Step into the light
What happens when we rebuild our online experience around people? We now can connect to those we want to in our private and work lives and build an online experience around them and the people that they are connected to, too. The most important underpinnings of a social network is trust and behavior. When you build around your identity, you’re not anonymous so your reputation is at stake. Folks are far more likely to behave when they’re not anonymous and they’re participating openly with their peers.
Reprezent!
Some people like to say, “this stuff has been around forever.” That can be said about most anything. In the meantime the real change is the amount of people interested and our comfort-levels around usage. The tools themselves get better, cost less and become vastly easier to use. For example, there’s a big difference between something like Twitter and an online Forum. Twitter has no hierarchy, no buckets, no babbling, no walls to write on. It’s just you, your connections and your wee, 140 character statement. That flattens things quite a bit and the results are that you get to know people and get value much, much faster. Folks have figured this out pretty quickly. You don’t see made up people, fake names, or Garfield avatars (well, much). And the things you say are not only said so everyone can see them, they’re recorded on the web. So what you say can be found many months later on Google. That said, I’m not sure everyone using this stuff has evolved from being a dog on the internet.
Behavior comes of age
Yes our identity crap is strewn across the web and that’s a problem. But it will get cleaned up, easier, and more universal. The smoke will clear on the consumer web and it will clear up in our muddy enterprises. The big thing is that we care. We care about the efficiency of our people-centric connections. We’re paying more attention to ourselves online then we pay attention to our television sets. This attention is vastly underestimated. Businesses are having to evolve to meet where our attention is. And in the meantime, we’re quickly learning how to behave.
Credit
- Internet Fuckwad Theory
- Thanks to Michael Sigler for helping on the Social Network Behavior Theory graphic
