Join the Community workshop - facilitated by James Whatley

Introduction video

Task: timelining social media development -  who, how, where and why we use social media tools?

Team 1

• Controlling the data you create
  • People want to own their data, import and export it as they wish
  • Give gradually access to their data
• One view: “masses” don’t care about creating content, they just want to participate
  • “But what happens when the service goes away, will people then realize the importance of data?”
• Super publics
  • “How do we talk to / address people / masses that we don’t have any idea of?”
• Discovery of friends
  • People use different services to engage with different groups of friends
  • Different contact / friend usage on mobile and computer (Zonetag research)
  • Many services don’t have the for putting some your friends “on top”, which helps your friend management 

Team 2

• Why are we using social media?
  • Easy to do, friends, learning, authenticity, sharing, tradition, getting reputation, personal brand, ego, killing time, diversion, desire to contribute, be heard, first to know (early adopter), commercial (emulate person), get closer, narcisism, feedback, alter ego/persona
• Where are we going?
  • Information overload (good/bad), seeing the whole, consolidation, different lenses, self-organization, filtering, return of the renaissance (wo)man, control of piracy, tools for sharing, born digital, going mainstream, skepticism, digital dropouts/divide, open source/system, low barriers for success, ”real human” communities
• There’s a need to disconnect totally every once in a while
• Low barries for success: in order to make services a success, you have keep barries of usage really low
• Return of renaissance person – are we like that online?
• Born digital: is age the deciding factor? We see relation between things that seem to have no relatation, no real cause & effect. But they for a coherent picture when seen from the right perspective.
• Prosumer: professional consumer – people who necessarily aren’t the ones creating content, more like enhancing it, cloning. This poses questions about ownership, IPR etc.   

   

Team 3

• As we belong to many social networks and communities, will there be a one Neigbourhood Management Application (Aggregator) which will poll and push content you create?
  • “to keep the barriers up”
• Or do people want to keep them distinct?
• Can we distinct the communities / services we use through our use:
  • Are people on Twitter your offline friends as well? Do we spam our “real” friends?
  • Are people using some of the online tool just to market themselves to people marketing themselves?
• Generational differences in usage patterns
  • Facebook and SMS are the primary media for young
  • Are they replacing some other forms of communication or bridging online and offline communication?
• “Lifestreaming” use on mobile is heavily dependant on the clean interfaces and ease of use

Team 4

• Are we having an “Icarus problem”?
  • People heavily involved with social media are “flying too high” to see what everyone else is actually needing / using
• Is social media just a tool, should we call social media all together?
  • Without branding it right will it become an echo chamber or goldfish bowl?
• Will we be needing social media training to adults?
• “Auto” social media
  • If we can incorporate all the actions online (playing poker, creating a scrap book etc.) and add them to our “lifestream”, there’s a good chance that “social media” use will grow dramatically