Breaking down the Gbuzz

I am aware of the irony of posting about the the buzz on Google Buzz this week. But there's no other way to contribute than to heap yet more on the pile.

I'll skip over the many good points that have been raised this week within buzz and alongside it. If you are reading this, you have probably read them.

I want simply to make a few observations about the Buzz user experience, some of which are simply unavoidable, and many of which belong to the "conversation" space in general.

Talk is a difficult thing to facilitate using social tools and services. This is because in addition to the content itself, there are contributors, readers, relationships, audiences, social scenes, and public. And talk is a form of social action. A statement alone is communication. A response is action that communicates. Many kinds of actions involving talk exist (greetings to wedding vows), involving varying degrees of sincerity, expectation, commitment, trust, and so on.

I'm simplifying in order to make the point quickly. Gbuzz, and any other tool in which an original post can accrue responses from known and unknown individuals, over time, exposed to audiences depending on the tool's particular relation to other services, applications, and devices, will have issues of both content and action.

A lot of people talk about the realtime information and information overload. I view this this content as communication. It therefore has information content and relational content. Furthermore, communication is interpreted by recipients/audiences for two intentions: the act of communicating and the content/information communicated.

This fact of interpretation makes the noise all that more noisy. If Gbuzz (and FB status updates, tweets, and other activity updates) were information and information only, I could read each simply for its information value. Because these are communicative acts, however, I read each for its act as for its content.

If the message is an original post, I may consider responding. If the message is a comment, it is already a response, and I may consider my response (or not) in terms of the relationship between the commenter and the original poster. All of this multiplied for all the people I recognize.

Assuming that in Gbuzz and elsewhere I encounter posts by people I know or know of, or have at least selected.... there is ambiguity in each comment or reply made by somebody I don't know. Again, there will be two types of ambiguity: content and relation. Not knowing the person I may have more difficulty interpreting the commenter's statement (content/information). Not knowing the relation, I might not know what to make of it, whether to respond, and if, to respond to the person, and/or what s/he said.

If this seems complicated, then I'm making my point. That being that in conversation tools, issues related to meaning are quickly amplified with each case in which ambiguity may exist around an intentional act of communication as well as solicited response or reaction.

I'll use "post" to cover status updating, tweeting, buzz posting, etc.
I'll use "comment" to include replies and comments.

In social interaction terms, ambivalence or ambiguity will exist around:

• who the author is
• who the commenter is (involves a relation; and intent)
• what is said (information alone)
• what is said relationally (asked for, solicited, impression made, feeling expressed, etc)
• who it is said to
• who is supposed (hoped) to see it
• who is/not to respond

In audience terms, ambivalence and ambiguity will exist around:

• Who sees it that I know (my followers, contacts, FB friends)?
• Who else sees it that I don't know (if RT'd, @replied, searched, FB friend of friend, if Gbuzz commenter to poster, etc)?
• Where do I post for best visibility within my social scene?
• Where do I comment to get the author's attention?
• Whether this is the best place to create conversation with and around that author
• Whether this is the best place to comment to be seen commenting to that author
• Whether this is safe
• Whether this will be surfaced later in search

In terms of attention, temporality, and speed:

• Where do I go for the most recent and up-to-date posts/news
• Where do I go for the most recent and up-to-date responses/commentary
• Which has the most attentive audience relevant to me
• Which keeps posts and comments alive?
• Which is for what's happening now?
• Where does the person post where they are now/what they are doing now?

Topicality

• Which has the most attentive audience by topic, for this topic?
• Which has the highest quality random commentary?
• Where should I invest effort in becoming a topical expert or authority?
• Where should I solicit responses of a topical kind?

Preservation and durability

• Which service will archive posts?
• Which service will archive comments?
• Which service will archive conversations?
• Which will be searchable?
• Where are users most likely to search?
• Which will have topical organization?
• Which is best to use for reputation building?

I just wanted to break down some of the problems users have expressed with Gbuzz. I'm only just getting started, but will stop here. I hope to have made a couple points clear, however. That talk is a kind of social action in which who we talk to, why, who else is present, and how it appears can all matter as much, or more, than what's said. And that in tools that facilitate posting original messages, replying or commenting, to or in front of others assembled by means of friending, following, or addressing, some ambiguity will exist around the meaning of what's said as well as ambivalence around responding.

