The State of Global Social Networking

Oracle very generously sends me a copy of their magazine "Profit"; the following was on one of the opening pages.



To make a short story even shorter - worldwide "58% of folks don't know what social networking is" For sure this refers to online systems. Almost everyone know that being socially polite with that good looking group of workers two floors above is at least a potentially sweet move. Right?

The overall interest in online social networks is fading fast for about one third of users. Actually not too great a surprise when you think about it particularly where the current master sources (referred to) are Facebook and MySpace. As humans a lot of us ultimately seem to be looking for face-to-face memories that include smells, tastes, physical surprises. It's OK to use something like Facebook to start a relationship with that great group two floors above but really, one day, we want to sit near the campfire on the beach together and talk about everything.

As part of history i.e. this sounds true, people originally didn't quite know what to do with telephones. Certainly stock trading and medical emergency were easy to accept. But if I haven't been writing to that dumb relative why in heck will I begin speaking to him through this thin copper wire!? Now it's hard to imagine a day without a cell phone!

Similarly we are on the brink of some truly wonderful SNA changes. And it's going to be great ...

LinkedIn

The evolution of online Social Networks is of course fascinating to watch - there are moments of what pass for stability in the ecosystem followed by variation explosions in many different directions. The pace of the process is breathtaking - adaptions come and go almost as you watch. I am hoping there's a Political Science grad or Anthropologist out there who is tracking all this!

Let me just point at one item that has caught my attention. LinkedIn is dedicated (more or less) to business professionals. They actively discourage participants from creating large networks of people you don't know personally or strongly trust. You can ask a Question and look for a Job but there are no photo albums, favorites lists, widgets to "poke" or "zombify" your contacts (...this is NOT Facebook!)

After a certain standard amount of "bitching and moaning" from community members this (more or less) closed model has spawned a very active black market of derivative communities on Yahoo Groups and as independent websites.

I made the top graphic from data I found on www.toplinked.com And you can join two of the groups I'm a member of - LinkedIn Power Forum or the Linking Northern California group. Feel free to invite me as a network contact on LinkedIn at any time! The top linked user on this social network has slightly more than 39,000 direct connections....eeeek!

Growing a Social Network

There's currently so much hyper-ventilation surrounding "social software" and Web 2.0 that it's easy to lose sight of the underlying humanity. I may as well say it clearly: social sites extend and accelerate our ability to participate in a greater number of communities than we would have otherwise experienced but they don't fundamentally change how we should treat each other. The suggestion that an online ID is a license to behave badly and without consequences is neither a recipe for inner peace nor social success.

Treating people properly, ala Dale Carnegie's How to win Friends and Influence People (no matter how badly they may behave) counts for a lot.

So, what actually steps can you use to strengthen and grow a social network? Here is a short check list -
Gather people into your network that have a shared interest, history, objective. One of my favorites is 11 Friends in Germany.

Born out of the friendship of two crazed soccer fans who met on the grandstand of the Bielefeld stadium, it's no surprise 11 Freunde (11 Friends) reads more like a love letter than a typical sports magazine.

Don't just sit there - make a contribution. Take a chance, ask a question, leave a comment, add a post - this is the fertilizer in your network garden.
Now do it again, apply some care and feeding to your network - this is where a watering can comes in handy! Keep in regular touch with group members(it takes more than a Christmas letter).
Actively connect others within your network, after all that's what this is all about! Hey, now that you have a new suite of social skills don't assume that everyone has achieved the same level of enlightenment! Be an enabler, make introductions, you'll be surprised how well your network responds.
Ask for feedack, solicit help. I clearly remember the first time I left a comment on a website - just a "thank you" for creating the resource. I was astonished to get a personal response from the webmaster saying how much they appreciated my note and how rare it was to have visitors acknowledge their work.

So, there it is. A few obvious ideas to make the planet a little better. Finally it goes without saying that these comments DO NOT cover Nigerian Banking offers, "lucky" chain letters, sure thing penny stocks etc.; for these I hope there's a very special corner in hell.

Social Networks and Space Planning - How Buildings Learn

Seth Earley pointed me towards a book my Stewart Brand “How Buildings Learn” – it’s fair to say that I’ve been consumed by it for the last few weeks – members of my family avoid making eye-contact with the whispered prayer – “Please God don’t let him start up about buildings & time!”

The book is full of surprises but perhaps its most intriguing central idea describes the interaction between buildings and their occupants through time. It seems too obvious to state that we change buildings but in many and varied ways buildings also change how we go about our activities. Brand provides a model for the various layers of interactions and excahnges between buildings and their occupants. He makes the point that these layers can be divided into two broad categories characterized by the timeframes in which they play out. On one hand there are aspects of a building, such as its site and foundation, that change only slowly or not at all; on the other hand there are the fast-changing furnishings, draperies, and wall coverings that are expected to change relatively frequently. A critical insight – the slow-changing features of a design constrain the fast-changing elements.

Brand offers example after rich example of how this plays out in practice and opens a window onto some very juicy questions. Specifically, given that internal “spaces” will be modified to meet evolving needs, and given that via social networks analysis we are beginning to undersatnd how people and organizations interact in detail, what is the best space planning strategy to achieve better collaboration, organizational agility, creativity, productivity etc.?

My initial searches for answers to these questions has come-up short. There are quite a few resources that describe the advantages of modularized space and furniture designs. However, the main measurable advantages seem invariably related to the lowered (facilities) costs associated with reconfiguring work spaces as individual jobs and organizational responsibilities change. Exactly how work spaces should be designed to meet defined organizational challenges seems to be open to a good deal of conjecture and anecdotal commentary (e.g. communal spaces are valuable for collaboration, window-views to the outside are good for morale…with little or no evidence).


It is interesting to make some guesses about the future of space planning in the context of mappable social networks. Functional responsibilities within organizations can be divided into two broad categories – PROCESS and, CONTROL. The basic idea is the Process groups perform well defined tasks within a specific area while Control groups regulate activites/communication over multiple functions - with lots of opportunity for ambiguity and confusion!


Even though it may not be possible to predict exactly the future relationship between social networks and space planning it is possible to know what roadsigns to look for –

1. Link Processes and Control - that is, physically arrange organizations so that members of a Control group are close to where the Processes they are responsible for are located. There are many examples where this happens already - Finance and HR will often have personnel imbedded in departmental offices. But, how often does Marketing, Regulatory Compliance interface directly with Production, R&D...


2. Systematic Reviews – Organizations conduct periodic Communication reviews the same way we hold Design and Performance reviews today.


3. Connect Virtual and Real – Establish non-virtual connections between centralized and remote employees. Are there desks reserved for field employees so they aren’t just visitors at the corporate office?


4. Competitive Communication – Is there one person within a department that is responsible for communicating and updating the competitive status of the group? How are we doing against our group goals? Where are we not getting the tools and information we need?

Your turn…