Process of Change : community

Tier Three Design

bobreb — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 01:06:40 GMT

Lots of really fascinating stuff is happening in my world lately. Some of it is a bit unusual. For instance, my wife now refers to me as the Hannibal Lector of Microsoft -- I'm not going to pursue that other than to report that I don't actually bite.

Anyway, half of what I've been working on is what I've come to refer to as "Tier 3" design. From this perspective, what we sometimes think of as Web 2.0 is in part the next level of abstraction of the internet: from physical; to content; to people.

The diagram might look like this:

It might not look like much of an insight, and perhaps it's not, but the ramifications are significant. For instance, if this is accurate, then MSN Spaces would not be Microsoft's consumer social networking offering. All of MSN/Live would be our social networking "solution". The same could be said for Sharepoint and Enterprise 2.0.

In other words it means a re-visioning of online experience generally.

The question then becomes, how do we accomplish this re-visioning? I'm keeping some cards to myself for the time being, but I will share this, when we applied this thinking to product support and troubleshooting we came up with a much different solution than we see in place today, or hear discussed, across the industry.

The quest for the best community strategy

bobreb — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 05:42:59 GMT

As I said, I've played online games for a while. Yes, that includes the classics, though I'd rather not talk about things that will date me. From where I stand, online games really started getting interesting with Diablo. With Asheron's Call (or EQ for some) they really came of age. I've played a couple of WOW characters -- never past level 30. Yes, I know, that means I barely played the game. My oldest son has a level 70 character (and of course a raft of others, but his level 70 druid is his main). For well over a year now I've been following his progression from the battleground, to the Arena, and into the world of raids. He has a full set of Gladiator gear now and is looking for a new guild. (Changing guilds is very interesting -- if you're into this whole thing, at least in part, to maintain pace with the state of the art in community creation and management. More on that later.) His druid kicks butt.

In the meantime, I've started in on Lord of the Rings Online. I'm trying to determine if Turbine learned anything from WOW -- if they've made any improvements. Here's my level 22 Minstrel.

He's been a blast to play -- but you'd have to like healers. I almost always choose healers. In my experience they're the most complex role to assume, and therefore the most interesting. Both my kids avoid healers. They're either DPS guys, or in the case of the Druid, an all around character able to do almost anything fairly well.

I've also joined a kinship. My new kinship is the "Misty Mountaineers". Got to love it. They seem like a fine group.

Turbine has made a tweak or two that I think might make a difference. I like how they've handled PvP better than the way it's done in WOW. I think that despite WOWs astonishing popularity, the way they've dealt with PvP will be their undoing. If I find it offensive, I can only imagine what a high context culture must think. I assume the Blizzard guys are totally aware of the ramifications of the world-building decisions they make and the impact those decisions could make on the popularity of the game in various cultural contexts -- I assume so anyway. I mean they have to be, right?

If you're into it, I play on Firefoot and my game name is Endorfin. Give me a tell.

Claimspace -- The power of simple, reusable, ideas.

bobreb — Wed, 16 May 2007 06:38:00 GMT

Bear in mind, Claimspace has yet to ship in any form. It's sooo close to shipment (if only partial shipment), it's painful for those of us that have been waiting. Also, be aware that most of the capabilities I discuss below will not be apparent in the first release. This post is about potential, appropriate platform design, and the power of simple, flexible, reusable, components. I'm making a claim about the power of ideas.

Korby has done a good job of describing the value of Claimspace from the individual contributor's perspective, and from the community member perspective generally. And, indeed, it was originally conceived to meet those needs as the phrase "personal recognition elements", that he graciously recalls, suggests. You make a claim, and people can vote on the accuracy of the claim, comment upon it, view where else the claim has been applied (Microsoft properties and elsewhere), and best of all get an RSS feed for the claim.

In that regard this emphasis is key: because the user can create/define the claim, Claimspace constitutes a long tail recognition system. It provides recognition possibilities for the greatest breadth of customers, not only the important, but tiny, percentage that receive the traditional "five-star" type accolades. Those systems have obvious and ongoing value. But every IT professional and developer -- every single one -- has something to offer, is good at something, and has the right to seek recognition for it. This is fundamental.