Some of this confusion will get sorted by Gbuzz developers. Some of it will get handled socially, as each of us finds and practices uses that, in time, others notice. Some will simply persist as residual noise, a byproduct of the fact that when content is separated from action interpretive possibilities are doubled and amplified (what to do?).

It might also be worth noting that at this point in the development of talk technologies and services we have industry competition and incomplete commitment to standards (activity streams). Furthermore, we have little to use that offers meta visualization of notifications. We still have to read everything. I strongly suspect that will change, making it possible for us to browse or skim social conversations for relevant headlines and activity. (Bring on the social searchers and data visualizers!)

The power of listening: a brief personal meditation

A friend of mine used to have a philosophy about friendship that I'd like to share. It affected me and and I still lean on it from time to time. He believed that we are each like some kind of "personality structure." And that when friendship is like a combination of two personality structures that empower and open up one another. Good friends amplify us and open up our strengths, skills, powers, and abilities. Not so good friends dampen, quell, close off, and shrink our "structural" possibilities.

The philosopher Spinoza had a similar argument, published during a famous theological debate on the nature of evil. He claimed that evil was the absence of good -- that it does not exist in itself, but is a "corruption" of good forces, and a weakening of the body resulting from forces that contradict us.

This all came to mind recently while reflecting on the discourse of listening that is prominent in social media circles. Brands are learning how to do it; governments are promising to get better at it; companies struggling with the economy are embracing it. Listening is a sign of the times, proof of fallibility and a commitment to humility, honesty, and integrity.

A few thoughts, then, on listening. I like listening. My conversational style changes with the person I'm talking to, and in many ways I adapt more (I think) than many people to situations and encounters. A good friend and I used to say that we could tell when we were in tune. Tune, tone... music makes for a nice example of listening.

Listening creates opportunities. It begins with perception, which moves quickly to recognition. When we listen, we hear what we recognize. What we recognize is something we already know. If we listen only passively, we will hear only ourselves: we will hear what's familiar. What's familiar is the same.

If we listen actively, we may discover. Discovery takes work -- for it exposes what's different. What's different is made available by the other person. The other person's interest, and its difference from our own interest, creates the difference. And that difference, if heard, and listened to, is the gap of opportunity.

The art of listening is the art of openness. Possibilities emerge out of the opportunities we can create by active and attentive listening because there is an open created where there as once our own sameness and familiarity.

Listening is not only an art of the open, and of being open. It is respectful. To listen is to pay attention, and that attention lights up the other. Listening is a giving attention that begets attention.

Finally, the power of listening is transformational. Our personal power is limited by what we can see, and in how accurately we perceive what we see. Situations, opportunities, problems, relations -- we can act only according to what we understand, and understand only by means of how well we perceive. Listening, taking into account another person, their difference and their interests, creates possibilities for action and interaction. But we can move one another only if we are ourselves movable. And a good listener is often moved.

Users: which is which, and who is who?

Who knows?
On the phone yesterday with friend and colleague John Cass (SNCR), he happened upon an interesting topic. One for social media professionals of all kinds: designers, builders, funders, pundits. The question came up: doesn't our expertise, built over years of spending time online, qualify us to see what's really going on with social media? How it works and doesnt?

Or, on the contrary, does one have to be in the target market, amidst the majority of users, to know best what's going on?

Who knows best -- the person with the most experience in the technology, or the person most like the mainstream user? One is old, one is young. The older person may not know what's most hip, hot, cool, or in. But the young person may not have yet learned things, call them technology's symptoms or side effects, that the older person has.

I was reminded of a debate that plays out among anthropologists and other cultural academics (those who study human "sciences"). Take a culture, a new, foreign culture. It's texts, rituals, pastimes. We want to study it, to understand what's going on, and what these practices mean. But we have a problem: as outsiders we cannot know that our interpretations of the practices are accurate. We are not on the inside; and therefore we don't know the validity of our observations and interpretations.

It's called the "hermeneutic circle." Inside the circle, one knows by right of membership and practice what's going on. Being on the outside, one can only observe as an outsider.

