Softening the Social Bite

Karen Hobert — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 18:11:10 +0000

Remember when email flaming was all the ..er..rage? It took a while for people to learn to turn off the caps lock. Surely there is a learning curve with social sites. In the meantime the stakes are pretty high, like losing your job.

The minidrama is an increasingly familiar one as companies and workers navigate the landscape defined by sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. Firings and reprimands over postings to social networking sites have become commonplace over the last year.

Surely, as individuals, we’ll eventually learn to balance who we “let in” to our social networks, how we reveal our thoughts, and consider who might see what we say or do. I wonder how tolerance levels for “past deeds” will play out in the future. I think we’ll become more tolerant when just about everyone has had the experience of putting too much out there. It’s like traffic in LA (I get to say this cause I’m from LA); the best excuse when you’re late for a meeting is to blame it on traffic, everyone commiserates with you especially if there was an accident on the freeway. For an interesting read on putting stuff out there take a look at this New York Times article from 2007 (funny how this article keeps coming up).

But the answer does not solely lie with the end user. Companies need to frequently communicate with their employees on what they will tolerate and not just rely on draconian measures after the fact. What’s the phrase, “an ounce of prevention…”? Most companies have some sort of policy on cyber-flaming; although it’s probably obtusely named something like Electronic Communications Agreement that employees my need to sign (but not re-read) once a year. Usually the agreement includes broadly written rules that only do well to serve as blunt instruments when it’s needed or is useful. Typically signing the agreement is made part of employment terms but the rules are dictated rather than communicated. When was the last time you read the entire licensing agreement when you installed a piece of software? And do you think of it every time you use the software? Same idea. If a company wants to avoid embarrassment and leaked information then it should take measures to help employees understand what is tolerated and help them to do the right thing.

AP Reporter Reprimanded For Facebook Post; Union Protests | Threat Level | Wired.com

Traction Software, Inc. | Blog1014: Explaining Twitter – One of Three Places for People

pbokelly — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 18:20:06 +0000

An excellent social networking snapshot from Traction Software co-founder Greg Lloyd – read the full post for more insights, if you’re pondering social software dynamics

For me, the most interesting use of Twitter is as host of the world’s largest stream of personal broadcast channels: you can find, follow or reply to people adept at the 160 character tweet. For example, I enjoy David Pogue (pogue) and Steven Fry (stephenfry) for their ability to mix notes, quips and links. I also follow a sampling of folk interested in hypertext, social software and technology – at least those who don’t just repeat what I scan in more detail from their RSS feeds. I’ll occasionally reply or rebroadcast a tweet ("retweet"), but I also don’t feel bad about un-following folk whose posts I’d rather read in RSS, or tune out as the only way to keep the signal-to-noise ratio of what I read under control. If you attempt to follow a very large number of people, you’ll end up reading a random sample or facing a signal to noise problem:

Venkatesh Rao (vgr): 9:44AM Mar 21: Twitter needs a ‘more like this’/'less like this’ reinforcement learning to lower my SNR . Fave tweet types, not people.

My reply (roundtrip) about 12 hours later: @vgr agree. There’s a great difference between following friends & family where everything counts & topics you care about x everyone.

I’ll call this use of Twitter the world’s largest floating cocktail party, coffee break, and trade show happy hour, where you’re free to tune in to what anyone is saying to the world – and talk back if you wish. Just like any party the roof is an introduction, but you can also just step back and enjoy the flow. It’s a fragmented, freewheeling and noisy place – but you choose the channels you want to listen to follow and can change channels any time.

Traction Software, Inc. | Blog1014: Explaining Twitter – One of Three Places for People

Collaborative Strategy Guild » Social Software

Softening the Social Bite

Traction Software, Inc. | Blog1014: Explaining Twitter – One of Three Places for People