computer interaction; it is culture now that fuels the evolution of the web. "What you're seeing now is people interacting not just with 'the computer' or with 'information' but with other people," comments Danah Boyd. "You have to bring out the sociology and anthropology." Personal connections - forged through words, pictures, video, and audio are the life of the new Web, bringing together the estimated 90 million bloggers, those 145 million MySpace users, and millions more on single-use social networks such as Flickr and You Tube.
The recent hive of activity within the online social network world has generated a huge buzz within the media, what businesses need to realise is the potential and power of this medium especially when it is focused in the world of business. In fact, it's hard to overstate the coming impact of these new network technologies on business: they give birth to trends and build immense waves of interest in specific products. They serve giant, targeted audiences to advertisers. They edge out old media with the loving labor of amateurs. They effortlessly provide super-detailed information to marketers. If customers are content, networks can help build fanatical loyalty; if not, they'll amplify every complaint until you do something about it. They are fund-raising platforms. They unify activists of every stripe, transforming an atomised mass of individuals with few resources into an international movement able to put multinational corporations and governments on the defensive.
"Social networking isn't a product or a company, but a feature that lives in service of some other mission," says Bradley Horowitz, head of technology development for Yahoo. "The spirit of social computing is the concept of leaving value in your wake." That value starts with expression. Users of social-networking sites are producing and freely sharing a whole universe of content for others to consume. Networks such as MySpace and Flickr are super quick ways of incubating trends, nurturing subcultures, and remixing styles. The core assets become the audience and community that exist on these sites rather than the perceived advertising space. How that community can feed--or destroy--an existing business is fast becoming the most important analytical challenge in the marketplace.
The super-detailed data and automatic feedback that these websites generate is extremely valuable to businesses; businesses are able to collect a lot of data without putting in the effort. Social network consumers are not passive participants in the consumption process. With vast space of the Net it is easier than ever for them to seek out unbiased, independent information about companies, products, or brands. When it comes to information, the balance of power has truly shifted to the consumer.
Social Networks allow the strengthening of customer relationships through improved customer support. They improve expert networking and knowledge sharing within businesses and consequently allow for the understanding of how communication really works within businesses. However taking advantage of social networking tools in a business setting generally requires some cultural change, which is never easy. But unless your customers, employees, and partners are already overflowing with trust and confidence in your business (and that is true in rather few situations), some experimentation with social networking is probably well worth the effort.
Metcalfe's Law states that the power of a network grows in proportion to the square of the number of its nodes i.e. networking technologies nobody uses are of limited value, as the popularity of social network sites grows, so does their value, because a larger number of users mean better odds for productive connections.
We are right at the beginning of the emergence of social networks. Online communities are going to continually grow and grow, this expansion will not be driven by the technology available but by the consumer and the uses that people have it.