So cultural anthropologists turned to comparative techniques, and by comparing and contrasting practices across cultures, drafted a set of structural principles and descriptions. The method is simple enough: look not at the content of a ceremony, but its structure. Look not at what's on the mask, but on which member of the tribe wears it. Look not at the dowry, but at the obligations and debts that flow back to the family that has paid it.

Rules of the game, not the game play itself.

This distinction occurs again in communication theory (especially in pragmatics). Language is not speech. Language is the system in which meanings can be preserved and through which they can be reproduced. Speech is the performance of communication, and uses language as its means of expression.

We are, it is said, unique among creatures in our ability to separate the meaning of statement from the performance of a statement.

What am I getting at? Designers ought to recognize where I'm going. As a designer of social interactions, John and I had to ask, who knows better: the teen who uses Facebook or the old guy who knows social media? The user or the observer? The performer or the structuralist?

Which is more meaningful: how social media is being used, right here and now, by these people. Or how it works, across different applications, regardless of who is using it?

Who knows best? The insider or outsider?

I do not have an answer. Both, I suppose. The user may know this application, or use case, best -- but know little of why. (So it goes anyways in cultural anthropology: the member of the group knows what's happening but doesn't have a reason -- it takes being an outsider to think in terms of reasons). The observer can see the structure, function, and process, but may not be able to play the game.

As many folks know, I come and go with social media for the reason that I have to be in it to be a user -- but out of it to reflect more freely on it. As it happens, coming and going is also good protection against burnout.

I recently took time out of twitter to catch up with some sites and services that i hadn't used in a long time. Built a small dbase to capture notes on screens -- in the hopes of writing about the grammar of social interactions.

I had to write this piece to get the question out of my head as well as to raise it among professionals and practitioners. We know that our own experience(s) on social media are neither universal nor common. Most of us have been doing this for a while -- and are no longer captivated by novelty of technique, result, or effect. Many of us are (variously) strategic in our uses of social media. We may have reputations to keep, peers to respect, tongues to bite.

So how do we know that we know better or best? Knowing the technology isn't enough --it all comes down to user experiences in the end. "Technology" is a thing, and social media are not "things" but are actions, interactions, communication, and distribution. One might describe qualities of a thing, features and functions of a thing and entirely miss what it can mean, and how it might help make meaning.

My own personal take on this is that one must first admit to multiple users and kinds of users. Multiple uses and use cases. This might seem to be stating the obvious. But I have heard time and again, from those who should know better, that "social media is ____". That what it is, is based on that person's experience.

That said, we have to make observations. Simply knowing the user experience is (if it were possible to know many) still not enough. Knowing what it's like to drive doesn't make one an auto maker. Process, function, design, architecture -- those things that will ultimately facilitate and help produce an experience for (many) users -- these are structural forms and rules necessary to build by. Structures still empty of users are still structures. Structures inhabited lead to habits, in time.

At the end of the day, because there is no one right, global, or universal experience or perspective possible, the professional's I think comes down to flexibility. An ability to shift perspective, to take perspectives, and to contextualize an application or user audience as clients (etc) demand. It then becomes a matter of changing one's own mind.

I think the designer's approach is as much his or her own mental awareness of the problem space and opportunities, of familiar and common forms and actual uses and practices, as it is anything else. This ability to be in, or out; to know how it goes, but also what makes it that way.

Tweeting with authenticity: genuine or strategic?

A rather new friend of mine recently launched a blog. I checked it out the other day and she had posted on authenticity. In the post she raised a point that would resonate with most of us (or so I hope): that we feel more connected to authentic people.

I asked her, and we have yet to discuss, whether this was a matter of feeling or a matter of fact. In other words does the "authentic" person have to reciprocate? Feel connected to us, in return? Or demonstrate and act on their authenticity in any way?

Or is it a matter of appearance, impression, and vibe?

You probably know where I'm going with this. It may be easier to impress authenticity on a person online. Impressions we make and take of people we don't know online can be far from the mark. Impressions are twice as likely to be off:

• The impression we make of a user reflects our own interpretations
  
• The other person's expression is not fully captured when it's online
  

In other words, the other person expresses less fully, and we fill in more. The impression we have of the other person, and their appearance to us, are informed more by our interpretations than by their intentions and expressions.

So is authenticity online something that we project onto the other person? Is it something that even if they intend, they can't fully express? Is a connection formed online a matter more of a connection we imagine and attach, and invest in -- or is it still a reality created by our communications and interactions with each other?

