The Working Network

My new organization uses these terms. We didn't. We used some others, but the end game is the same. Just to be clear, tenets call out what we value (though not necessarily why), and the KPI's (key performance indicators) are intended to help us measure our effectiveness against those things we've said are valuable.

And because I don't see any meaningful distinction between social networking and community -- it's all a question of types of associations -- we might also say this is a contribution to the marketplace of ideas on the subject of a core community tenet and it's associated KPIs.

To be clear, I'm not covering community site statistics of the following sorts:

• Number of unique visitors
• New member registrations
• Page views
• Retention/Attrition
• Member loyalty
• Member satisfaction
• Most active members
• Message posts
• and so on

Those are clearly important -- most clearly important for judging the health of any specific community site. At Microsoft we have many, many, community sites (thousands). Our partners have many community sites. The health of our community overall can't be found in the impossible task of rolling up the above sorts of stats across the sites we're able to identify. And to date, our polling mechanisms haven't been wired to answer those questions -- if indeed they could.

But we still have to do so. Here's what I propose.

Core tenet: associations

Call it relationship if you like. The point is, community is about connecting people to people. It may be that the purpose of the connection is to avail one member of the content produced by another, but if it doesn't involve people operating together it may be a wonderful thing otherwise, but it's not community.

KPIs:

1. Number of connections per member
2. Degree of connectedness between between member connections
3. Types of associations by groups and individual
4. Message propagation rate across the networks.

I might suggest one or two others, but that will do for now.

There are a couple of things worth pointing out. Most organizations won't have any ability to track this information at all (let me introduce you to yet another reason why we designed our services the way we did). Tagspace, the upcoming Claimspace, and finally the "subscription" services (ohhh, wait to you see this) planned for the first half of fy08, especially considering their integration into our discussion services, round out our story and make it possible to get one thru three. We're still puzzling over four -- but we know we want the information. I trust the business justification is immediate and obvious.

The other thing to consider is that while these aren't exactly site based, they do assume the use of one or more of our services -- and will therefore be limited in that regard. Still, the services it assumes members use touch many sites and indeed many people that may not be members. For those reasons the information these indicators provide offer another view on the health of our community. One that is different from, but complimentary to, and broader than, conventional community site-health indices.

Josh has an excellent post reviewing Amazon's investments in social software. (Thanks also to Brian for all the analysis). I agree they're good, and we've taken a number of clues from them including a hard-core focus on purpose-driven social software design. And clearly they're a reasonable general model, but I wouldn't take it much beyond that. 

Amazon's social solutions are designed to help people sift through countless purchasable goods, and few of us have that problem. Some of the techniques they employ can be re-purposed to solve other problems, recommendations fall into this category, and that's fine as far as it goes. We're clearly into it. But the point is, don't just copy Amazon -- design your social systems for your users. For example, to what extent is "connection",  or one-way, two-way, 1:many communication important, and in what fidelity. Ask yourself what goals your users have and what key activities will they pursue. In social systems like those we build for Microsoft, affiliations are key -- think MVP program. And there are lots of other examples -- access to the best information flows also comes to mind, as does reducing customer and Microsoft pain associated with support.

Also, Amazon's social solutions consist almost entirely of no-tie associations. That may be fine for them -- though I suspect they'd prefer it otherwise. (In fairness, some of the benefits of weak-tie associations are had in the form of the "other people bought this" feature.)

Finally, for many of us engaged full time in social software design, we assume our systems will form a daily experience, ideally many times daily, for most of our users. Personally, I check in with my professional social network many times a week -- I may skip days, but I'm more often in the many times a day camp. It's my morning paper, my during lunch reading material, and sometimes my bedtime reading. That's the way it is for most successful social solutions: WOW, Second Life, Myspace, del.icio.us, Facebook, or by far (IMHO) the most useful social network -- the one in your RSS reader.

Now I'm a real fan of Amazon, but if I'm there more than a few times a week it's a lot.  I don't have any research one way or another, so I don't know if that's a lot or a little. My quick check (asked the folks in the adjoining offices) suggests my number of visits is on the high end. And the vast majority of my trips ignore the social features they have to offer because my social network sources the books that interest me. I visit Amazon after the fact and typically only to purchase.

