The story of the social web is a story about how people, when given the ability to freely communicate – do so in great numbers. And when they do they abide by social rules (be yourself, listen, build relationships through give and take etc.). Social Tools Follow Social Rules. When people are allowed to exercise their innate drive to be social they expect the companies they interact with (and work for) to get social as well. Thus social rules become the new rules of doing business.

The problem is, companies have spent generations codifying rules of conduct to make communications – with employees as well as customers – cost-effective, uniform and risk-reducing, not necessarily to be social. We have put in IVR telephone systems (“press 25 to transfer to another pre-recorded call representative”) to lower call costs despite the fact that humans prefer to speak with other humans. We have delegated all communications to the outside world to two classes of individuals: low cost (e.g. call center reps) and high cost (e.g. “communications professionals” and marketers) who serve as proxy communicators on behalf of the organization. Neither of these addresses the challenge of the social web.

This is the challenge.

How does an organization manage the increasing communications asymmetry between inside and outside?

On the inside, information flow is glacial and constricted to a few individuals at the top of the reporting pyramid. On the outside, information flow is kinetic and ubiquitous. Taken within the context and expectations set by the social web most corporations are now structured to be antisocial (communication by proxy) and non-responsive (overwrought workflows governing when/how to respond to issues).

There is no functional method within any organization I know (and I am familiar with quite a few organizations that are trying to tackle this issue) that is effectively handling the following questions:

• How can an organization reasonably (read cost effective and on-brand) be responsive to so many voices that are out there discussing your product or service?
• How do you calibrate your response times to the web where real-time tools like Twitter, Facebook feeds and blogs distribute information instantaneously?
• When and how do you decide to get engaged versus not when issues can literally metastasize overnight?

There are several mutually supporting solutions that need to be put in place and getting there will be a haphazard affair.

First, corporations are not predisposed towards listening (see Listening Beats Talking). We have companies preternaturally tuned towards talking. This is being addressed by the raft of social media consultants out there preaching the holy gospel of listening. Like all behavior changes, this change will come slowly. It will come as a slow market correction – companies that align to this new reality will prosper (think Zappos where customer service is their fundamental marketing plan).

Second, while we have monitoring tools that mine the social web for discussion, we don’t have simple means of connecting our insights into action. There is no “ticketing” system that can provide workflow and audit trail of a customer voice out on the web – and the company outreach that ensues. Another way to say this is that we don’t have any real, proven social CRM solutions. BestBuy has Twelpforce that allows hundreds of BBY employees to respond in semi-coordinated fashion on Twitter. It is a great program and a good start but we have a long way to go.

Now – what does this have to do with the War on Terror? The analogy is more of a footnote to this post but it is an important one and it leads to the third solution needed to meet the challenges listed above.

The U.S. government has approached the The War on Terror  the way a large, industrial corporation would; lay down a heavyweight strategy and marshal all of its resources for a big, resource-intensive push.   Meanwhile the enemy, like the Social Web, in this analogy, exhibits a few key characteristics:

• They are emergent: there is loose direction at the top but most of the action occurs on a cellular, self-directed level
• They are dispersed: geographically Al Qaeda has a confirmed footprint in multiple countries
• They are unknown – These are no longer state actors (in our analogy you might say these are no longer known journalists and “influencers” in the pay of a known corporation that you can negotiate with).  The lowest common denominator is an anonymous well-motivated individual or small group empowered to take a wide variety of actions in pursuit of their goals
• They learn fast, they don’t “play fair” and they are predisposed not to like you

Using a centralized model to meet a decentralized “threat” is a tricky game. The third issue that needs to be solved is that of communications decentralization within large organizations. How do you energize and mobilize your workforce to engage with the outside world? Companies that create a happy, dynamic work culture will have a happy, dynamic workforce capable of carrying the flag in social media (inside and outside the organization). This will allow you to move beyond the limited spokesperson model of today.  To get there companies need to (1) work on a culture of sharing, (2) co-create social media guidelines with their employees and (3) provide training that engages them in thinking innovatively about the potential of these tools and gives them familiarity with the cultural norms of the social web.

Companies that foster a culture of sharing will thrive disproportionate to companies that don’t.  And companies that address the communications asymmetry will be more likely to prosper.

Last week at Web 2.0 Expo Danah Boyd , a well-respected researcher at Microsoft took the stage to deliver a keynote. In most respects the stage was what you would expect: lights, podium, giant slideshow to accompany the talk etc. In one respect the stage was totally different – there was a live, unedited Twitter stream coming from the audience being projected for everyone (except the speaker) to see.

Danah’s talk was difficult – you should read her post on the subject.  She had a rocky start – couldn’t see the audience (lights), couldn’t see the Twitter stream (projected behind her) and the podium made it difficult for her to see her notes. When critical comments began coming through on Twitter it began a downward spiral. The audience laughed at inappropriate moments, throwing Danah off her game.  The audience then fed on her increasing anxiety and so on.

Danah’s post is remarkable in that she makes a painful personal experience even more public in order to foster dialogue on the sort of culture we are creating with social technologies.   Hats off to Danah.   The whole spectacle seems to present a great learning experience for all involved; event organizers, public speakers, audience members.