Regardless of how you feel about authenticity (we prefer it) and feeling connected (ok, some of the feeling is projected, but authenticity does seem to secure connections), there's no denying that it can be faked.

Since fake authenticity is a contradiction in terms, we need to distinguish between intention and appearance. Sincere intentions can appear insincere, and vice versa.

So if you're a brand using twitter, and you wish to reach your customers authentically and sincerely, how would you do it? How would you show it?

• Would you emphasize your actions -- make sure that you're being real and genuine in what you say, share, and do?
  
• Or would you consider how you appear, and instead create a sense of authenticity strategically and tactically -- recognizing that it's not ultimately in your hands and the other user's impression of you matters more than how genuine your feelings are?
  

I'm not just splitting hairs here. The people who post for brands that use twitter are real people. Every day they must choose to tweet as themselves, personally, and genuinely -- or post inauthentically and insincerely. In communication theory, this has been described as the difference between understanding and effect. Authenticity contributes to a shared understanding; strategy merely has to produce results; communication being simply effective.

As much as we want to see authenticity win, there's no logical reason why a brand wouldn't choose to communicate disingenuously, and for effect. Realizing that the "customer is always right," and that it's really the (other) user who makes the impression, strategies might be better if they are designed for effect. It is contrary in spirit to "conversational media," but it's more consistent with advertising/marketing. Seduction, deception, appeals to price, value, image, quality... impressions of brands need content!

The argument against this of course is built on time and repetition. None of us is fooled, over time, by the disingenuous behavior of a brand acting according to strategy and plan. Over time, and through ongoing or recurring interactions, we augment our impressions with experience. Trust grows. And with it, the risk of damage to the relationship.

The reason for authenticity then it not strictly in the impression you make, or in how you appear. Authenticity begins as an appearance but becomes experience over time. Brands that intend to keep using twitter, for example, might choose to communicate with greater effect now, frequently, with new followers -- or instead sustain relationships over time (at higher cost perhaps).

The former can be achieved with effective communication -- the latter demands consistent and genuine communication. Or so it would seem.



Riffed and inspired by a post on Lizasperling.com.

Improbability of Communication in Social Media

The floor in front of me is half covered with paper sketches. Blank sheets awaiting diagrams and visuals. Which is in part why they're still there. I have arranged them into short stacks by category. In an attempt to create a series of visual presentations on conversational models relevant to social media, and to flow and talk applications like twitter, I've managed to isolate the elements and need a eureka moment before I can lift them off the floor and start sketching.

The waiting is the hardest part.

Apropos waiting, I want to toss out another concept: probability. Or more specifically, improbability. And to contextualize it to social media, the probability or improbability of communication.

The concept comes out of Niklas Luhmann's social systems theory, in which communication becomes action only when communication by one person is picked up by another. The response to a communication, be it a response to what's said or to the person saying it (person or content), is a form of social action. Social action is how society is reproduced through individual acts and agency, and can include other kinds of interactions (symbolic exchange, money-based transactions, rituals and ceremonies that repeat the social w/o personal claims made).

In the absence of a response, communication is just expression. Online, it's expression recorded as an artifact: a message, post, upload, or other contribution.

Luhmann claims that systems are all about making the improbability of communication probable. A more humanistic view would simply say that we bind through our use of language and interaction; that regardless of whether or not we reach agreements, we can reach an understanding of what we say to each other. And that this alone is adequate to role of communication in having meaningful personal relationships.

All of which is a rather long-winded way of saying that we use social media to connect and to feel connected.

I've noted in this series on "status culture" (the culture of status updates and tweets) that every update/tweet contains an appeal. It appeals to the audience the user has in mind (those s/he follows, those following him/her, or friends -- as in Facebook). Appeals to response, perhaps as an @reply or dm, or Facebook status update comment. Those would be direct responses to the appeal. It may appeal to an indirect response, such as a Retweet, @name citation, or follow (yes, we get followers when we tweet, and we can think of being followed as a kind of response).

The appeal for some kind of response is how communication tries to increase the probability of the Improbable. Time-based applications like twitter dramatically increase that improbability (search will reduce it), for communication flows in time. It is not bound by a container (a Facebook page), nor is it bound by an application (e.g. anything synchronous like chat, IM, skype).

