our connected minds

Community on Web 2.0? April 26, 2007

First, another stab at defining community:

A network of individual agents performing unique and independent social functions while exchanging some form of feedback. This feedback enables individual agents and the network as a whole to adapt and/or grow, dictating the frequency and nature of future interactions. After my research on the business networking site Linkedin, I feel confident in asserting that the notion of community is driven by the idea that the mutual interest of all agents within a community is each individual agent’s own self-interest. This means that the independent motivations driving each agent in the network are, ironically, the same motivations that make those agents dependent on one another.

Second, is a purely online community possible?

My answer to this question is yes, however, online communities are not nearly as prevelant as one might think. In order for a community to be fostered online, it must be a network of manageable and navigable size. The example of MySpace has proven to the class that when a social networking website grows to rapidly, it runs a higher risk of ‘digital disease,’ and individual agents have no motivation to drive dependence on one another. Therefore, MySpace is not a community.

On the other hand, there are many examples of purely online community; such as Matador Travel, dandelife and Linkedin. The first two are great examples of online communities that utilize the benefits of social capital exchanged between members. This exchange allows individual agents to foster connections while providing both an outlet for expression and a tool to locate those with similar interests and passions. While Linkedin is specifically for business networking (often with real-world connections), it is not the ’6-degrees’ feature of the site that makes it a community. Rather, it is the sites new feature, Linkedin Answers, that holds the potential for a vibrant online community. Hopefully, Answers will continue to foster purely online community on Linkedin by providing a vehicle for the exchange of knowledge capital. The Answers feature allows for an agent’s independent motivation of recognition to be exercised by displaying their expertise. The reciprocal nature of community means that an agent will expect a return on their investment of knowledge capital, making each contributing agent dependent on the expertise of the Answer’s network as a whole.

Third, is social networking online — Web 2.0 — part of the problem, or is it part of the solution?

Even though Robert Putnam claims that our stock of social capital is plummeting and “impoverishing our lives and communities,” I think it would be far fetched to claim that a social networking tool as powerful and adaptive as the World Wide Web is actually endangering the frequency with which humans interact. Sure, we might be spending much more time in front of our laptops and PCs instead of sitting with one another around the television. However, our time spent on Web 2.0 is time spent interacting with others from our community, our nation and the rest of the world. The time wasted in front of the television carries no reciprocal benefit; the tube is merely a static, one directional format for receiving information. Web 2.0 allows us to make an investment of more than just time; we can now exchange our social and knowledge capital with millions of eyes and ears.

What about the claim that Web 2.0 is discouraging real world action? Check out sites like Meetup, outside.in and even the campaign website for presidential candidate Barack Obama in 2008. All three of these sites (and many more like them) are encouraging individuals with similar interests to connect; real-world interactions that would have never happened before online social networking became such a powerful tool. In fact, I see Web 2.0 as the vehicle through which America will “civicly reinvent” itself in the very near future, ushering in a nation of revived democratic souls similar to the revival witnessed a century ago in the Progressive Era described by Putnam.

“You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one…”
John Lenon

my final project… April 17, 2007

Below is an excerpt from my COM 429 final project, presented earlier today in class. In searching for a research topic I knew that I wanted to further explore the concept of social capital. Specifically, I wanted to explore the different ways in which social capital is measured, accessed and reciprocated within online communities.

I decided to make the business networking site Linkedin the subject of my case study and the social capital theory of Nan Lin my primary tool of analysis, chipping away the hype surrounding Linkedin to reveal how this thriving online business community works, why it works, and for whom.

I encourage you to read the full text version of the paper, my research led me to some admittedly unexpected conclusions.