So Amazon would get my vote for social software for the online low margin breadth retail marketplace. If you're interested in books, my vote for best social solution on the net is http://librarything.com. Be warned though, it's all about books. If they'd integrate their tagging solution with their forums, they'd be even better. BTW, I've heard Amazon has about five percent of the tags that Librarything boasts -- these guys know how to make tagging work. Hint: they know it ain't about the tags...

Great post by Infotangle. 

"Information design for the Web has changed.

People are changing the way that they consume online information, as well as their expectations about its delivery. The social nature of the Web brings with it an expectation of interaction with information and modern Web design is reflecting that. There are now alternate forms of navigation including the ability to browse by user, tag clouds, tabbed navigation etc."

Here's an article I wrote explaining a few of the reasons customers should care about the new community services we've built.

Microsoft should care, and does, for a variety of reasons. Most of them having to do with customers being happier, better connected, and more productive. But there are other reasons as well and below we discuss one of them -- one that is not generally considered.

Outrageous claim: if Microsoft customers were connected in rich social networks our support costs would drop dramatically.

Here's why:

• Social networks are also trusted communications channels -- cheap, effective, and fast communications networks
• When customers are connected in an online social network (actually online or offline, but we're focusing here on the online experience) and one customer has a problem, they all know about it when it happens, and they all know about it when it gets fixed.
• A customer only needs to call support, or visit a support forum, if their social network has failed.
• Therefore, support calls drop dramatically through social network connection

Consider the following illustration:

This bell curve represents a typical product support incident call pattern. Here's the scenario. At point "B" a problem is discovered in a newly released product and the first customer support call is registered. As the product is adopted, the problem effects a growing number of customers and the call volumes increase. At point "C" a fix is found. Nevertheless, the call volume continues up for some time before leveling off and eventually trailing off. That is the case today.

The next illustration compares call volumes when social networks are fully realized (a theoretical best case):

In this case, shortly after point "B" the potentially effected social network is notified of the problem. Word spreads, but not necessarily fast enough to immediately curtail the increase in call volume. However, as word spreads (and communications across on-line weak-tie networks can be very fast) everyone -- ideally -- in the potentially effected community knows about the problem. Call volumes drop off because there is no point to calling. When the solution is found, the network will effectively spread word of the solution. The area within the curve and between the dashed lines represents the cost of social network failure in terms of call volume.

Overstated? Clearly. The extreme case was illustrated to make the point. How extreme is it? Hmm. No good way to know. Consider this, satisfaction rates among opensource users seems quite high, and social networks are a principle means by which information is shared across that community. 

This article describes the value of the next generation of Microsoft community investments to the customer. Actually it does so three times: short, medium, and large.

Short and sweet answer:

In the experience of most people, the internet makes available too much information. The new community services make it possible for you to filter out the noise and pay attention to only the information that matters most to you.

How is this miracle performed? It's the latest spin on the oldest trick in the book: we do it together. Simply put, you identify peers and experts you trust and allow them to filter the information vastness for you. You use an RSS reader to keep tabs on what internet resources they find most helpful. Identify the right peers and experts, and what they find most helpful will be very close to what you need. As your skill with the services improves, the greater the match to your information needs.

This link describes how to get started.

Not enough? Here's the medium version:

The medium and longer versions borrow just a bit from the field of system dynamics (stocks and flows). To be honest, I got this idea from a visiting consultant who told me about a post he recalled reading on the subject. I couldn't find the original reference, so below is my best effort to recreate what I imagine might have been the jist of it. And, of course, I've taken the liberty to relate it to my own projects.

The Microsoft communities team is evolving its information repositories from stocks, or collections of information for your reference when the need arises, to flows, or dynamic information systems delivering information as you need it. To be more accurate, our stocks will remain stocks, but they will become better and more accessible flows for an ever larger group of customers. This is important and leads to what may be a shocking statement.