Still, delivering recognition down the long tail (and thereby doing a lot to solve the "who can I trust issue") is only half the story -- perhaps less than half. Claimspace is also a generalized polling mechanism. The ramifications of that are not fully recognized and certainly not appreciated.

For instance, let's say I host a community and I'm interested in asking my community members how they feel about a proposed new feature. I create a claim about the feature, expose it, and watch the votes add up. I could even make ten claims regarding competing features, and see how the votes compare. I could do this on my blog, or in a forum. I could reuse the same claim in both instances and totals are calculated across both appropriately. I could ask 30 of my best friends to apply the same claim and because we support authenticated voting, we can avoid duplication and properly total across each instance.

Claims can be created and applied by anyone, including the people hosting the community. They could be built right into the forums application, for instance, to support assertions or claims such as "was this post helpful", or "this post answers the question asked". A library team could, for instance, create several standard claims (a claim/assertion taxonomy) that relate to the quality or usefulness of the posted library content.

We're only scratching the surface here. Because claims can be applied on non-Microsoft properties, the wealth of information regarding likes, dislikes, opinions, whatever, is almost incalculable.

A simple REST API gives everyone (and I mean everyone -- the mashup possibilities are just staggering -- caveat, keep the crawl, walk, run idea in mind) the ability use the data in a manner best suited to their needs: community (MVP or other influencer) reward programs, product design input, product feature voting, bug prioritization, and on and on and on, all without a ton of custom code. Any Digg-like application would love this kind of data. Can you imagine -- hottest claims, hottest people making claims, most used claims, newest claims, by product, by solution area, by geographical region, and the list goes on.

How many structured discussions can we imagine we'd like to have with each other?

Am I again stating the extreme case to make a point? Yes, guilty as charged. And worse yet, I have taken the liberty to discuss Claimspace capabilities that will not be available out of the gate. If this bothers you, well, I'm sorry. It's just as important to understand what can be done in the nearest term, as what will be available shortly thereafter. Our children are valuable not just because of their skill at kickball today, but also because of what they may become -- especially when growing up takes only few short focused development sprints of the Agile kind.

*Imagine my claim here: Claimspace has a lot of potential. Agree, Disagree, View Stats, Comment, RSS

Social Networking Core Tenets -- KPIs

bobreb — Mon, 14 May 2007 22:46:00 GMT

My new organization uses these terms. We didn't. We used some others, but the end game is the same. Just to be clear, tenets call out what we value (though not necessarily why), and the KPI's (key performance indicators) are intended to help us measure our effectiveness against those things we've said are valuable.

And because I don't see any meaningful distinction between social networking and community -- it's all a question of types of associations -- we might also say this is a contribution to the marketplace of ideas on the subject of a core community tenet and it's associated KPIs.

To be clear, I'm not covering community site statistics of the following sorts:

Number of unique visitors
New member registrations
Page views
Retention/Attrition
Member loyalty
Member satisfaction
Most active members
Message posts
and so on

Those are clearly important -- most clearly important for judging the health of any specific community site. At Microsoft we have many, many, community sites (thousands). Our partners have many community sites. The health of our community overall can't be found in the impossible task of rolling up the above sorts of stats across the sites we're able to identify. And to date, our polling mechanisms haven't been wired to answer those questions -- if indeed they could.

But we still have to do so. Here's what I propose.

Core tenet: associations

Call it relationship if you like. The point is, community is about connecting people to people. It may be that the purpose of the connection is to avail one member of the content produced by another, but if it doesn't involve people operating together it may be a wonderful thing otherwise, but it's not community.

KPIs:

Number of connections per member
Degree of connectedness between between member connections
Types of associations by groups and individual
Message propagation rate across the networks.

I might suggest one or two others, but that will do for now.

There are a couple of things worth pointing out. Most organizations won't have any ability to track this information at all (let me introduce you to yet another reason why we designed our services the way we did). Tagspace, the upcoming Claimspace, and finally the "subscription" services (ohhh, wait to you see this) planned for the first half of fy08, especially considering their integration into our discussion services, round out our story and make it possible to get one thru three. We're still puzzling over four -- but we know we want the information. I trust the business justification is immediate and obvious.

