The original wisdom of crowds concept specified four key attributes for what could be called wise crowds:

1. Diversity
2. Independence
3. Decentralization
4. Aggregation

It can be argued that Independence is not possible on most social sharing sites, especially where the interactions are conversational. The independence aspect is lost because people are supposed to look at others’ activities and comment, react, and otherwise collaborate with them. People don’t construct their contributions in isolation.

And Aggregation into a single decision is not always valid for constructing wise book reviews or wikis that reflect all of the crowd. The viewpoint of each contributor cannot easily be aggregated in many cases. The wisest voices may be over-ruled by the noisiest ones or the most popular ones. And the method of aggregation is always controversial – is it authentic? – and subject to manipulation.

Diversity and Decentralization are characteristics of most online crowds. Large social networks are typically diverse, and decentralized.

If we pick the part of the crowd that we hang out with, and seek their slices of wisdom, the diversity element may start to be challenged. And that may be okay, for everything from restaurant reviews to hiring to deciding on activities.

If the tools allow it, our personal crowds will be dynamic, and based on the situation they will provide guidance for us that is smarter and wiser than we are.

But do we always need wisdom? The next post in this series will explore the path from data to wisdom.

Many people inherently believe and trust that crowds can decide better than individuals: judges’ decisions can be appealed to larger & larger panels of judges, celebrities are ranked by how many people are fans, et cetera.

Yet trying to make crowds decide implies that there is a decision engine that can operate the crowd.  And we don’t know individually how we decide.  But collectively, the decision engine may be one programmed via software, but operated by human contributors.

We typically – or always - use some emotion in our decisions, and the crowd supposedly doesn’t.  Or shouldn’t, perhaps.

We could each make the best decisions for ourselves… if we had more time to focus in depth on all options.  But we don’t have time, and the crowd does seem to have time to focus on all options in parallel.

And there are those who want to create the illusion of a crowd decision, but to also influence that decision at the same time.

The future promises that, via social networks, we can have a more focused crowd… our personal crowd.  This crowd may not be only people we are friends with, but it will be tuned to us as individuals using a collection of inflences.  The promise is that your crowd will help and guide you in ways you can’t or don’t have time to.

Some tools that perform this help are available now, but they’re early-stage compared to what will come later.  Yet perhaps these tools will have to work around some issues…

A recent study confirmed what I’ve long thought – and assumed – about participation: there is a vocal minority that drives conversation.  If one applies the long-assumed 80-20 rule (Pareto Principle) to online social media, the percentages will vary but the result is similar.

Most people (i.e. the 80%) really don’t participate or contribute much, in areas such as rating or voting.  And within the group that does constructively contribute their voice (i.e. to 20%), only a very small percent do the bulk of activity.  This collection of hyper-contributers allows a very small group to skew the message of the so-called crowd.

Whether or not future studies validate the reported skewing of the crowd’s wisdom, there also is an issue of how the crowd’s decision engine might be constructed.  Search for skin care recomendations online and there are sites that are constructed to show apparent crowd opinions, yet these sites are bogus.  They are set up to sell a product, using the appearance of being an unconnected third party.

The authenticitiy of the wisdom of crowds may work at times like statistics… statistics are frequently calculated so that they prove the point that is desired (while obscuring other data that may be contrary to what message is to be communicated).

The writeup continues in the next part which will include a look at the four key attributes of what could be called wise crowds, using what the wisdom of crowds concept specified: Diversity, Independence, Decentralization, and Aggregation.  In the meantime, as an overview towards crowd wisdom, the first video below is from PBS NOVA ScienceNOW, and the video farther down is from 2007 and highlights some of the wisdom of crowds concepts:

(This is part one of a longer post that needed to be broken into smaller pieces, and is continued here)

Over 60 years ago, this effect was first verified in an experiment by psychologist Bertram Forer with some students. He constructed a personality assessment from various horoscopes, and gave the same assessment individually to every student who took a personality test.

The assessment included sentences such as:

At times you are extroverted, affable, and sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary, and reserved.