If you ever have to search for the answer to a question about our products the chances are good that that we've already failed you. Ideally, you should never have to search for an answer.

Consider this: around a million people visit our forums every month, but fewer than 10 thousand new questions are posted -- some say much fewer, some say a bit more, in any event it's hard to measure (some questions are posted multiple times in different places by the same person, and the same question is asked by many people using different words). One of the major reasons why this should be so is that the questions most people are pursuing have already been answered. Now this is important -- really important -- ask yourself why it is that 990,000 people a month have to wait until they have the problem before they seek the answer if someone just like them, using the same exact product in a similar environment, has already faced and solved that problem? The answer is they're not connected; they are not communicating; their social networks have failed them. And by social networks I don't mean being chums and talking shop over beers. It's sooo much easier than that.

Technically, what I'm referring to are online weak-tie social social networks. But knowing that is not really necessary. The fact is that such networks are relatively easy to plug into, require little of you, solve information overload, and might even let you go home early on Fridays.

Let's not overstate the case. You will still encounter problems, but if you plug in to the new community solutions, over time your problems will be fewer -- and harder. Harder, because you'll know the answer to all the easy ones. You'll be operating at a higher level. You'll be longer and longer in flow, and spend less and less time in frustrating search. (And let's be honest, there is no happy way to be interrupted, only various ways of making it suck less. And of course, we are also doing what we can to make searching for answers suck less in those cases when your network does fail.)

We're trying to build networks by delivering social bookmarking and site tagging service, and later a claims service. Both represent a source of critical new flows in and of themselves. Perhaps more importantly, we integrate the new services deeply into the new forums and blogging platform. Then, through the magic of RSS the outcome is what we humbly believe will be the most fertile field of information flows on the planet. And of course the trick is in finding and plugging into the right flows. Find the right flows and the magic happens. Find the right flows, and information overload becomes information abundance.

If this is all you need, go here to discover how to get started.

If you want to know more, read on into the longer version...

Definitions:

Stock: In this case it's any collection of information. Examples include online forums, online libraries, knowledgebase articles, even wiki entries. Today most people access stocks when looking for the answers to questions. For the majority of internet users, the net is one big stock -- one big reference source you access when you need a quick answer. And, as far as it goes, that's clearly accurate.

And stocks are great when knowledge fails. But their limitations become clear if you consider the extreme case. What if you didn't "know" anything, except how to search? What if you had to search for the subject of every sentence. Every job would take a very long time. Put another way, knowing is like typing fluidly -- without thinking. Searching is like hunting and pecking on the keyboard. Which do you prefer?

Flow: I use this word in two different ways (sorry, both are very helpful). In the first case a flow generally refers to a dynamic process that effects the stock as in in-flows and out-flows. The question and answer process (or flow) contributes to the forum stock. The publication process (or flow) contributes to the document library stock. The local user group flow contributes to the individuals personal stock (the information he carries around in his head or has immediate access to), as does the technical publication to which he or she may subscribe. The latter two examples represent traditional information flows.

Another example of a traditional information flow is the information exchange between you and your coworkers (a strong-tie relationship that offers a different value proposition than the weak-tie relationships we're primarily concerned with here -- but that's probably more information than you're looking for on that subject). In many organizations email and the associated distribution lists are a widely adopted, even primary, information flow. Microsoft is one such organization.

Essentially, people plug into flows to maximize the information they have immediately available to them. You associate yourself with the information flows that deliver to you the most useful information and the least noise.

Here is the ideal condition:

You are happy. You are in the other kind of flow(a mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing, characterized by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity.)

But it doesn't always stay that way...

You encounter a question to which you do not know the answer. Now, if you are normal, you are very unhappy. So faced with an unknown, you either give up, or you visit an information stock looking for an answer. For most technology professionals, giving up isn't an option. So it's off to Google -- oops, I mean Live.com -- to search for an answer.

But if you've been paying attention so far, you already know that most of your questions have already been answered and that if you'd of been plugged into the right flow, you wouldn't have had to search in the first place -- you'd probably be on your way to your kid's little league game. Where are those flows? Enter the new Microsoft community services. In time they will deliver an almost unlimited number of flows for you to choose from.