Improbability of communication becoming social action is higher on twitter because we are not in synch on twitter. Each of us is only capable of keeping up with so much of the twitter stream; limits on our time and attention are real, and ever more precious the more people we follow. My mental metaphor of late has been of twitter as a kind of highway in which cars travel in their own lane and at different speeds, and for communication to occur, two or more have to be next to each other. Yes, we can scroll back in time, but only so much. And we all know that we're much more likely to get a response from somebody if they have just tweeted. (Link clickthroughs captured on bit.ly show exactly this -- a near instantaneous peak that decays quickly).

If the improbability of communication is increased in time-based applications because we are not in synch, then that is an interesting design and system feature of time-based talk applications. For the psychological factors, those involved in user motives and behaviors, we might ask: How do we handle communication in systems that make it improbable? What's our feeling about the ambiguity it creates, when so little of what we say is directly addressed and replied to? And what explains our dedication to something like twitter, and our attempts to thwart the improbability of connecting by tweeting more, following more, and seeking more and more followers?

For that we might need to know something about personality and how different kinds of personalities relate to online communication and interaction. A separate article on how we talk is in order for that.

I think the concept of improbability is interesting. It captures the system and market-like features of talk applications, twitter especially, very well. And it raises an important question -- one that is oft overlooked by claims that everyone just needs to join the conversation. It's not conversation and we know it. And yet it's something we do -- and which can be remarkably satisfying.


Related: reading notes on Luhmann
Slideshare presentations on psychology of users, competencies of users, and social interaction design.



This bit.ly graph of click-throughs to this post shortly after I tweeted it demonstrates what I'm talking about here: in time-based applications like twitter, the probability of communication is contingent on temporal coincidence. Communication happens "as it happens."

Note: This blog post belongs to a series on "status culture." The posts examine status updates, facebook activity feeds, news feeds, twitter, microblogging, lifestreaming, and other social media applications and features belonging to conversation media. My approach will be user-centric as always, and tackle usability and social experience issues (human factors, interaction design, interface design) at the heart of social interaction design. But we will also use anthropology, sociology, psychology, communication and media theories. Perhaps even some film theory.
The converational trend in social networking sites and applications suggests that web 2.0 is rapidly developing into a social web that embraces talk (post IM, chat, and email) in front of new kinds of publics and peer groups. User generated content supplied to search engines is increasingly produced conversationally. Social media analytics tools provide PR and social media marketing with means to track and monitor conversations. Brands are interested in joining the conversation feeds, through influencers as well as their own twitter presence.
This changing landscape not only raises interesting issues for developers and applications (such as the many twitter third party apps), but for social practices emerging around them. So we will look also at design principles for conversation-based apps, cultural and social trends, marketing trends, and other examples of new forms of talk online.
These blog posts will vary in tenor, from quick reflections on experiences to more in-depth approaches to design methodology for conversational social media.

Social media's third law: designing for communication

The third law of social interaction design is that communication is transformed by the medium, which separates what is said from the saying of it. In everyday face-to-face encounters, we say something by speaking.

But in mediated communication, speech is captured and produced only with the help of technology. It is then distributed: as a post, be it text, video, audio, or something else (e.g. virtual worlds, games, etc, which involve a specific kind of communication).

Communication in social media is talk, and social media are "talk technologies." True, updates are written, but writing is the just the form. This is a particular kind of communication, and we need to unwrap it if we are to understand the social media design issues specific to it.

Our first observation is that the communicative form of the status update is that it is always new. It is neither writing, text, nor literature, in spite of how it is captured and published. It is a form of speaking; for each update is a new update. Even a retweet or pass-along is an act of authorship.

Because it is new, it attracts attention. It is attention-getting because we pay attention to new things, and to news of things new.

Updates are made by individuals. As a form of talk, the status update is some kind of self-narration, some kind of telling, telling to and telling about. It is personal, that is, it comes from the person doing the talking. The person posting the update must be able to reflect on him or herself, think of something that can be said online, and then post it. She or he must have a sense for what is worth saying, for what might get attention, responses, and so on.

All of this might seem obvious, but it is important in that it places status updating squarely within a user-centric framework.