Almost anyone can find some truth about themselves in sentences like that.  And, in repeated experiments that tendency held true.  And with social media and other online (or offline) interactions, there is perhaps the same tendency to follow the Forer effect.

If a social media tool analyzes our online traits and provides us with a judgement, we probably will think it must have truth in it.  After all, it’s about us, based on our own input.

Even knowing that an interaction is non-human, such as interacting with a “bot” of some sort (or a voice response system), we still feel that the interaction is ours alone.  But perhaps like a credit score run amok with other people’s information, we should not accept the assessment without making sure it’s not co-mingling our information with others.

To some extent, what you believe becomes your reality, and certainly our belief can get us past otherwise-overwhelming challenges.

If a new tool tells you that you are #1,230 of all tweeters worldwide (on Twitter), you are inclined to want to believe it. But what if it were partly a randomly-generated number?

hmmm….

And in a perhaps orthogonal way, an online persona is our own Forer effect upon the world, and this can be bolstered using social networks.  It’s the same old technique put online: if enough people refer about someone as a visionary, then it is easier to believe to be true about that person.  And we can get others to say those nice things about us! (article continues below)

Sites such as Facebook & LinkedIn, along newer sites such as Philtro, are also trying to enhance their picture of who you are via your social network, in order to provide you with more relevant information (and, of course, advertisements).

While this social network assessment technology is still new, over time we are likely to expect our online services to deliver us what we like, without us having to do much to filter those information & media feeds.  Just say (one day) to your phone/PDA – “I want to watch a minute of the most interesting clips of my friend’s party last night, and after that chill out for about 30 minutes to some new music like what I heard there.  Go!” and you just might get what you instructed.

And you may believe it’s been done just for you.

The reasons behind being what could be called “semi-social” are varied, and include:

• Desire to be different
• Fear of (using) technology
• Not enough desire to socialize online
• Not enough time to socialize online – information overload
• Most friends or relatives not using online social websites
• Desire to cut back on online social activities

So, your choices on how to handle these miscreants – um, miscellaneous users – include:

• Acknowledge them – Show that you know that not everyone “gets” it and tone down the geeky/chic-y plug-ins and social media campaigns
• Help them – Provide work-arounds so that semi-socials can partake of your website’s offerings
• Ignore them – Don’t slow down the speed at which you use every possible social media tool to expand your reach, while risking alienating people who are semi-social.
• Invite them to socialize – Take a chance that you may find their moment to start socializing via one of your preferred methods. (This invitation can happen along with the first bullet point above – after acknowledging them.)

We’re all semi-social and even non-social during the course of a given day. So, it is easy to understand the mindset of someone who is routinely less social online. That is, if you can stop posting for a moment and ponder about them.

Times Square, New York City (2009), slightly altered. © 2009 ChiefSocialOfficer.com

Whether it is written, or not, if you are using social media then you have a strategy.  The key to excellence starts with how much time you devote to something, and this area is no exception.

There has been advice out there on social media strategy for a year or more. Following up the strategy, there are lots of lists to help you plan. A strategy is important, since you can do anything with social media.

And it’s all free!

Not really. As the excellent slide deck below points out (see slide 38), it takes time. Time is not free, even if you are not getting paid. There is the opportunity cost of making a choice, as time spent on one activity prevents or delays another one.

Hopefully they’d quickly learn about the concept of the social media echo chamber, and keep a foot outside of the door, if not more.

If not, they would be lost in the advice to what may amount to 4 hours a day of important, serious reputation building via Twitter, along with a few hours of interaction on Digg, Mixx, Delicious, and StumbleUpon, remembering to read important blogs, subscribe to podcasts, when not actually creating content via blogging, video, and audio.  And how does someone whose primary work is in, say, driving a vehicle all day… how do they do all of this fun social media stuff on the side?

So for all of the social newbies arriving this year: don’t sweat it.

