Tuesday, July 04, 2006
The metaphor between gene, cell and social
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On Formal verses Natural systems à [206]
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Generative Methodology Glass Bead Games
Discussion on iai-members list
On my group's intranet we have a tagging system that allows anyone in the company to view our team members' areas of expertise, years of experience, etc. Although it would likely be extremely useful for those wanting to find an expert in a particular area, it has been nearly impossible to get participation from these experts in the tagging even when we offered to do the work … I expect in an overworked environment, the thought of making it easier for people to find you may just add unwanted stress.
Samantha
Good Morning All,
Perhaps a more likely reason is that the “gift economy” or “architecture of participation” that underlies success of these ventures in other places cannot do so in a highly competitive environment. This list, and others that I participate in, has a few individuals that do most of the work in sustaining discussions that illuminate resources and best practices. I do not see tagging as being in a different “economy of scale” for sharing. If the participant does not see some personal gain, altruistic or otherwise, why should they bother?
marianne
Marianne and Samantha
This is the Del.icio.us Lesson (http://bokardo.com/archives/the-delicious-lesson/) a coinage of Joshua Porter (I believe he is on the list) nail this. The key to del.icio.us is not the sharing but the personal value. The successful social tools nearly all provide a "value first to the person" and the secondary value is the social aspect.
With del.icio.us the first value to the person is refindability, bookmark (favorites) management across browsers and devices, and the ability to tag (for the various reasons people tag: refinding, aggregating, task oriented (to read, etc.), community sharing (NPT, moms, knitters, etc.), missing metadata, and personalization). Many other social bookmarking tools do the same things. Providing something a person needs in their life for their own use adheres longer use from the person than for social interaction first.
The mixing of the two, with attention to the personal needs first, while protecting privacy leads to some interesting tools.
Del.icio.us was not the first tool to do this. Amazon has been doing similar things with wishlists for years. There are many of us that use Amazon wishlist to store our media shopping list for access from our mobile device to have that list in our pocket in physical book, record, and/or media stores. We use the list to examine physical copies, to purchase locally, or add to our list items of interest we run across in the local store for purchase later. The first value is my own shopping list. I have also chosen to share that out, mostly because my friends that have shared their lists with me have opened up new authors or subjects that I enjoy or find of personal or professional value, or media that provides enjoyment that I would not have found in other ways. For years the wishlist was the most valuable tool Amazon offered, was the best social network/social computing tool around for me. It was much better than the Amazon recommendations.
Marianne, I completely agree, but I think that many who are building the tools will also agree and have been developing these social tools with this in mind. To note, social tagging on the Web is less than 0.5% of Web users (a quite generous estimate at that).
Thomas