(We can also offer some simple instructions to get you started. Later, in the upcoming year, we're going to automate this whole process.)

Here's how we've done it. We built some tagging services and a social bookmarking service on top of them (here's another link on social bookmarking). If the term social bookmarking is new to you it is worth you time to check it out. Obtaining feeds that refer to the tagging activities of the peers and experts you've found will be one of your principle information flows.

We've also built a claims service that will release in May of 2007. Claims will also be useful sources of information flows. What's most interesting about them is that the feeds they deliver link you to different information stocks.

Both of these new services have been thoroughly integrated into our new blogging and forum products, and rich support for RSS is available throughout. So here's the idea, let's say you have a blocking problem. You head to the forums and find an answer. Turns out it's a good answer. The person that provided it has some real expertise and is a skilled communicator. So instead of just taking your answer and going back to work, you obtain an RSS feed for that person. Next time they contribute something of value, you'll be notified. Tagging and claims make the experience better by allowing you to further filter based upon a stricter and stricter defintion of the what you're looking for.

Simple: you went to the stock, found an answer, and left with a new and valuable flow. We've embedded the new ideas and capabilities into the more familiar services. Thinking of deploying Vista this summer? Wouldn't it be a reasonable idea to plug into the key flows of information around that subject? How would you do that? Once we've migrated to the new forums, simply obtain an RSS feed for the contributions of experts you can find, or simpler yet, obtain an RSS feed for the tags Vista+deployment.

Today, these services are brand new. We haven't migrated the old forums to the new forum infrastructure yet, so the stock available in new forums isn't as rich as it will be later this year. In the meantime, the best thing you can do, is explore. There are lots of excellent flows out there. Yes, the interent is a fast reference source, a vast stock of information. But it's also a social space, and by using the new community services you'll be learning to traverse the new social spaces and to manage information access in that fashion. Take the time, develop the skill, and you'll be happier, better connected, and better informed for it.

I just finished a book by Edward Castronova called Synthetic Worlds.

Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games by Edward Castronova Read more about this title...

It's about online games. It's one of the best books I've seen on the subject. There is only one thing I'd like to add, that I think Edward misses. Towards the end of the book is this quote:

"Early visionaries saw a single "metaverse" that is said to exist in parallel with our own universe; but we can already see that the synthetic world will resolve itself into a thousand islands, each separated from the next by many miles of ocean."

I'm not so sure. I think the minute we sit down in front of a computer we enter a virtual world. With the internet that virtual world became -- potentially -- social. Potentially social, but until recently, the social articulations were quite poor -- limited principally to discussion boards of one sort or another and one-to-one interactions of the IM and email kind. In the 90's, and for the majority of the population even today, the online virtual world they inhabit remains less social space and more reference space. Most people still surf the online virtual world as if they were alone, in an otherwise uninhabited information space, on the backs of search engines and home pages.

I believe the internet does express a metaverse that exists in parallel to our own universe, but that for a variety of reasons the primary means of exploring it is a dry, lonely, textual experience. The appearance of alternatives, currently in the form of games, blogs, tags, evolving web forums, and supported by technologies such as RSS, is a sign that internet-as-lifeless-reference-space is evolvuing into the internet-as-shared-social-space. Search, of course, will remain. In fact it's role will expand as it's capabilities increase; but that role will be in the background. The companies that get this are already leaders or are poised to lead.

The people were, are, and will remain, the only network that matters.

So I join Facebook. I'm doing their thing for about five minutes, and I discover an old college/post-college buddy I don't really speak to all that often anymore. You know the story: kids, jobs, other crap.

So I ask him to be my friend (at that point I had no friends -- now I have two, I'm a social animal).

He happens to be online and and we connect. Ya know what, I missed speaking to Mark. It's amazing the directions life has taken him.

Relating this to my day job leads to my first observation of Facebook. And btw, I knew this intellectually all along, but have only recently realized it otherwise. Facebook, and Myspace, and the others like them are about strong-tie relationships. MSN Spaces plays the same game. Strong-tie relationships have value and online tools can renew, and strengthen, those bonds. It's no wonder those sites are rockin.