Play around, have fun, find “shiny objects” on the web to try & use, and buy gadgets & toys if you want.  Then determine if you are a full-timer, a part-timer, or a hobbyist.  For the first two types, make a plan (as best you can) and execute it.  The plan should have the basics of a mission statement (goals), a strategy, actions (steps you will take), and timeframes if not actual deadlines.  For the social media hobbyist, have fun, and make sure that you aren’t taking up this hobby at the expense of some other goal, such as writing a book, learning a new language, climbing Mt. Everest, or spending more time with family & friends.

“Maybe“

is about the best answer possible now.

An earlier post on online social capital and influence touched on managing it as an asset, and certainly there is an increasing awareness of the value of online social capital in business and personal life.  (This is not to be confused with traditional social capital, an emerging industry)

But perhaps this is still the dawning of the age of online influence peddling, at least among the social networking crowd.

There are many ways to measure online influence, such as page rank. The current rage is one’s online social ranking.

People are proud of their top (or rising) popularity listings on Twitter Grader, Twitterholic, and other ranking services.  These rankings may not out-last the recession as sites like Tweeterboard shut down when there is no long-term sustainability model for it.  But blogs like Twitterfacts point to many services to rank these top “Tweeples” (Twitter people), some of whom I’m met in real life.  They are having fun as they engage on- and off-line with a large number of people.

In researching for this write-up, the term “social influence counter-measures” came up in a non-web context.  Yet, the online meaning of this term carries significance.  Every social media marketing campaign involves counter-measures.  The campaign goal is to influence, and to thus overcome/counteract/eliminate competing social influences.

Think this stuff is small potatoes? Not.  The largest search engine (and perhaps largest brand worldwide) is looking to patent social influence.  Perhaps this technique will allow social networks to monetize better.  Perhaps it will be the number that you use to rank & value yourself online.

A Chicago VC wrote about the possible profitability for those who can “effectively harness the power of influence across networks“.  But, this influence is classically not just about money.

Moreover, it could allow election campaigns to factor in and influence the popularity contest aspect in an unprecedented way.  How much would it be worth to know exactly who influences your opponents followers?  (It will always also depends on who actually votes.)  Or how would you combat a decline of confidence in leadership? But, for the individual who blogs or tweets their way to social stardom, there are established and emerging payoffs.  Paid blogging posts have been around for years, and now popular Twitter posters can earn some bling (although perhaps not a full-time income).

Better to be popular doing what you love… what you’re passionate about. Why? The solution for monetizing your online social capital or influence is still evolving. The economy may not support it en masse for years, although some people will make money. And the general advice given by many is to do what you love and the money will follow.

A definition of social: the aspect of life that is lived in communities.

Another definition of social: belonging to organized groups, with a known or assumed boundary that defines the group.

A definition of community: a group of interacting people sharing one or more life aspects in common.

The wikipedia definition of community is longer than these definitions.  It delves into sociology, anthropology, psychology, and other areas.  One could derive from it that online communities fall into the general category of either “communities of culture” or “community organizations”, with the other  category being geography.

Yet online – and virtual – communities have evolved to a different blend that has not existed before.  The sheer number of virtual communities may grow to equal or exceed the population that supports it – i.e. the population of the world.  This growth won’t happen overnight.  But if you assume that 80% or 90% of the population may be candidates for virtual communities (including groups), and people usually join multiple groups, the case can be made for billions of groups existing in 5 to 10 years.

But what is the “blend that has not existed before“?  It is the interwoven way that community boundaries exist and change in the virtual world.

In the real world, communities are usually physical, and also non-overlapping.  The town of, for example, Fundale, consisted of the society that lived within its borders.  Physical borders defined geographical community borders.  And the teachers of Fundale would be the community defined by teachers working in the town’s borders.

In the virtual world, communities now overlap.   There can be a Teachers of Fundale group on Facebook, another one on MySpace, another one at TeachersOfFundale.org, and numerous other ones.  Membership is almost guaranteed to be different in each of these communities, as some of them may not even know about the existence of the others.