This means, first of all, that talk means something to the person who talks. There is a payoff for the user who does the talking. Seen from a design perspective, the user action is: talking. Now, talking in-and-of-itself is not yet communication. Communication requires at a minimum one more user.

If one user says something and no other user catches it, only one user experience is involved (and it's a poor one at that). Still, one user talking who believes s/he is being listened to is still one (somewhat) satisfied user.

Communication is a system of statements and responses using language, or some kind of symbolic form. Because it involves people, it involves what's said and to whom. The statements themselves may be considered the content of communication; the relationship between users can be considered meta-communication.

In face-to-face encounters, meta communication has access to gestures, body language, and more. A lot is accomplished just by looking at and looking back. indeed, a sense of "understanding" is often accomplished not by means of saying things, but by interacting.

We can now make a distinction between interaction and communication, and between saying things with gestures and saying things with words. Here's where things get interesting. Communication doesn't produce its own meta contents or meta communication. Meta is possible only by means of observing the communication. In other words, one cannot say something and also say something about what is being said at the same time.

Unless one were to use body language, gestures, or some other non-linguistic means of expression... Which is of course what we do all the time in face-to-face interactions. "Facework" is the work done alongside speaking and saying things -- and it gives us wit, sincerity, irony, and all other kinds of layered communication.

Recognizing now that the act of saying things doesn't say everything we mean, we can see why communicating online may be neither a) the easiest way to make oneself understood nor b) the easiest way to reach an understanding.

Being understood is not the same as being in agreement. The latter assumes the former; but the former may sometimes be good enough. Both of these conditions, however, are complicated by the use of media. Use of the face, and of expressions, tone, and looking/looking back do seem critical to the kind of being together that is involved in a shared understanding.

To summarize where we are, we now can say that communication online is unique because:

• it is a form of user action
  
• it can suffice as user activity even if nobody responds
  
• it is only truly communication if another user does respond (or take it up)
  
• communication is more than just saying things the medium doesn't do meta communication well
  
• nor does it allow use of facework or gestures, body language, and so on
  
• it creates challenges to making oneself understood and to reaching understanding with another person
  

We are now ready for the next step.

Online communication creates ambiguity. For the reasons mentioned above. Ambiguity in what is said, what is meant, who it is meant for, whether it is understood, whether it is agreed with -- we have seen above how each of these kinds of ambiguity can arise strictly because communication is mediated. (There are more, unique to gaming, dating, and other kinds of coded or ritualized communication).

What is the status of ambiguity? Is it all bad? Is ambiguity the absence of meaning? Noise or confusion? Is it the lack of understanding? Not at all. Ambiguity is the engine of communication -- it is why communication happens. If we understood each other perfectly and at all times, we wouldn't need to communicate other than to instruct one another or express ourselves. Ambiguity is that which we seek to resolve, or sustain, when there is more to say.

Ambiguity, while not providing a clear message, signals that more communication is necessary. Communication, on the other hand, indicates what is an appropriate response. But mediated communication is accompanied by the ambiguity of intent, tone, and feeling. Mediated communication actually creates ambiguity.

Is it possible that ambiguity created by social media might be one of the reasons it is a compelling experience? Is it possible that ambiguity can make it sticky? Is it possible that because communication is the simplest way to create ambiguity, and the only way to resolve it, communication is the engine of all user activity on social media?

Let's consider this, because it could be very important. We have talked about the challenge that online presents to full and rich communication -- as a result of what the medium takes away. But what of all that is added by the medium?

We have focused so far on communication as a form of talk. But communication also includes printed and distributed communication -- as in "the age of communication." We have already mentioned that for communication to become interaction it must be taken up by another person. Online communication may reduce the possibilities of reaching an understanding with somebody; but it also increases the possibilities that communication is taken up.

Linking to a person, @replying to a tweet, is taking up their communication (yes, differently, but still). And communicating online provides infinite possibilities of distribution. Face to face communication, on the other hand, is very limited in space and time (barring use of a megaphone).

The fact that online communication requires some form of recording or reproduction, while decreasing the potential for direct understanding, increases the potential for indirect communication. It may not feel as good, but online, one can communicate without talking. And one's communication can be picked up at any point in time and by anyone who chooses to take it up.