Architecting a Proper Social Experience
In my opinion (and with the benefit of hindsight of course) the architecture of the experience was bound to create problems. Speaker facing audience but can’t see them. Audience facing speaker and having the ability to project their thoughts onto a screen for everyone except the speaker to see. It doesn’t help relate the speaker’s intent, it doesn’t clarify anything for the audience (presuming they came to listen to the speaker), it makes the false equation that the speaker’s well planned presentation allies well with the spontaneous commentary of the crowd, and ultimately it alienates both parties from each other. I have moderated panels by fielding questions in real time from the audience using Twitter. It worked extremely well because it didn’t divide the panelists’ attention, but it allowed a richer, more diverse set of questions to be posed.   In each case we need to ask ourselves how the technology will serve our communication goals.  Which brings me to the next point…

Thinking the Trend is the End Game
The mistake above is part of a larger mistake that is being made everywhere; embracing a trend without thinking of why you are doing it. In this case the trends are (1) the audience is now part of the conversation and (2) we consume content in smaller, faster bits. These trends are not applicable to every situation. In the case of a large public event where the audience is coming precisely to see a roster of well-known speakers (that is how all conferences do their marketing), there is an inherent and justified asymmetry in the flow of attention. Large audience pays attention to a single speaker.    Just because “the audience now has a voice” doesn’t mean it should be exercised without interruption.  There is still value is prolonged focus, there is still value in the art of the lecture, there is still value in simply listening. In fact I have argued that being able to focus and having a capacity to sit still and listen will be the traits of the next generation of leaders in our staccato-signal world.

The Audience is Responsible
We don’t have much experience with simultaneously being able to be present in a group setting, heard by our peers and yet relatively anonymous to that same group. Previously, if we wanted to raise our hands to say something – we had to pay the price of being identified with the comment or question that we asked. This is why your professor always said, “there are no dumb questions” – to encourage people to accept the price of being identified with a dumb question by reframing the equation. Yes, you have a Twitter handle and someone could look you up… but this doesn’t carry the same stigma as being publicly identified in-the-flesh.

Recently I listened to a Fresh Air interview with Mike Judge, creator of King of the Hill, Beavis and Butthead etc.  In a very thoughtful, funny interview Judge stunned me by saying that he was most proud of Beavis and Butthead. He thought they were cultural archetypes; two un-self-aware do-nothings heaping criticism upon the outside world, while remaining completely oblivious to their own sorry condition. Perhaps it is a bit harsh – but often the Twitterverse allows us to be Buttheads – free to heap scorn upon public figures from the safe, cozy confines of our computers.   As a frequent audience member at conferences I am recommitting to the act of giving my attention and focus on the speakers I have paid to see.

Full Disclosure:  I have worked at O’Reilly Media (co-organizers of the event) and know both Web 2.0 Expo Conference chairs.   I have nothing but respect for how well they do their job and continually push the boundaries regarding how to enhance the event experience.

Here is a link to a transcript of Danah Boyd’s talk.  It is worth paying attention to.

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2009 was the year that everything received a “social” prefix; social media, social web, social business and so on. I wanted to ask John Hagel – co-chair of Deloitte’s Center for the Edge – for his take on the significance of the term and its importance for business.
John starts with a great quote, “in many respects we are going back to the future:” the Internet began as a social tool with early bulletin boards that connected small groups with shared interests (mainly academic researchers).  Then the Worldwide Web came along and the population went boom. Millions of people flooded the system to look at basically static content… With the rise of social technologies like blogs, social networks, Twitter etc. we are just now rediscovering the web’s inherently social capabilities.  John goes on to talk about the value of social networks to connect people and surface tacit knowledge and the concept of serendipity on the Social Web.

This is the second in a series of interviews conducted at the Web 2.0 Summit last month.  First interview with John Hagel on the Real Time Web is here.  These interviews originally appeared as part of The Future At Work series.

This is a cross post from Radar:

Kevin Kelly spoke at the Web 2.0 Summit and I ran this interview with him immediately after.

Kevin is a big thinker – focused on the intersection of technology, biology and culture.   His current line of inquiry is around “What Technology Wants.”   That is,  taking technology’s point of view as a method to get a deeper understanding of what technology means in modern life, our relationship to it, and where it is headed.

To Paraphrase Kevin: We are coming into a new territory where the dimensions and possibilities for collaboration have just begun to be explored.  As far as we have come in the roughly 6.500 days since the advent of the Worldwide Web – we are in the early stages of a Cambrian explosion in terms of how social groups interact and get things done.   eBay (one way that auctions work), Wikipedia (one way we collectivize formal knowledge gathering), Digg (one means of using collaborative filtering to delivers news) etc. are all just  beginning to show the methods and means by which we produce information and meaning in a social context.

This interview covers:

• The impact of the web on our recent elections
• The rich new possibilities for interaction and collaboration afforded by the web
• The Wisdom of the Crowds vs. the Stupidity of the Mob
• Technology is the 7th Kingdom of Life… looking into “what technology wants”

This last section (at around 12 minutes) is the deepest and most provocative. Kevin assumes the point of view of technology to assess its needs and wants and this is line of inquiry that leads to some surprising conclusions.