Oh, and what about the Instuctors of Fundale?  And the Professors of Fundale?  And don’t forget the Fundale Educators and the Coaches of Fundale.  Each of these communities may differ in name only from the functional boundaries of “people that instruct or teach other within Fundale“.

What’s the point?  Why should you care?

The largest social network is… the human race.  Some people reading this post may assume (or hope) that one day there will be one online social network that becomes #1 worldwide and that everyone will join.  We’re all members of the human race, after all, and we deserve our virtual platform with no walls for everyone on the planet, right?  But that one worldwide social networking platform is not likely to exist anytime soon, as there are hundreds of social networks launching each week (our estimate based on a few scattered stories and statistics).

Instead, envision an online world that mirrors – and expands on – the mix of communities in the real world.  Boundaries are mushy – membership fickle – and the human nature of competition is just as real as in the offline world.  (All your members are belong to us.)

You may believe you are the member of a particular community.  When does that membership cross into areas that are outside of the community?  How do you describe the essence of your membership? For many communities online, it becomes hard to define the boundaries, especially if anyone can join and quit at will.

The activity of the members creates the community.  Usually this description applies to the social activity, and it also includes activity that may not be on-topic for the community.  If an online community member (who is a member of 12 communities simultaneously) uploads a video to YouTube or a photo to Flickr, and links it to 4 or 5 communities, and then is removed from 2 of those communities…

…the boundaries and intersections of “community” may start to become more interesting. As does the strength or level of group participation, the distributed nature of community (including what is going to explode with technology such as Open Social and Facebook Connect), and mobile aspects.  Understanding the dynamics behind community boundaries is worth exploring, as that aspect has a lot to do with how community exists out of its ability to satisfy basic human needs (to belong, to be understood, to have meaning).

The community boundaries become defined by the members of the moment, and their activities and contributions.

Consider this post to be the first attempt to get words around how to manage the chaos of online communities, and that it is to be continued (link will be added when that happens).

Author’s Disclaimer: Fundale.com is a site that I’m involved in, and is not an actual town (that I know of).

Over the last three days there have been two major startup demonstration events – DEMO and TechCrunch50.

The presenters are among the top of the crop for this year’s startups (notwithstanding the ones we will showcase on Startup Rockstars!).  If you step back and realize the sheer volume of new tech ideas that are launching or recently launched, you might (and should) be overwhelmed.  Mostly the theme seemed to be (1) social and (2) mobile (as in iPhone apps).

I was able to watch many presentation from both of these events online, and at times there was almost 3,000 people watching the live TechCrunch50 stream (on Ustream.tv).  This viewer number is large for an online show of any kind today, but also notable because it’s an unknown event to most people.  It was (probably) never advertised on mainstream TV.  And so this post is relevant to the current panel on TechCrunch50, which *wins* the ratings race by default as it was the only event streamed live. Both events were well-attended over the last three days, with the long-running DEMO event stating it was their largest-attended event so far.

As I type this post, the TechCrunch50 is wrapping up with a Hollywood discussion panel.  While they are discussing whether YouTube “is a disruptive force in Hollywood?” (question by Michael Arrington), most of the conversation is about how the old model of watching TV is evolving to even newer sites and services than YouTube. 

Some of this change is described as generational, as large numbers of teens (at least in the USA) now are watching shows on the web, totally ignoring mainstream over-the-air (or -cable) network programming.  So the challenge is to leverage what I termed the “assimilation of TV” into the social web.

Examples of how this assimilation happens is when a TV show has a major online presence, including clips or entire shows, blogs, and online social interactions with viewers and fans.  While most stars aren’t on Facebook or Twitter, some are slowly embracing technology such as Seesmic, which allows video comments and feedback to be posted immediately on the web.

A separate post will discuss the higher-level issues brought out by the trend of startups.  For now, the merger forecast years ago between TV and the internet has happened, and will continue to happen.  With films released on the internet included, the total merging of media is at hand.  How will this affect your business, your lifestyle, and our civilization?

And now back to the show, already in progress. (and next up after that, the re-runs of what was missed!)