But they are different than the social networking I use at work -- and I use my version far more often and I don't see that changing anytime soon (read this as big opportunity).

Let's put it another way. Facebook is to social software as cruise ship is to transportation. I wouldn't jump on board a cruise ship to commute to work. However, I wouldn't forego transportation in support my commute. To be clearer, would I send my audience to MySpace, or would I clone it for my audience? No. But, does social software have value for my audience? Absolutely no doubt -- none. The only question is, what are the features of a social software solution appropriate for knowledge workers (of which devs and ITPros are just one enormous example)?

The answer is, in part, one that focuses upon weak-tie associations and has as its core activity (and a core activity is a requirement -- some people call it a "vertical" focus) personal information/knowledge management -- at least to start with. The full story can be much, much, bigger. I almost don't want to say...

I admit I'm experimenting. I've joined Facebook. I'm bobreb -- join me if you like and we can check this thing out...

In recent months I've been studying social "spaces". Because it's an aspect of my so-called "creative" approach -- I still owe part three of that story -- I've been comparing and contrasting fictional synthetic worlds (of the science fiction kind incidentally), with online synthetic worlds (ala WOW and Second Life), and the Internet interaction model as we currently know it. I say part of my creative approach because interesting things happen when we make connections across disciplines. More interesting yet when we force our minds to keep  a hold on two or more apparently inconsistent concepts. The temptation is to label them inconsistent, and drop the whole thing. However, if you're persistent, sometimes your mind reconciles the differences. Sometimes the reconciliation is, well, interesting.

For instance, have you ever considered that the dominant Internet navigation paradigm might as well be Second Life-like? There is no reason to assume the impersonal document-search metaphor will continue in it's present form for ever and that so called synthetic worlds will be only "somewhere you go" on the net.

An expanse

Within a boundless space

Surrounded by a vastness

This quote from TechCrunch's post on a new project in Firefox land:

"Adding a friend will mean getting access to a broad array of their published web content."

The only drawback is that this is clearly designed for sharing content with "friends". That might be great for the 12-year-old to college age crowd, and somewhat nice for the newly graduated, but for the knowledge worker looking to use social solutions for purely professional reasons, it's just okay. I'd like to see something a little less personal.

I can't blame them, they're building to their audience. It's the same with MSN and the Live teams. Ask them about social networking and they'll talk about the people in your IM list, or in you email address book. Both of those are very clearly strong-tie associations.

Someday they're going to realize that adoption is in large measure gated by the relative advantage the new innovation has for a potential adopting population and that knowledge workers have a lot to gain adopting social software solutions -- though that advantage comes primarily from weak-tie associations.

One of the best things about traversing social spaces on the web, is the thrill of discovery. Sean's blog is right on target for me and this post describes the value of tagging, or "tag-drafting" as well as anything I've ever read.

Thanks Sean.

The visit to the Polish subsidiary was a highlight of the trip. I've never been to Warsaw, and in a certain sense was only marginally there this time. I arrived late one night and was up the next morning and back in a taxi for the subsidiary offices. After the meetings we jumped back in the taxi and went to the airport. I'm confident I never set foot on Polish soil -- polish cement, polish asphalt, yes, but no soil.

It was a highlight for several reasons. First the hosts were great, all of our hosts have been great, but the Polish team really had it going. They asked hard questions, and pointed out that they were in an opensource stronghold. They also pointed out that Poland was facing a brain drain as many college grads were picking up and moving elsewhere. They (only half jokingly) pointed out that the biggest Polish city was Chicago.

Perhaps most interesting though, they arranged to have about a dozen opensource and Microsoft technology focused customer community leaders and community members visit the offices in the afternoon for a question and answer session. Everyone, including our hosts I think, expected us to leave bruised and battered. Microsoft, in Poland, is definitely in the evil empire category.

As the customers walked in the door, I felt a little like a guilty felon must feel watching the jury return from deliberations.

