Mark Greenfield

The uwebd social site hit another milestone today with the addition of the 700th member. Activity on the site continues to grow at a steady rate. There are now 36 groups, 18 videos, and 256 discussions in the main forum. Over the past month, we’ve had 4,608 visits, 19,953 page views, and visits from 80 countries

Ning has been in the news recently as well. The EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) recently highlighted Ning in the “7 Things You Should Know About…” series These briefs focus on a single technology and describes what it is, where it is going, and why it matters to teaching and learning. (see 7 things you should know about Ning)

The cover story for the May 2008 issue Fast Company magazine is Ning’s Infinite Ambition. The article focuses on Ning’s business model and provides a nice overview of the history of the company. IMHO, Ning will be a major player on the web. Niche social networks are the future and Ning is a great platform to allow people to connect and coolaborate.

This June I will be giving several presentations at a conference hosted by Innovative Educators called Increasing Enrollment and Retention via Technology: Blending High Tech and High Touch. Here is the conference overview:

Using technology is essential in attracting students to your institution and creating an atmosphere that cultivates success. Some feel that when incorporating technology you lose the personal touch that makes institutions memorable. However, high tech and high touch do not have to be mutually exclusive. Knowing how to use technology to target the individual needs of students is the key to successful implementation.

As students move to the web for information and more and more services are provided online, combining high tech and high touch becomes imperative. One of my main messages at the conference will be the value of Web 2.0 tools in achieving this goal. For me, Web 2.0 is the social web. Web 2.0 is about connecting people. It’s about conversation. It’s about building and sustaining relationships.

I’m really looking forward to this conference. There are many great speakers from a wide variety of backgrounds and the program covers many interesting topics. Hopefully I will see you there.

The game has fundamentally changed. A seismic shift is underway. The social web is here. Dialogue has replaced monologue. The conversation is the message. Communities dominate brands. It’s time to join the conversation.

So how should colleges and universities leverage the full potential of this new paradigm? It’s time to think about creating a new position - the CMO. No, not a Chief Marketing Officer, but a Community Management Officer.

Nathan Gilliatt, the principal at Social Target LLC created an excellent overview of the responsibilities for what he calls social media relations (SMR). He sees SMR “as an interdisciplinary specialty that spans marketing, technology, and Internet culture—three components of any successful strategy for engaging social media.” Here are his summary of the responsibilities:

1. Coordinate the development and implementation of social media engagement strategy and policies, including blogging policy, formal blogger relations programs and social media monitoring programs.
   1. Maintain domain knowledge in social media. Be a resource for others who need to understand new services and their potential impact on the business.
   2. Maintain awareness of company’s activities in social media and contacts for the various activities.
   3. Be an advocate for the understanding of social media and how they affect the company’s marketing and communications activities.
   4. Engage the company’s IT organization to coordinate IT resources and policies with social media strategy.
2. Train functional groups (such as marketing, communications, and HR) on the technology and culture of social media as it relates to their roles.
3. Coordinate company’s tactical response to social media issues.
   1. Consult with internal groups on appropriate responses to social media issues. Advise on the likely response of online communities to the company’s plan.
   2. Coordinate company response to social media crises; track engagement by appropriate groups (internal and external).
4. Serve as the primary contact for external service providers and vendors who support the monitoring of, and engagement with social media.

So I ask - does anyone know of a college or university who has created the position of CMO, Online Community Organizer, or Director of Social Media Relations? Does the above job description need to be altered for higher ed? How would this position relate to the web team?

I predict these positions will be hitting higher ed shortly. I think this would be an exciting job and I can see this as a logical next step in my career.

Recommended Books

• Cluetrain Manefesto
• Communities Dominate Brands
• Join the Conversation
• Meatball Sundae
• Naked Conversations
• Now is Gone

Additional Resources

• Jobs of the future, #1: Online Community Organizer (Seth Godin)
• Defining social media relations (Nathan Gilliatt)
• Understanding the Community/Evangelist Role (Jeremiah Owyang)
• Community Manager Catagory (from Jeremiah Owyang’s Blog)
• Who Can Be a Community Evangelist (Christopher Salazar)
• The emerging role: Community Manager

I had the opportunity today to return to the classroom and teach a graduate level Anthropology class on Culture Change. I was asked by the professor to get students to think about how this new technological communication might be altering the nature of social relationships, and the very essence of society itself.