The other thing to consider is that while these aren't exactly site based, they do assume the use of one or more of our services -- and will therefore be limited in that regard. Still, the services it assumes members use touch many sites and indeed many people that may not be members. For those reasons the information these indicators provide offer another view on the health of our community. One that is different from, but complimentary to, and broader than, conventional community site-health indices.

Struggling to simplify the idea of social filtering

bobreb — Tue, 08 May 2007 20:41:36 GMT

Damn. It's just not simple enough yet. The stocks and flows discussion was too hard. People still find the idea of anticipating and answering questions before the "asker" has the occasion to ask incredible (as in not credible).

So I'm thinking that perhaps we can use the fact that it happens all the time -- though goes unnoticed -- to make it clear.

How about this...

Try to recall a time when you were fully engaged in some task for at least one hour. For that hour you didn't have to search the internet, or any other reference. Ask yourself why that was possible. Ignoring the possibility that you were channeling some other legitimately smart person, the answer is that already knew what you needed to know to get that job done during that hour. You had sourced the information prior to needing it from friends, books, TV, magazines, hallway conversations, or possibly you deduced it from principles you'd learned (that you picked up from books, teachers, whatever).

In every case, you sourced the information from somewhere, and then made it a part of your personal toolkit, to be applied whenever needed. You only need a reference, you only need to search, when your sources fail to properly prepare you.

Social networking, social filtering, is all about using a social network to do a better job sourcing -- a much better job. Because your ideal social network consists of people very similar to you, the social filtering provides what must be the most relevant, most highly targeted, selection of sources. Who or what can know better what you need to know, than people just like you that have already been where you're going. (Clearly, if you're always on the cutting edge, your trailblazing tendencies have a price. For 99 percent of us that's not an issue.)

Professional social networks share the burden of identifying the best sources. It's as simple as that, but the difference it makes is hard to underestimate. Understanding it changes the way we support community, measure community, and interact with the communities we serve.

One reason Microsoft cares about the new community services

bobreb — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 03:05:11 GMT

Here's an article I wrote explaining a few of the reasons customers should care about the new community services we've built.

Microsoft should care, and does, for a variety of reasons. Most of them having to do with customers being happier, better connected, and more productive. But there are other reasons as well and below we discuss one of them -- one that is not generally considered.

Outrageous claim: if Microsoft customers were connected in rich social networks our support costs would drop dramatically.

Here's why:

Social networks are also trusted communications channels -- cheap, effective, and fast communications networks
When customers are connected in an online social network (actually online or offline, but we're focusing here on the online experience) and one customer has a problem, they all know about it when it happens, and they all know about it when it gets fixed.
A customer only needs to call support, or visit a support forum, if their social network has failed.
Therefore, support calls drop dramatically through social network connection

Consider the following illustration:

This bell curve represents a typical product support incident call pattern. Here's the scenario. At point "B" a problem is discovered in a newly released product and the first customer support call is registered. As the product is adopted, the problem effects a growing number of customers and the call volumes increase. At point "C" a fix is found. Nevertheless, the call volume continues up for some time before leveling off and eventually trailing off. That is the case today.

The next illustration compares call volumes when social networks are fully realized (a theoretical best case):

In this case, shortly after point "B" the potentially effected social network is notified of the problem. Word spreads, but not necessarily fast enough to immediately curtail the increase in call volume. However, as word spreads (and communications across on-line weak-tie networks can be very fast) everyone -- ideally -- in the potentially effected community knows about the problem. Call volumes drop off because there is no point to calling. When the solution is found, the network will effectively spread word of the solution. The area within the curve and between the dashed lines represents the cost of social network failure in terms of call volume.

Overstated? Clearly. The extreme case was illustrated to make the point. How extreme is it? Hmm. No good way to know. Consider this, satisfaction rates among opensource users seems quite high, and social networks are a principle means by which information is shared across that community.

The tools of flow and the value of community

bobreb — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 02:48:14 GMT

This article describes the value of the next generation of Microsoft community investments to the customer. Actually it does so three times: short, medium, and large.

Short and sweet answer:

In the experience of most people, the internet makes available too much information. The new community services make it possible for you to filter out the noise and pay attention to only the information that matters most to you.