Instead of presenting -- we knew Powerpoint would be the death of us -- we just started asking questions. At one point, I asked how they managed information. How did they cope with information overload. How did they obtain the information they needed to get their jobs done.

Honestly, up to this point we'd said nothing about RSS, nothing about social bookmarking, the Web 2.0 phrase never passed our lips. (I don't think so anyway.)

To my utter amazement about three fourths of the room said they relied upon RSS feeds viewed through an RSS aggregator to filter the internet. Only one person in the room expressed a different opinion -- and of all things, the exception was a college student. The remainder all just nodded.

I was dumbfounded. Yeah, that is exactly how I, and a lot of the people I know, have solved the internet information overload problem. And it is a key tenet in the community team strategy. But here was a room full of IT focused professionals, nearly half way around the world, in an area that's supposed to  be experiencing an outflow of qualified young people, and at least this group was way ahead of the curve.

At that point we started telling them what we were doing. Fewer by far were familiar with social bookmarking. They relied primarily upon technical blogs. So we spent most of our time discussing how bookmarking could compliment their activities.

I think we connected. It was really encouraging for us. The fact is, we fully realize that asking Microsoft customers to adopt new work habits will be hard. But to see some customers that have already made the transition, and to hear that it works for them, and to know what we're doing is going to work for them, was just great.

In case you're curious, my sniffles had by this time evolved into a minor cold. After that meeting, and on the way to airport, I barely noticed.

It's hosted by Forum One Communications. The event is called the Online Community Business Forum 2007. They've been kind enough to allow me to host one of the sessions. I'm really looking forward to it. 

I've been following their blogs for a while. Bill Johnston is over there now. I had the opportunity to paricipate with Bill on a Web 2.0 panel last fall.

Check out this interview they did with Lee Lefever. I had the opportunity to meet with Lee myself a couple of weeks back. He's a sharp guy. Commoncraft is worth a look too.

So my meetings in Europe continue...

I was in Munich from around 8:30 AM until 6:30 PM flying in from Paris and out to Warsaw the same day. Minor case of the sniffles showing up.

The German team was a lot of fun. Again, I'm just floored at the level of understanding in the subsidiaries -- well ahead of most of Redmond. I was feeling so good about the whole thing I shared the definition of community we'd come up with and have been working against for a couple of years now. I've blogged about it before. I usually don't bring it up, eyes just glaze over and attention wanders. I've learned to keep it out of the conversation unless it's clear we just can't make progress otherwise. 

Anyway, these guys are all over it sharing examples I hadn't considered, mapping it to opensource development scenarios, and generally expounding with gusto. They immediately understood the idea of helping people into weak-tie communities and why that was so important. Anyway, all we needed was a few pilsners and a little more time and I suspect we'd have made the news. Oh well, next time. 

The other thing they're into is the local Codezone site. It seems the site is due for some renovations, and so we're talking about incorporating some of the community services into the mix.

Very cool.

So I'm on this tour meeting with the community leads in the Microsoft subsidiaries, and some of their partners and community owners and members, in and around Europe. On Tuesday I had the opportunity to speak with the Wunderman's Microsoft account team. 

For comparison's sake, consider that the most common understanding of social software I hear is that it has something to with MySpace. Community, on the other hand, has to do with steamlining the Q+A support scenario. Of course there is some truth to both views, however limiting they may be, and understanding that as context usually,  but not always, provides a useful base upon which to build a more accurate understanding.

Wunderman, however, was clued in. We spent the first hour comparing notes and defining terms. The balance of the time (the major part of the meeting) was dedicated to the details of our efforts (tagging, claims, new forums and blogs, and membership services), and to the impacts we might expect this to have on advertising and marketing business processes.

They want to start working with the technology as soon as they can. That good news. As I was telling the team yesterday, the technologies we've begun to deliver will have a significant impact on Microsoft and our customers. However, that won't happen as soon or as well, until really smart people like the Wunderman team come to grips with what it can do, and then put it to use in their own fashion. The ability for the services to be used in ways we can't predict was a completely conscious part of our design process and we can't wait to see what comes of it.