This means that there are two possibilities for understanding the user action of communication: the action of the "speaker," which is to express; and the action of the "listener," which is to act on what's communicated. Two actors who would normally bind in a face-to-face exchange now act separately. Two people are still involved, but not in creating a shared sense of time and presence; rather each acts separately.

The speaker is more aware of what s/he intended; the listener is more aware of what s/he understood. Between the two is a gulf of ambiguity, but it is narrow enough to create both a sense of communication and wide enough to open up the possibilities of what happens next.

As a system, online communication leaves more possibilities open. It is a future-oriented type of communication, aligned to the kind of opportunity that rarely exists in face-to-face interactions. I don't think we yet understand the significance of this: that the online communication system is a kind of communication for future possibilities much more than any kind of face-to-face communication can be. I don't think we understand how important time is to social media.

We relate to the future through anticipation and expectation. I suspect, but don't yet have a theory for it, that social media are a means of organizing ourselves and our relationships in time and in anticipated time -- and that much of what drives our use o social media is a "future pull" as much as a "being here."

(Note: In the interest of space and time, we will cover the corollaries in the next post.)

Related:Paradoxes of social media: Twitter, Facebook, and status culture
Social media's first law: user centric design
Social media's second law: it's a verb, not a noun
Social Interaction Design: Primer



Social Interaction Design Primer II

Note: This blog post belongs to a series on "status culture." The posts examine status updates, facebook activity feeds, news feeds, twitter, microblogging, lifestreaming, and other social media applications and features belonging to conversation media. My approach will be user-centric as always, and tackle usability and social experience issues (human factors, interaction design, interface design) at the heart of social interaction design. But we will also use anthropology, sociology, psychology, communication and media theories. Perhaps even some film theory.
The converational trend in social networking sites and applications suggests that web 2.0 is rapidly developing into a social web that embraces talk (post IM, chat, and email) in front of new kinds of publics and peer groups. User generated content supplied to search engines is increasingly produced conversationally. Social media analytics tools provide PR and social media marketing with means to track and monitor conversations. Brands are interested in joining the conversation feeds, through influencers as well as their own twitter presence.
This changing landscape not only raises interesting issues for developers and applications (such as the many twitter third party apps), but for social practices emerging around them. So we will look also at design principles for conversation-based apps, cultural and social trends, marketing trends, and other examples of new forms of talk online.
These blog posts will vary in tenor, from quick reflections on experiences to more in-depth approaches to design methodology for conversational social media.

Small talk in Tinychat: from twitter to chat

I had one of those eureka moments yesterday trying out tinychat from twitter. Tinychat is a "disposable" chatroom launched from a tinyurl. You tweet the room's address and wait to see who shows up. Several of us got in there yesterday morning and had quite a lively discussion about tinychat.

I decided to try it again in the afternoon after blogging -- just to see if tinychat might serve as a kind of live commenting alternative to blog comments. The afternoon chat was very different however, and got me thinking about the whole value proposition and its success requirements.

I'll make this a short one, and do the social interaction design on it in a separate post. (There are some concepts we can take from real world interaction dynamics and forms of talk as a means of anticipating design challenges and pitfalls to going live).

First off, there's a strong novelty factor in tinychat. Just going from tweetdeck to a chatroom was pretty cool. Even more cool was to change register and chat with twitter followers. There's a payoff to stepping up the interaction from the "l'm talking" mode of twitter to the "we're talking" mode of chat. Tinychat shed a bit of light on how differently conversational twitter is. We can feel as if we're in conversation over twitter. Switching to chat meant actually being in conversation -- it feels different.

Going live is not only a matter of switching apps, it also breaks the frame. If twitter is an open talk tool, then chat is enclosed. Upon entering the chatroom, each of us became bound by the higher presence demands of chat. Conversational etiquette and the many and rich aspects of talk and giving face take over. The continuity of presence in chat replaces the discontinuity of twitter, just as conversation replaces tweeting (as the mode of interaction).

I wondered whether this change of frame and change of app would be a gate on tinychat's usability. To many users, and in many situations, frame changes are a usability gate. (The reason most of us don't invite friends to chat in Facebook, even when we can see very well that they're online.) Change of frame is a change of commitment.

