The Amazing Power Of Belief
The inspiration for this write-up is the Forer effect, which is the tendency for most people to identify with otherwise-general descriptions that are said to be about them. In other words – if someone says we have various personality traits, we are inclined to believe them if the person says the description is truly about [...]
Your Semi-Social Visitors
A lot of people won’t ever use Twitter, Facebook, Digg, or (insert your favorite social networking site here). Don’t piss them off. They’re visiting your website, watching your television show, or visiting your location. And they, like all of us, bring their own expectations about social experiences.
The reasons behind being what could [...]
Brand Conversations – Teacher & Students
Back in school, us kids talked behind the teachers’ backs… unless we were caught, in which case we had to speak in front of everyone.
“Johnny, what were you saying to Eddie? ”
”Nuthin’”
“I want you to repeat it loud so the whole class can hear you!”
…this was the type of social experience that we sought to [...]
Homophily Happens – a Homogeneous Web?
Will online social networking make us all the same?
Or, will we elect to stay in mostly same-thinking groups? As we join up in communities online, the homophily aspect could kick in. Homophily is defined as the tendency to be friends with others who are similar, and is described futher in this New York Times article.
Birds [...]
What are Community Boundaries?
It is sometimes helpful to step back and look at some of the definition and assumptions around the foundational areas behind social media and social technology. One of these is the notion of communities, which much exist as a precursor to social activities.
A definition of social: the aspect of life that is lived in communities.
Another [...]
Facebook Disconnect? Connecting to the social ROI
The recently-announced platform service, Facebook Connect, will allow people to be social across sites on the internet in a new way. But will corporate offices and other workplaces allow access? And will the other similar services interact with each other, or find reasons to not interact reminiscent of the early days of instant [...]
Definition of Social Media
In trying out the new Knol collaborative platform, I took a stab at defining Social Media. There were no search results for that term when I first tried it out, and in general as a new service Knol has a lot of opportunity for people to contribute. The definition-writing took about an hour [...]
Social Clutter – Too Much Information
The music of The Police, including the artist Sting, has among the songs some concepts that were perhaps ahead of their time. One example is “Too Much Information” (listen), which was written over 25 years ago, and refers to having to deal with information overload:
Too much information running through my brain
Too much information driving me [...]
An Old Idea Becomes New? Akashic Records & Tech
Someone mentioned to me at lunch last month a term I hadn’t heard – akashic. The wikipedia akashic definition has in it the following: “A theosophical term referring to a universal filing system which records every occurring thought, word, and action. The records are impressed on a subtle substance called akasha (or [...]
You Can’t Touch a Tweet!
Online social interaction requires the real world, but can (or do) social media marketers blend the offline and online together in a useful way? Rarely.
My own online social interaction has always had a strong connection to the physical (real) world. My instant messaging was always with people I had met physically, until it wasn’t. My email messages [...]