How is this miracle performed? It's the latest spin on the oldest trick in the book: we do it together. Simply put, you identify peers and experts you trust and allow them to filter the information vastness for you. You use an RSS reader to keep tabs on what internet resources they find most helpful. Identify the right peers and experts, and what they find most helpful will be very close to what you need. As your skill with the services improves, the greater the match to your information needs.

This link describes how to get started.

Not enough? Here's the medium version:

The medium and longer versions borrow just a bit from the field of system dynamics (stocks and flows). To be honest, I got this idea from a visiting consultant who told me about a post he recalled reading on the subject. I couldn't find the original reference, so below is my best effort to recreate what I imagine might have been the jist of it. And, of course, I've taken the liberty to relate it to my own projects.

The Microsoft communities team is evolving its information repositories from stocks, or collections of information for your reference when the need arises, to flows, or dynamic information systems delivering information as you need it. To be more accurate, our stocks will remain stocks, but they will become better and more accessible flows for an ever larger group of customers. This is important and leads to what may be a shocking statement.

If you ever have to search for the answer to a question about our products the chances are good that that we've already failed you. Ideally, you should never have to search for an answer.

Consider this: around a million people visit our forums every month, but fewer than 10 thousand new questions are posted -- some say much fewer, some say a bit more, in any event it's hard to measure (some questions are posted multiple times in different places by the same person, and the same question is asked by many people using different words). One of the major reasons why this should be so is that the questions most people are pursuing have already been answered. Now this is important -- really important -- ask yourself why it is that 990,000 people a month have to wait until they have the problem before they seek the answer if someone just like them, using the same exact product in a similar environment, has already faced and solved that problem? The answer is they're not connected; they are not communicating; their social networks have failed them. And by social networks I don't mean being chums and talking shop over beers. It's sooo much easier than that.

Technically, what I'm referring to are online weak-tie social social networks. But knowing that is not really necessary. The fact is that such networks are relatively easy to plug into, require little of you, solve information overload, and might even let you go home early on Fridays.

Let's not overstate the case. You will still encounter problems, but if you plug in to the new community solutions, over time your problems will be fewer -- and harder. Harder, because you'll know the answer to all the easy ones. You'll be operating at a higher level. You'll be longer and longer in flow, and spend less and less time in frustrating search. (And let's be honest, there is no happy way to be interrupted, only various ways of making it suck less. And of course, we are also doing what we can to make searching for answers suck less in those cases when your network does fail.)

We're trying to build networks by delivering social bookmarking and site tagging service, and later a claims service. Both represent a source of critical new flows in and of themselves. Perhaps more importantly, we integrate the new services deeply into the new forums and blogging platform. Then, through the magic of RSS the outcome is what we humbly believe will be the most fertile field of information flows on the planet. And of course the trick is in finding and plugging into the right flows. Find the right flows and the magic happens. Find the right flows, and information overload becomes information abundance.

If this is all you need, go here to discover how to get started.

If you want to know more, read on into the longer version...

Definitions:

Stock: In this case it's any collection of information. Examples include online forums, online libraries, knowledgebase articles, even wiki entries. Today most people access stocks when looking for the answers to questions. For the majority of internet users, the net is one big stock -- one big reference source you access when you need a quick answer. And, as far as it goes, that's clearly accurate.

And stocks are great when knowledge fails. But their limitations become clear if you consider the extreme case. What if you didn't "know" anything, except how to search? What if you had to search for the subject of every sentence. Every job would take a very long time. Put another way, knowing is like typing fluidly -- without thinking. Searching is like hunting and pecking on the keyboard. Which do you prefer?

Flow: I use this word in two different ways (sorry, both are very helpful). In the first case a flow generally refers to a dynamic process that effects the stock as in in-flows and out-flows. The question and answer process (or flow) contributes to the forum stock. The publication process (or flow) contributes to the document library stock. The local user group flow contributes to the individuals personal stock (the information he carries around in his head or has immediate access to), as does the technical publication to which he or she may subscribe. The latter two examples represent traditional information flows.

