On Social Networks, nobody thinks you’re a dog
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
Things people have said about this post
Sam, Great post! Although this stuff has been around forever, it has never been presented in such a compelling and cogent way! Great visuals really tell the story of our evolution into an online community of well-behaved trusted chaps.
At the moment it seems that we have to be careful about out identity on the web to protect ourselves from no-gooders, but I think two things will happen to improve the situation: first we’ll start getting back control of our own data, and the identity metasystem will start enabling greater trust; and second - soon you’ll know so much about me that it will actually become MORE difficult for someone else to pretend to be me … the transparency will become protective.
Funny, I was reading “Cluetrain Manifesto” last night and having all sorts of thoughts. For the first time I singled out the theses than rang most true for me. I highlighted;
“Even at its worst, our newfound conversation is more interesting than most trade shows, more entertaining than any TV sitcom, and certainly more true-to-life than the corporate web sites we’ve been seeing.”
Night after night, I’m finding Twitter much more rewarding than my TV set. So from a technology and thought perspective, it has all been around..but we’re all finally starting to get it.
Glad I could help with the graphics. Our discussion about the change in online culture instantly brought to mind PA’s Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory. I really do find it amazing to see the great leaps internet culture is making from complete anonymity to openness and credibility building. I and many of my friends have shifted away from random internet alias’s and handles to our real names. I’d kill to have michaelsigler.com
I love this post (and fantastic graphics, by the way!). I have spent more and more time interacting online in recent years than I ever planned to, and have divulged more of myself than I ever thought I would.
I enjoy and value my privacy, and stayed far away from blogging for a long time for that reason. Eventually, LinkedIn became a good, legitimate choice for me to display my information online and network with people I knew and worked with. As my career changed and I became an entrepreneur, I sought out other ways to connect with real people online both “as” my business and “as” myself.
The word transparency gets thrown around a lot, but I think you’re absolutely right–it has become easier to be a real person online, easier to ignore those that are not, and more valuable from a trust perspective. For someone like me, you are your business after all, and I believe that’s of great value.
Like many others I have fallen in love with Twitter. And while my username is my company’s name (and my pic is my logo), profile shows my full real name. What I say and do is available online not only for a future boss to Google, but for future progeny and even descendants to dig up (imagine WWW archive research projects in the year 2100). People are everything, and anonymous or made-up personas are nothing.