“…an effective and critical analysis of Linkedin’s functionality as a tool for business networking must begin with a definitional approach through the context of ‘community.’ Once a functional definition of community has been established and applied to Linkedin, we may then peal back the surface of the Linkedin community to reveal the theory of social and knowledge capital. Finally, the respective functions of both community and social capital (as well as the relationship between these two concepts) will be investigated and assessed through the lens of the leading business networking website, Linkedin.com. Along the way it will hopefully become clear to the reader how exactly the key concepts of trust, accountability, reciprocity, reputation and identity function and interact within the digital parameters of a virtual community such as Linkedin…”

my MySpace fixes… March 27, 2007

I wasn’t in class for last Thursday’s COM 429 discussion, but from what I gathered we were able to declare that MySpace has to either adapt to its size or collapse underneath it. Here are my suggestions:

1. the learning curve is steep…new members need a more uniform portal in order to feel comfortable in such an enormous, diverse and interactive environment.

2. the advertising that News Corp slaps on every member’s profile page is out of hand. I understand that MySpace is a free service, but the flashy ads make me barely want to look at my own profile page, never-mind a browse around the rest of the social network.

3. increase searchability…I think Katie made a great point when she said that she couldn’t find herself when she used the search function to look. My MySpace profile page says that I currently have 166,587,388 members in my Network, and also says that my profile has been viewed 68 times (I’m guessing by accident). MySpace needs to employ a search engine that rewards the best content of its users rather than its corporate sponsors. Don’t take advantage of an already teetering social network.

…or perhaps it is inevitable that MySpace will fall a tragic victim of its own popularity. Maybe this will filter out enough of those less dedicated members, returning the environment of the network into what it was before its explosion; a heterarchy of more stable and manageable size.

Only time will tell.

another try at community… March 5, 2007

After exploring the ideas of Anderson, Johnson and Lin it seems a fitting time to reassess the definition of community I presented when this blog was originally published.  A new definition is as follows:

A group or collection of agents interconnected with one another through local interactions, trust and reputation.  These allow for both the group and the individual to adapt/grow from the feedback given during the interaction and further utilize their reputation and adaptability in future local interactions.

Questions to guide my research… February 14, 2007

The following questions are intended to focus my research proposal examining the phenomenon of LinkedIn.com:

1. How is an individual’s professional identity (as a LinkedIn member) marketed online as a commodity, using the “Long Tail” culture effect described by Chris Anderson?

2. How does the LinkedIn system of networking capitalize on the facilitation of weak ties?

3. How is social capital embedded, manifest and accessed in LinkedIn, using Lin’s definitions?

I hope those clear up the direction of my research proposal. If anyone has any other suggestions please feel free to send them my direction.

COM 429 Research Proposal February 5, 2007

How can the strength of weak ties on LinkedIn.com help to build a profitable identity online? Is LinkedIn.com the marriage of social and financial capital?

Ever since I stumbled across LinkedIn.com the other day, I have been baffled with the implications of what Business 2.0 writer Michael V. Copeland calls “a MySpace for grown-ups.” However, LinkedIn isn’t the social networking website for bored adults with too much free time. On the contrary, LinkedIn has become the go to place for 8 million business professionals looking to increase the potential of their ‘dead-tree’ Rolodex by joining a network whose membership includes executives from all of the Fortune 500 companies. The “About” section of LinkedIn describes the simple philosophy of the site to be that relationships matter:

“Your profile helps you find and be found by former colleagues, clients, and partners. You can add more connections by inviting trusted contacts to join LinkedIn and connect to you. Your network consists of your connections, your connections’ connections, and the people they know, linking you to thousands of qualified professionals.”

The beauty of the LinkedIn approach is the site’s emphasis on weak ties as means by which to exponentially increase the size of an individual’s network. William S. Frank describes the potential of the weak ties built through LinkedIn in his Denver Business Journal article:

“Let’s say you send invitations to 150 friends and colleagues, and they link to you. Since each of those 150 will have about 150 friends, that will give you 22,500 connections in your second tier. If those 22,500 have 150 contacts, your total network grows to 3,375,000. Even if some invite only a few to connect to them, your third-level network will be more than 1 million.”

Wow! It would seem that a site such as LinkedIn might actually decrease the density of the CEO’s network to include more than just those other individuals occupying the upper echelon of the business world.

