October 29 - Significance, Influence
Chapter 7 of Design to Thrive explains the dynamics of building significance among the members of an online community. One of the difficult aspects of creating a sense of significance is a sort of paradox between letting people into a group on an arbitrary basis in order to build a member base and the resulting lack of value they might feel in having become members so easily. Essentially, letting people easily become members of a group makes them value their membership less, and so social media authors must learn how to juggle exclusivity and inclusion when building social media. This factor of building membership based on exclusivity is also known as social capital. It basically builds the significance of a group because when building a community, quality should be valued over quantity. This is how Facebook started out, and when they went public a lot of its members were actually upset over the loosened criteria for joining. I've personally felt the same way in my martial arts career as I've seen more and more karate schools offer advancement based on less and less stringent guidelines over the years. My black belt was a very difficult achievement and took a long time to reach, so nowadays when I see small children who have only been in martial arts for a few years walking around with black belts of their own , I tend to get frustrated. Not only do I feel that they deserve theirs less, but the value of my black belt goes down. To say the least, in regards to significance in both martial arts and social media authoring, it all boils down to quality over quantity.
Mashable's business section contains an informative infographic on the criteria of Influence, which begins with a history of Influence that began in 1704 with the first recorded advertisement. Obviously, social media is much different today than it was 300 years ago, but some of the fundamental dynamics remain the same. The graphic explains the split between two main schools of thought on Influence. The first is called "the law of the few," and was first posited by a guy named Malcolm Gladwell. This law states that influence is driven by small groups of people with massive followings. The other side of the argument was first presented by Duncan Watts, and is known as "the pass-around power of everyday people." Watts's argument seems to hold more weight, and the facts support it. It's simple, really - consumers trust their peers more than any other form of advertising, and that's something social media authors must keep in mind when building Influence in any online community.
I also focused on the exclusivity factor in my post that Howard stressed in this chapter. I actually never knew that Facebook was an exclusive sight when it first started out, which makes sense to why it is so widespread now. I am sure if it started out as completely open to the public then it wouldn't have the foundation of significance that it actually has in reality. Also, I like how to talk about the quality versus quantity conflict and attach it to real life. I don't know anything about martial arts, but I can say that, I too, have seen little 8 years old walking around with black belts and I think that they may not be hard to get anymore. This is exactly why I am sure you are frustrated because someone from the naive public (like myself on the subject of martial arts) may see your black belt the same way--which can be very disheartening I am sure. Bringing Howard's concepts back to real life situations makes them much easier to see eye-to-eye with.
ReplyDeleteI also did my post this week on the juggle of exclusivity and inclusion. You make a very interesting point with the black-belts. Sure, that young child feels included, but the value of the black belt is weakened. Applying that to social media, it's easy to see how exclusivity can raise the value of something and inclusion can lower it. Looking at Facebook, I have to wonder if they truly grew through inclusion. The rapidly expanded, but as you pointed out, there's a different between quality and quantity. Is Facebook better now than it was then, quality wise? Does this even apply if the main goal of a website is to expand to as many users as possible? How does revenue tie in? Is quality vs quantity an argument if a business has quantity and income as the main goal? One can argue that quality can lead to quantity and income. I would be interested in seeing FB's statistics on how going from exclusive to inclusive benefited or hurt them.
ReplyDeleteI think Howard makes a compelling case that exclusivity, while beneficial for generating enthusiasm and hype for something, would ultimately be limiting if the policies are not loosened somewhat as the community of users reaches a certain critical mass/tipping point. Looking at the example of Martial Arts you gave from a business standpoint, a MA studio these days is likely struggling to stay afloat and to get new members to participate-- children, in particular, are enthusiastic about practicing and (I would imagine, I took Taekwondo as a kid, only got up to purple belt though >.>) make up the significant majority of new members. Children are more likely to lose interest in something quickly, however, if they do not experience Remuneration for their dedication, and their parents will be less inclined to continue to pay the Dojo. If that happens, especially with the younger generation, Martial Arts could die out-- people increasingly question its relevance in modern society. Perhaps what is needed to enhance the significance/influence of older, more experienced black belts is a type of badge/patch that can only be earned by completing certain trials or competing in competions at a certain level. Even though Martial Arts have strong traditions associated with their hierarchies, they will need to change something to address the issue you bring up.
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