The lecture was an abridged version of my “Born to Be Wired: Technology, Communication and the Millennial Generation” presentation. I didn’t need to spend as much time explaining emerging technology to a group of graduate students. Instead we looked more at overall implications of the communications revolution and the sociological changes.

Last week there was a great post on the Freakonomics blog asking Is Myspace Good for Society? Leading thinkers were asked “Has social networking technology (blog-friendly phones, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) made us better or worse off as a society, either from an economic, psychological, or sociological perspective?” They had some interesting answers.

My favorite resource on the use and impact of social networking is Danah Boyd. Her thoughts were included in the Freakonomics post and I provided this link to this Discover Magazine video interview with her as well.

During the lecture we discussed the work of Marshall McLuhan. If you are not familiar with his work, you definitely need to check him out. He was way ahead of his time. I’ve often thought about what he would think about the Internet and Web 2.0.

I concluded my lecture by summing up my take on the best way to approach the use of communications technologies. I created a slide of the album cover of Radiohead’s OK Computer and quoted lyrics from the song “The Tourist”, which includes the line “hey man, slow down, slow down, idiot, slow down, slow down.” I think we need to carefully manage our time online, learn to slow down, and occasionally unplug - something easier said than done.

As we move from monologue to dialog, we are going to need some new rules. While much of the focus is on how companies and institutions such as colleges and universities need to behave on the social web, the customer needs to behave in an ethical manner as well. I came across this Company-Customer Pact which helps define this behavior. Companies and customers need an online environment that supports open, authentic communication and a mutual responsibility to make it work.

Learn more about the pact at http://ccpact.pbwiki.com.

Previously I posted about the 90:9:1 rule which states that must users of online social networks lurk rather than participate. I decide to analyze the activity on the new uwebd social network on Ning to see if this applicable.

I did the research when the site was one month old and had 249 members. There were two very active members, 37 members who had some activity (at least one post/comment) , and 210 members who had not been active since joining; resulting in a 81:18:1 ratio. If you changed the definition of “some activity” to be two or more posts or comments, the ratio changed to 91:8:1. (Note that this does not include anyone visiting the site who are not members. Based on data from Google analytics, this number is very small.)

Some other quick numbers:

• 60% of members have added a profile picture
• 18% of members have customized their profile page

As of this morning, there are 337 members, 19 groups, and 87 general forum topics. I encourage everyone involved with higher ed websites to not only join, but to participate as well. Again, the site is located at cuwebd.ning.com.

The Pareto Principle states, 80% of the results flow from 20% of the activities. In 2006, Jakob Nielsen wrote “Participation Inequality: Encouraging More Users to Contribute”. When studying user behavior in online social networks, most users lurk rather than participate. They follow what’s become known as the 90:9:1 rule:

• 90% of users are lurkers (i.e. read or observe, but don’t contribute
• 9% of users contribute from time to time, but other priorities dominate their time
• 1% of users participate a lot and account for most contributions

With the launch of the new uwebd social network, I was curious if the 90:9:1 rule would apply. The site has been live for about one month and participation is definitely following this rule. Given the target audience for the site I thought participation might be higher, but that hasn’t been the case.

I plan to revisit this topic in a few months. I expect membership on the site to grow substantially and people should be more familiar with the features and functionality of the site. We’ll see if we have a greater percentage of people participating.

Over the past three weeks I’ve been involved with the launch of a new social network targeted at higher education web professionals. The uwebd (University Web Developers) mailing list has been around for 10 years and has always been an excellent source of information. Recently a discussion was started on the list about whether uwebd should become a Google Group. I advocated for taking it a step further by creating a uwebd social network. On December 13, we created a site on Ning as a companion to the list. The new site can be found at cuwebd.ning.com. As of today ,there are 217 members, numerous groups, several videos, and many discussions in the forum.

For me, this is the next logical step in the evolution of uwebd. While a mailing list is good for information exchange, a niche social network takes this to a whole new level. With features including user profiles, discussion forums, groups, friends, numerous RSS options, search, tagging, blogs, and integrated rich media, a niche social network is an ideal platform to create a community around a shared interest.