LinkedIn allows a new member to create a free profile that basically acts as a digital resume complete with past work experience, special skills and educational detail. In COM 429 terms, this allows members to craft a reflection of their real-world identity in an online format. A member can then create a list of keywords that they would like to be associated with, so other members can find you without specifically looking for you, and vice versa.

So how does Lin’s theory of social capital come into play on LinkedIn? Well, a testimonial system allows friends of yours on the website to endorse your strengths and marketability, which you in turn may do for the friend who endorsed you. This goes back to the simple idea of “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.” By endorsing and being endorsed, members of LinkedIn establish and maintain their credibility and reputation within the online community. If I’m a CEO looking for a new director of marketing, it is very likely that I will use those stronger ties within my network on LinkedIn that I have already established trust in (possibly other professionals that I have worked with directly in the past). However, through this small number of trusted ties, LinkedIn provides me access to millions of weak ties. I can then use the testimonial system of endorsement to determine which of these weak ties has a reputation that is trusted enough to become a member of my organization.

LinkedIn.com and social networking websites like it have already begun to change the way of doing business and making connections. In an a piece for NPR’s Morning Edition by Frank Langfitt, Maureen Crawford-Hentz reflects on the benefits of networks like LinkedIn:

“Social networking technology is absolutely the best thing to happen to recruiting — ever.”

In this same piece for NPR, Crawford-Hentz also describes for Langfitt how LinkedIn may benefit professional and aspiring journalists who are constantly in need of more and more sources they can count on and trust:

“You could put something like: ‘Always looking for interesting story ideas on the following topics,’” she said. “And then I would do everything under the sun you can think of: ADA, business-place issues, sexual harassment, and recruiting, work-force development. And that will help you be found.”

Obviously, I agree with many professionals and those aspiring for the professional realm that LinkedIn.com is an absolutely invaluable networking tool, one that will very likely be essential to remaining ahead of the game in a an increasingly fast-paced and heterarchical business world. In fact, it seems as thought building a trusted and reputable identity on LinkedIn.com might soon become as essential as having one’s contact information in the big-shots dusty Rolodex.

When viewed through the lens of Lin’s social capital theory, LinkedIn.com provides the vehicle for an excellent and in-depth case study on the benefits of weak ties, reputation and identity in an online community that is becoming more and more influential to the business realm everyday.

Where do we start? January 23, 2007

What is community?
Here is a prime example of a concept that most of us understand that is labeled by a term that is far more difficult to define. In my own words, community is defined as:

An entity made up of multiple, individual actors (each performing a different and unique function) that insure the collective well-being of the entity as a whole through social, cultural and economic obligations and/or interdependence.

So, why then do individual actors within a community find it in their best interest to be such a good neighbor? The answer might be found in the concept of social capital.

What is social capital?
As Nan Lin makes obvious for us, it is not an easy task to summarize the theory of social capital in a nutshell. In my opinion, a functional definition of social capital is as follows:

An investment of the social resources possessed by an individual into the collective well-being, made under the assumption that the individual making the investment of capital will receive the unique resources of another individual in return. Therefore, both individuals have contributed parts of their social resources to the collective well-being (going back to community) and both individuals have received compensation for their efforts by expanding the resources available to them now and in the future. For both individuals, the investment and exchange of social capital (by investing a social resource into the ‘network-bank’) leads to increased returns on there initial investment.

Hopefully, that definition makes at least some sense outside of my head. Feel free to leave any comments or questions you have. I’m particularly interested to hear your opinion on what exactly constitutes a social resource, and is the resource invested directly correlated with its return in the marketplace (or community)?

While you have your brain wrapped around the topic, scoot on over to Kevin Bacon’s new website. He hopes to use social networking (and the popularity of the ‘six degrees’ game) to raise money for charity.  I heard on CNN Headline News this morning that Bacon’s project has already raised $50,000 in its first week of existence (talk about social capital)!