Another example of a traditional information flow is the information exchange between you and your coworkers (a strong-tie relationship that offers a different value proposition than the weak-tie relationships we're primarily concerned with here -- but that's probably more information than you're looking for on that subject). In many organizations email and the associated distribution lists are a widely adopted, even primary, information flow. Microsoft is one such organization.

Essentially, people plug into flows to maximize the information they have immediately available to them. You associate yourself with the information flows that deliver to you the most useful information and the least noise.

Here is the ideal condition:

You are happy. You are in the other kind of flow(a mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing, characterized by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity.)

But it doesn't always stay that way...

You encounter a question to which you do not know the answer. Now, if you are normal, you are very unhappy. So faced with an unknown, you either give up, or you visit an information stock looking for an answer. For most technology professionals, giving up isn't an option. So it's off to Google -- oops, I mean Live.com -- to search for an answer.

But if you've been paying attention so far, you already know that most of your questions have already been answered and that if you'd of been plugged into the right flow, you wouldn't have had to search in the first place -- you'd probably be on your way to your kid's little league game. Where are those flows? Enter the new Microsoft community services. In time they will deliver an almost unlimited number of flows for you to choose from.

(We can also offer some simple instructions to get you started. Later, in the upcoming year, we're going to automate this whole process.)

Here's how we've done it. We built some tagging services and a social bookmarking service on top of them (here's another link on social bookmarking). If the term social bookmarking is new to you it is worth you time to check it out. Obtaining feeds that refer to the tagging activities of the peers and experts you've found will be one of your principle information flows.

We've also built a claims service that will release in May of 2007. Claims will also be useful sources of information flows. What's most interesting about them is that the feeds they deliver link you to different information stocks.

Both of these new services have been thoroughly integrated into our new blogging and forum products, and rich support for RSS is available throughout. So here's the idea, let's say you have a blocking problem. You head to the forums and find an answer. Turns out it's a good answer. The person that provided it has some real expertise and is a skilled communicator. So instead of just taking your answer and going back to work, you obtain an RSS feed for that person. Next time they contribute something of value, you'll be notified. Tagging and claims make the experience better by allowing you to further filter based upon a stricter and stricter definition of the what you're looking for.

Simple: you went to the stock, found an answer, and left with a new and valuable flow. We've embedded the new ideas and capabilities into the more familiar services. Thinking of deploying Vista this summer? Wouldn't it be a reasonable idea to plug into the key flows of information around that subject? How would you do that? Once we've migrated to the new forums, simply obtain an RSS feed for the contributions of experts you can find, or simpler yet, obtain an RSS feed for the tags Vista+deployment.

Today, these services are brand new. We haven't migrated the old forums to the new forum infrastructure yet, so the stock available in new forums isn't as rich as it will be later this year. In the meantime, the best thing you can do, is explore. There are lots of excellent flows out there. Yes, the interent is a fast reference source, a vast stock of information. But it's also a social space, and by using the new community services you'll be learning to traverse the new social spaces and to manage information access in that fashion. Take the time, develop the skill, and you'll be happier, better connected, and better informed for it.

Just a little more on -- What is Community

bobreb — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 22:14:00 GMT

I can't help myself. I'm bent on doing my utmost to come to some agreement on the meaning of terms under discussion. It's become top-of-mind for me recently because my group has been part of a general reorganization and the slow process of understanding between the new housemates has only just begun.

I took a stab at defining community a couple of years ago. The diagram that resulted is below. (And yes I admit I snagged ideas from a lot of places to put it together).

I suppose many of the terms used in the diagram above deserve some clarification, but for now I'm going to risk misunderstanding for the sake of brevity. I liked it, and continue to find it useful because it speaks to a range of associations, makes clear the overlap that exists between them, and points out that many community "types" can exist based upon a single fabric (forums, blogs). There are also several weaknesses. For instance, it does not make clear that strong-tie associations of the user group kind often employ many tools. That is, they may visit the same forum or forums, read each others blogs, or participate on the same DLs. There's a possible apples and oranges problem with the examples -- though I think it's a minor one. And, it's not remotely complete in terms of the channels available to "community" -- email isn't listed at all (sell that to the burning-man communities).