Ning

Ning.com is an online platform that allows users to create their own niche social networks. One of the co-founders is Marc Andreessen from Mosiac and Netscape fame. Technical skills are not required and it has a long list of features and functionality. Ning also supports the OpenSocial API.

Ning has two primary business models. The first allows you to create a network for free in exchange for the network hosting ads that Ning supplies. The other, known as Ning for Business, has monthly fees which provides premium services including control over ad content, extra storage and bandwidth, and use of your own domain name. I have created many niche social network sites using Ning and have always been impressed.

Cluetrain

Many people dismiss social networks as the latest buzzword and/or Internet fad. This is a mistake. The Cluetrain Manifesto was written in 1999 and I still consider the message very timely, especially the value of the social Web. Here’s a quote from the preface:

The Web is not a new medium or a new place to shop or a new way to make a fast million, but instead is a global set of conversations - people talking together, in their own voices, about what they care about.

And another from the introduction:

What if the real attraction of the Internet is not its cutting-edge bells and whistles, its jazzy interface or any of the advanced technology that underlies its pipes and wires. What if, instead, the attraction is an atavistic throwback to the prehistoric human fascination with telling tales. … Millions have flocked to the Net in an incredibly short time, not because it was user friendly - it wasn’t - but because it seemed to offer some intangible quality missing in action from modern life. … The Internet connected people to each other and provided a space in which the human voice would be rapidly rediscovered.

Alan Moore, co-author of the seminal book Communities Dominate Brands, sums it up by saying that human beings are highly social animals and have an innate need to connect, communicate and interact. This is the heart and soul of the Web, what it does best, and why social networks are here to stay.

Metcalfe’s Law

Metcalfe’s Law states that the value of a communications network grows exponentially as the number of users grows. As networks get larger, they also get smarter. The Cluetrain Corollary states that the level of knowledge on a network increases as the square of the number of users times the volume of conversation. Not only do you need members of a network, you need participation.

The challenge for the new uwebd site will be getting enough participation to hit critical mass. Many sites on Ning have been abandoned due to a limited number of members and the resulting lack of participation. For the site to ultimately be of value, membership will need to continue to grow as well as participation.

Wisdom of Crowds

From my travels, I know first hand the collective intelligence of the higher ed web community. I’m exciting about the possibilities of the new site which has the potential to allow higher ed web professionals to connect and collaborate in new and exciting ways.

I encourage everyone involved with higher ed websites to not only join, but to participate as well. Again, the site is located at cuwebd.ning.com. You can visit my page on the site at cuwebd.ning.com/profile/Mark. Your feedback on the site is welcome.

In 2008, I plan on writing and speaking extensively on Social Networks, with special attention paid to niche or vertical social networks. Here are a few of the blogs that I currently follow on Social Networking:

• Many 2 Many
• Communities Dominate Brands
• apophenia (Danah Boyd)
• Bokardo - Social Web Design
• Social Media Today
• blog.pmarca.com (Marc Andreessen)

Help me build this list. What other good blogs on Social Networking are out there?

Over the past few months I’ve been happy to see many of my colleagues at UB and other institutions starting to use social networks. Not only are they on sites like Facebook and LinkedIn, they are actively using them to build relationships.

The next step will be the development of niche social networks. Think of it as the intersection of social networks and the long tail. While Facebook and LinkedIn attract millions of users, these users have very dissimilar interests and share little in common. They were not built to be flexible. Niche social networks have the potential to allow like-minded people to connect in a much more meaningful way than the larger sites.

Many new tools are emerging to build social networks including Ning, CollectiveX, and Elgg. I am currently testing both Ning and Elgg to build an “Academic Network” which will allow students to connect and collobarate around shared academic interests.

As the number of social networks grow, social network overload will become a major issue. How can we keep up-to-date on the activity across numerous social networks?. Tools that aggregate your social websites are emerging as well including profilelinker, spokeo, and Profilactic.

Many of the projects I’m working would benefit from a niche social network. From a homeowners association to an elementary school to a community tennis association, a common goal is to bring people with shared interests together.

Related Resources

• The Nearly Never Ending Market for Niche Social Networks
• The Long Tail: Social Networking is a feature, not a destination
• Metcalfe’s Law Recurses Down the Long Tail of Social Networks
• Social Networking: Time For A Silver Bullet
• Social Networking’s Next Phase - New York Times