Chat is also much more susceptible to who's chatting. And here an unintended design consequence comes into the picture. With Tinychat you invite people following you -- not people you follow. Those who show up may include people who want to talk to you more than you want to talk to them. The people you have been seeing on twitter are not the people who have seen your tinychat invitation (unless you follow those who follow you). And as soon as one other person appears in a chatroom, you are obliged to change your conversational register and be nice. (That I'm exposing the mechanics of online conversation is not a reflection on my experience yesterday!! I'm merely extracting some principles from the experience.)

if one could invite specific people to a private tinychat room (still would be from people who follow you), the service would be a lot more interesting. Because in chat it's all about who's in the room. And when people appear in a chatroom that they don't want to stick around in, they will often background the chat but not actually leave the room (for reasons of etiquette). So there can be a lot of waiting in chat. And a lot of wondering what to talk about.

It would be interesting to think about use cases where going to chat makes sense -- has some purpose and topic. Chat is a lot faster than twitter. But it's a lot more contingent on other users: who they are, how they are related to you, and what they are interested in talking about.

Chat works best when it is bound by a context -- and over twitter it is difficult to create context. As long as tinychat is available to whoever wants to show up, or until tinychat can set up uses and contexts, it's likely to feel like randoms in a waiting room to most.


Note: This blog post belongs to a series on "status culture." The posts examine status updates, facebook activity feeds, news feeds, twitter, microblogging, lifestreaming, and other social media applications and features belonging to conversation media. My approach will be user-centric as always, and tackle usability and social experience issues (human factors, interaction design, interface design) at the heart of social interaction design. But we will also use anthropology, sociology, psychology, communication and media theories. Perhaps even some film theory.
The converational trend in social networking sites and applications suggests that web 2.0 is rapidly developing into a social web that embraces talk (post IM, chat, and email) in front of new kinds of publics and peer groups. User generated content supplied to search engines is increasingly produced conversationally. Social media analytics tools provide PR and social media marketing with means to track and monitor conversations. Brands are interested in joining the conversation feeds, through influencers as well as their own twitter presence.
This changing landscape not only raises interesting issues for developers and applications (such as the many twitter third party apps), but for social practices emerging around them. So we will look also at design principles for conversation-based apps, cultural and social trends, marketing trends, and other examples of new forms of talk online.
These blog posts will vary in tenor, from quick reflections on experiences to more in-depth approaches to design methodology for conversational social media.

What Goes Up One Way Comes Down Another

I've had a few notes sitting here in my text editor on asymmetries in social systems. For example, that when the stock market is rising, it has no upper limit; but when falling, its lower limit is very real.

• That in the stock market, the purchase of shares is an extension of trust on the part of the investor.
  
• That purchase, as a transaction between buyer and seller, is a bet on the future.
  
• That trust in markets is extracted, and invested, in the future : and set in the price of exchange.
  
• That the transaction uses price as its expression -- but is no less a system of communication than any other.
  
• That trust also characterizes social networks
  
• That this trust is also extended by means of a transaction -- in this case, however, the transaction is a "connection" and not an exchange
  
• That the medium or currency of the social marketplace is may be the "interest" that we take in each other, and which we can show one another by paying attention
  
• That the basis of transactions in a social system is a handshake (of sorts)
  
• But that in the imperfect social system that is social media, the handshake is rare : a form of unilateral and monological communication prevails, often unanswered
  
• That this produces a high degree of redundancy (noise), as participants post more than they acknowledge having read or viewed
  
• That in contrast to the stock market's vertical asymmetry (of up vs down), communication media, or social media, have a horizontal asymmetry (or sending/receiving)
  
• That possibly all social systems are inherently asymmetrical, in that no system can provide complete knowledge, or truth, or proof, that the meaning we intend is the meaning understood by others, or that the meaning we make of others is the meaning they mean also
  
• That the asymmetry between one's own experience and the experiences of others will always subsist beneath any communication or transactional system (Markets: trust in the future, certainty, ability to anticipate future events; Social media: trust in relations, ambiguity of the audience's interest, unknowability of the other's attention and interest)
  
• And will be a fundamental experiential currency of that system (and that psychology is unavoidable when individuals use systems to mediate their relations)
  

What was the point of all this? To think through the comparison of market-based social systems and communication based social systems. And to pose the question: might the intrinsic asymmetry between production and consumption, between acting and reacting, between intending meaning and interpreting meaning, not always govern and organize our experiences and thus account for motives and behaviors?