Finally, my diagram doesn't call out the fact that both no-tie and strong-tie associations tend to be predominantly "site centric", while weak-tie associations are more likely to be "net-centric". It doesn't in part because I'm not sure I buy it just yet, though I'm aware of a lot of anecdotal evidence that supports that contention.

All pro's and cons aside, there are other ways of looking at the subject. It's just one way to get to some common ground.

Below is another. It's from Rawn Shah (a Community Program Manager at IBM's Developerworks).

What I like about this is that it starts from "General Population" and ends with "Organization". That's a perspective my version misses altogether and that I find interesting. Also, by avoiding the word "intimacy" and instead describing the more concrete forms increasing intimacy delivers or enables (levels of involvement, complexity, focus, shared identity) it is perhaps easier to understand.

The downside is that what he calls audience and "social network" is what lots of people in my world call community. Telling them they're not community managers, but are instead audience managers, or social network managers, is asking for trouble.

In both cases, however, the range of possibilities is clear. And that is the central message. People are almost always in more than one type of association based upon needs and disposition. I, for instance, have very few online (or offline) strong tie relationships. I am, however, very much into weak-tie associations for purely utilitarian reasons. Even where I do engage in strong-tie associations, in those same areas I fully employ every weak-tie association I can find.

One type of association is not better than another -- though there may be reasons to strive for one over another from a corporate perspective in that there appears to be a correlation between strong-tie associations and customer satisfaction. (Sadly, the research I have available does not make these critical distinctions and so have less value than they otherwise might.) And apart from simple discovery, it's not clear that one type necessarily leads to another. Though we shouldn't discount the discovery/awareness angle. Seen this report?

Once we agree on a rational definition of community -- one that in the very least draws distinctions between types -- we can talk.

Tags: community social network socialsoftware microsoft

Corporate community strategy: communications as the safest choice.

bobreb — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 04:08:00 GMT

Why is investment in online community communications -- specifically, enabling social networking and social computing -- unlike most innovative efforts you'll ever undertake? Two reasons: the strategy is rock solid, and the community will do all the real innovating. How can the strategy be considered so solid, and what would ever entice the community to do all the innovating? The same thing answers both questions: genes.

(http://members.cox.net/darkened-past/evolution.html)

It is that simple. Birds flock, fish school, people associate with one another, and some of those associations we call community. We are a social species. We are a "we". Community, broadly, is among the adaptive responses our species -- our evolutionary lineage in fact -- has developed to cope with the requirements of survival in the complex adaptive landscapes we have inhabited, and that clearly characterize our lives today.

What's changed now is only the revolution in community that has emerged from the co-evolutionary development of several internet technologies relating to personal publishing, web20-style development, and syndication.

At least the communications world.

This makes the strategy unassailable. People are hardwired to associate and to use those associations to achieve their own goals. Give people the opportunity to interact and they will. Increase the communications capacity of your audience and they will -- in time -- make the best possible use of it. Even if you can't foresee what they'll use it for. (Alexander Graham Bell, for instance, felt the telephone would be most useful as a means of broadcasting symphonies and news. He did not anticipate it's popularity as a means of 1:1 interaction.)

Sadly, that doesn't mean that the tactics are foolproof. There's a lot of room for error in exactly how we deliver these new communications tools to our customers. Plainly, this calls for an agile methodology. We have to assume some missteps and focus on short turnaround iterative development. What's the right path?

To decide what to build we elected to stick with the basics:

Know your customers as individuals
On the basis of that knowledge help to connect them to experts and peers (emphasis on peers)
Given them venues in which to interact
Reward them for participation.

We have projects aligned with each of those four pillars.

Along with those basics, we've adopted the following user experience design principles:

Every customer visit should result in a community connection
Let customers feel the presence of others
Customers are in control of their self expression and their consumption
Customers should have access to the tracks they leave
Build for the long tail
Wed participation architecture with personal utility and a focus on a specific activity
Expose an API

We believe we can deliver on each of those design principles through tight integration between the components. (Will we get it right the first time? Probably not. But we're in it for the long haul.)

As far as I know, we didn't actually create any of those principles -- they're a product of the community of people interested in social software. It's our community; one which we appreciate; and one in which we make every effort to contribute to.