Howard 43 - 197

Design To Thrive - RIBS

This reading is the "meat & potatoes" of Dr. Howard's book. It provides a heuristic for examining the success/failure of current social networks and online communities as well as a road map for creating new ones. These four chunks, if you will, are:

• Remuneration
• Influence
• Belonging
• Signifcance

The first, Remuneration, is "simply put, is the commonsense observation that individuals remain members of a social network when there is a clear benefit for doing so. (43)" It is the X factor of a given community. Why do people keep logging on, reading content, and contributing? One way to do this is to provide ranking systems for members messages. Make people feel as if they are competing for some goal or purpose, even if it is as simple as first place in a virtual chat room. In addition to that you could also create membership levels and contributor titles in a community. For example in Wedding bee, contributors are giving names based on their quality and frequency of contribution:

The second chunk is Influence. "When members feel the pull of influence on them in a community and once they feel they have "buy in" from a community, they'll often stay in that community and continue contributing to it even when it's no longer clear to them how they are being remunerated. (82)" In order for someone to truly "belong" to a community, they must feel like they have influence. Social communities are not a place for simple consumption. People do not simply read for content, they must feel like their voice is being "heard". Also they want to feel like they have control over how that voice is heard. Many examples of allowing influence in a community is to allow avatars, run surveys periodically, allow people to report problems, create exit surveys, and "why do you want to join" pages on the website. 

The third chunk is Belonging. In my mind these last two go hand in hand. In order to make people feel that they belong they must feel that they have the power of influence. But belonging goes much further than that. This includes rituals, rites of passage, laws, icons, and other unique items that define a community. Visual identifiers such as colors, images, and logos help to create a sense of belonging amongst individuals.  

The final chunk is Significance. What is the point of it all? Does this really matter? It needs to be a community that is well-recognized, well-respected, and overall important. Now this fact can be relative to its members. Obviously a WOW online community would not be important or significant in a guitar community. 

Howard 11 - 41

Design to Thrive - Creating Social Networks and Online Communities that Last

In this first section of his book, Dr. Howard discusses the differences between a social network, discussion groups/forums, adhocracies, and online communities. Each serves its own distinct purpose. Social networks, for example, are structure around the individual. An individual is at the center of the user-interface. For example Facebook is made up of profiles. Also, secondary connections are less important in social networks. For example Linkedin tells you the amount of people you are connected to via your initial connections. You might only have 10 connections, but those people are connected to another 100 it claims that you are connected to 100 people (through secondary connections). However it is possible that you have nothing in common with those people, and therefore do not share in "community" with them. Different from social networks, online communities consist of,

1.  "people who interact socially as they strive to satisfy their own needs or perform special roles, such as leading or moderating. 
2. A shard purpose, such as an interest, need, information exchange, or service that provides a reason for community. 
3. Policies in the form of tacit assumptions, rituals, protocols, rules, and laws that guide people's interactions. 
4. Computer systems, to support and mediate social interaction and facilitate a sense of togetherness.

These are different from "adhocracies", which are groups that come together for a cause or purpose and the disband. One example that came to mind for me was the online notification system for victims of the Tsunami in Asia. It was a community of people that emerged to notify and education fellow citizens about the goings-on of the Tsunami and the relief effort (it was also due to the fact that the government was incapable of providing similar information to its citizens). But that community has served its purpose and is now, for the most part, disbanded.

Another example that came to mind, and skirts the line between online community and "adhocracy" is the Survivor group in Jenkins, Convergence Culture.

The reason I hesitate to say whether this group is a full-blown online community, is because its future is determined by the success and future versions of the show. Without new survivor seasons the group's purpose would have to alter in order for it to survive. Currently its main goal is to discover the identity of the contestants and predict any eliminations throughout the show. It is, however, similar to online communities because there exist a system of rituals, protocols, and rules that governs how the community interacts with one another. There are also specific roles that certain people fill in the overall purpose of the group. Lastly the group serves a shared purpose.

Lastly Dr. Howard explores 10 reasons why a business/school/non-profit should invest in social networks and online communities. One of the most interesting ones to me was preserving institutional knowledge. Social networks and online communities provide a virtual filing cabinet of knowledge any given individuals contributes. Therefore if you have employees who leave, or work with interns often (with very quick turnover) these communities are incredibly valuable in preserving the knowledge and skill sets of those various people. Without them, an company would have to "start from scratch" each time a new employee or new intern is hired. 

Jenkins 1 - 59

"Universal Remote"

Convergence Culture

This is by far one of my favorite readings so far this semester. It really discusses a lot of the things I am interested in, but was unaware of how to articulate them. This book has begun to give me a language to discuss the convergence of culture across multiple media platforms. One of the things that hit me while reading this, was the selection about the "universal remote" and how that, for the longest time, was the future of technology. Pretty soon we would have one little device that would do everything for us. This was partly based on science fiction movies and other futuristic films that depicted people using such technology. I believe it also emerged out of the fear of what technology could do. "Wow this thing can do everything! Next thing  you know it will park my car for me!" Which ironically enough is now a common feature among luxury cars. The author states that this book is about, "the relationship between three things - media convergence, participatory culture, and collective intelligence." The first part, convergence, is a term that describes this "universal remote". However we have seen that this convergence has happened in quite a different manner than science-fiction originally predicted. There is no universal remote, no single box or device that does everything you want for you. Instead we have seen a divergence of technology platforms. Just in the past couple of years, the tablet, an entirely new form of technology has emerged. A few years before the tablet, ereaders were developed and have been growing in popularity ever since. People have more devices than they know what to do with. Instead we have seen a convergence of media and content across these devices. You can now read a book on your phone and watch a movie on your tablet. The content has, and continues to, span across all devices. "What we are now seeing is the hardware diverging while the content converges..."Therefore this "universal remote" just does not exist, "Part of what makes the black box concept a fallacy is that it reduces media change to technological change and stripes aside the cultural levels we are considering here." There is something bigger than technology at stake and so many companies forget that fact. I think it is evident in companies advertisements. Way to often companies focus on the "technology" of a device and forget about the usability of the device. What are people actually going to do with your device? What CONTENT are they going to interact with and how? No how big is the processor, consumers don't care about that. (well most of them don't) Because, "convergence, as we can see, is both a top-down corporate-driven process and a bottom-up consumer-driven process.

 











I am very excited to continue to read this text. (mainly because there is a chapter on harry potter ;-)). I think the other summarizes it best towards the end of this first portion, "convergence culture represents a shift in the ways we thinking about our relations to media, that we are making that shift first through our relations with popular culture, but that the skills we acquire through play may have implications for how we learn, work, participate in the political process, and connect with other people around the world."