Sunday, February 01, 2004
Social Software for Geniuses (Who Don't Want To Weed Through Thousands of Pages of Crap)
To understand the practical applications of social software, you need to remember three numbers: 3, 6, 10:
- 3 - There are three primary zones of social interaction: the outer zone of "structureless exploration" (characterized by valuing similarities through sharing information and ideas, discussion and meeting new people), the inner zone (characterized by valuing differences where people with specialized skills collaborate to carry out specific plans) and the barrier of member selection between the inner and outer zones. Moving from the outer zone to the inner zone without considering selection is often disastrous. All the more reason for exploring...
- 6 - As in "six degrees of separation" where the focus is on reputation and social capital. The six degrees concept was originally proposed by Stanley Millgram in the late 1950's and since confirmed by Duncan Watts and company. While it is true than any two people are connected by six degrees or less (a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend), social capital dramatically drops off after two degrees. In the words of Watts, "You can ask a friend of a friend for a favor, but that's about it." Of course, some people have more friends than others, which leads us to...
- 10 percent of the American population calls the shots for the other 90% according to RoperASW executives Jon Berry and Ed Keller, authors of The influentials. Sturgeons's Law states that "90% of everything is crap." While I am not comfortable mapping this law onto human beings, my research of posting patterns in internet discussion groups follows a similar pattern: 90% of all posts are written by 10% of all posters, 90% of all posts receive one response or less, 90% of all replies are of the "me too" (cool! great idea) variety, etc.
