Social Signal: Latest Blog Posts

Alex on why you should stop apologizing for your online life

Rob Cottingham — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 16:55:29 +0000

It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking what we do online isn't real, and doesn't matter. And it doesn't help that we've developed the acronym IRL, In Real Life, to refer to the offline world.

But why shouldn't we regard our online lives as just as real, just as valid and just as meaningful as our offline ones? That's the question Alex posed a few months ago at TEDx Victoria, proceeding from a blog post she wrote last year for the Harvard Business Review.

The talk, titled "Ten Reasons to Stop Apologizing for your Online Life", just went live. And if you've ever wondered why a valued online friendship doesn't count as "the real world" while a trip to the mall does - and, more to the point, what you can do about it - you'll want to watch.

Just because you have numbers doesn't mean you have insight

Rob Cottingham — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 22:43:38 +0000

One of the most seductive things about social media is the way it allows us to quantify things. I have more friends than she does – I must be more popular. That blog post got more hits than this one, so that one's more effective. We have more Twitter followers this month than last month, so we're on the right track.

Numbers are lovely that way. In a world where everything seems open to interpretation, numbers offer certainty. Five is bigger than three: end of argument.

Problem is, a beautiful number can hide an ugly bunch of oversimplification. Trying to quantify the complexities of human interaction in a multidimensional matrix of influence and activity in a few simple numbers is next to impossible (although potentially very attractive to venture capitalists).

Which is why, despite a valiant effort, social-media-analysts-turned-political-prognosticators fell so heavily on their virtual fannies in trying to use online metrics to predict last Tuesday's Iowa Republican caucus.

The good folks at Trilogy Interactive summed up how woefully short those predictions fell in a handy infographic. (Only one prognostication came close - eerily so - until a glitch in the data it was based on got corrected, and then it fell into line with the others.)

So why are retweets, likes, mentions and follows such poor predictors of electoral success? As Trilogy points out, it's partly because of the difficulty of focusing that information geographically. And it's partly the way those numbers confuse conversational buzz and notoriety with support. Micah Sifry puts it well:

Saying simple, stupid things that lots of people want to tell their peers about can get you tons of followers and retweets. But it doesn't mean anything definitive about grass-roots support. Otherwise, right now we'd be talking about Herman Cain's amazing victory in Iowa.

More fundamentally, the information that Twitter, Facebook and other platforms can offer us about our relationships to brands, candidates, ideas and each other is still pretty crude. And it would take a far more subtle, sophisticated and complex reading of the things we say to each other to infer anything very meaningful from those blunt-instrument statistics.

Which is worth remembering the next time you find yourself or your organization getting hung up on the number of followers, fans and subscribers you have. Those numbers can be useful... but they couldn't predict Newt Gingrich's future, and they shouldn't dictate yours.

15 best practices for managing your first (or subsequent) web development project

Alexandra Samuel — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 23:05:28 +0000

Back in the day, the only real way to have an online conversation was to build your own blog or online community. These days, many people, companies and organizations have their first taste of online conversation and social media through pre-established social networks like Twitter, Facebook or YouTube.

But eventually, you might outgrow what you can do with those sites alone, or decide you want to have a new kind of conversation that is best supported with an online community of your own. When that day comes, you’ll face the painful, terrifying and thrilling experience of building a website — if not with your own bare hands, then through the efforts of an in-house web development team or web development company.

It’s a process that is always challenging, but never more so than the very first time you undertake the job of managing or supervising a development process, even if it’s as a client rather than as a developer. You don’t know what to expect, you don’t know what questions to ask, and you don’t know who is responsible for what. So let me offer a very partial set of observations and insights into the development process, which may make your first time out a little less overwhelming — and which may help experienced web-heads refine their approach, too:

Developer hours are your new hard currency. If you’re managing a development process, you need to treat each developer hour like it’s a bar of gold. If this is your first dev process and you’re working with experienced developers (if this is your first dev process, I really hope you are working with experienced developers) then they probably cost your company or client somewhere between 2-5x what you get paid per hour. Unless you’re dealing with an infinite budget, that means you have to be careful about where you spend those hours and dollars — and even if the dollar constraint isn’t tight, you’ll find that a good developer typically has other demands and will offer you only so many hours, so use them wisely. Once you start seeing your development hours as very, very precious, a lot of other development principles follow….
You are supposed to be the bottleneck. One of the challenging aspects of the client or project manager role is that you turn into a bottleneck: there’s a steady flood of incoming tasks for the dev team, which you’re supposed to pass along, only you feel like you can’t feed them to the dev team fast enough. You’re the bottleneck, which we are told is a bad thing, so you feel terrible. But here’s the secret to your role in the development process: you are supposed to be a bottleneck. By slowing the rate at which incoming tasks flow to the dev team, you allow them to work on the priorities that have already been established. While you may need to feed them some occasional additional tasks, particularly after a period of testing, it’s your job to filter all those incoming requests so only the essentials make it to the dev team.
Ticket your tasks. Web development companies typically use tools like Unfuddle to track their outstanding development tasks including bugs that need fixing. If you’re working with a development team that will give you direct access to their ticketing system, you may find it easiest to feed your tasks directly into the system; most of the time, however, the dev team will want you to give them tasks in some other form, so they can enter them into the ticketing system with all the details they need in order to address the task correctly. But you can create your own de facto ticketing system by religiously writing each incoming issue down in a single place, using a consistent format that allows you to review all issues and prioritize the ones that will go forward to the dev team. I recommend doing this in a spreadsheet (if you want others to see what’s already on the list, use Google Docs) or using a task/project management system (like Basecamp).
Review and prioritize. If you’re “ticketing” all the incoming questions, bug reports and change requests in a single spreadsheet or task list, you can review that list on a weekly or daily basis to decide on which items will get forwarded to the dev team. (Weekly for most of the process, daily when you are in the final phase of quality assurance and launch.) The closer you are to launch, the higher your threshold for what gets prioritized: if you’re just a few days from launch, the only things that should be addressed are the 5-alarm fires.
Batch your questions, bugs and change requests. It’s very easy for a web development process to get overwhelming, if only due to the volume of email it generates. (A project management tool that includes threaded messaging, like Basecamp, can help a lot.) If you are relying on email to send requests to your dev team, try to limit yourself to one email a day unless you are facing a major emergency. Ask your dev team to do the same — to reply to all your questions in one email per day (or week), replying to each line item/question directly underneath that question, so you see that each issue is addressed (even if it’s just to say that the dev team has now added that bug to their ticketing system). (You may want to agree that they can reply to each ONE email from you with up to TWO or even THREE emails from them: the first email to answer all the questions they can answer off the top of their heads, the follow-up email(s) to address any outstanding issues that require further investigation.
Snap your glitches. Part of the secret to communicating with a dev team is communicating clearly about what problems you are having or what you need done. That’s a bit of a Catch-22 when you’re new to web development, because you don’t necessarily know how to describe what you are looking at. So don’t try — take a screenshot instead, and send that to the dev team in your next batch of requests/bug reports! Use a tool like Skitch, and you’ll be able to draw an error on the part of the screen that is puzzling you, or to write a short note directly onto the screenshot noting your concern. Just make sure your screenshot includes the URL of the page you’re looking at. (The easiest way to do this is by including the top of your browser in the screenshot.)
Google your problems. If you are doing hands-on work as part of the site development process, such as authoring or loading content, you may run into problems that could be bugs — or could just be things you don’t yet know how to handle. Before you ask your dev team for their (expensive) help, try googling your problem: if you’re getting a specific error message, google that, or if you’re just trying to figure out how to do something, google the task along with the name of the web tool you’re working in (e.g. “WordPress how to insert image in post”). Unless you are working with a custom-built or obscure tool, the odds are good that somewhere on the web, someone will have done an awesome job of explaining how to do the thing you are trying to do, or how to fix the thing you are trying to fix.
Give up quickly. The flip side of batching your concerns is that you know you will be in touch with your dev team every couple of days. So if googling your problem doesn’t yield a quick answer, don’t keep slamming your head into a brick wall. Add your question to the batch you will be sharing with your dev team later today or this week, and then set the task or problem aside until you send your next batch of questions and get the answers your need.
Define what constitutes an emergency. Talk with your dev team about what constitutes an emergency, so that you agree on what calls or emails simply can’t wait for the next batch. Normally that will include any issue that prevents users from accessing a significant part of the site (either because it’s a very important part, or a very large chunk) , an issue that produces a visible and embarrassing bug (like a huge missing image on your home page), or an issue that creates some kind of legal liability (like disclosing private user information). And agree with your dev team on how to reach them quickly if you do face an emergency: email? tweet? SMS? call? Whatever your communications mechanism, it should be a channel that can get a response in less than 1 hour anytime during business hours, and ideally well into the night. (But remember, that channel will only stay open and responsive if you are onlyvery careful not to abuse it. If you have “emergencies” on a regular basis, either you are too quick to call your dev team, or they aren’t doing a good job of keeping your site bug-free.)
Schedule a standing check-in call. Email is great, and project management software is even greater. But there is nothing to keep you in sync with your dev team like regular phone calls. Scheduling can be tricky, so set up a time for a regular weekly call or meeting as soon as your work gets underway, and increase that frequency to at least 2x/week (possibly even daily) for the last couple of weeks leading up to launch (those daily calls can be short, but can help to quickly address urgent issues). Keep a separate queue of issues to discuss during your next call, and take 15 minutes to prioritize that list just before you have your weekly check-in, so that your most important issues get addressed even if you run out of time.
Build a buffer. Just as your job is to serve as a buffer between your site’s users and your web team, you may find that you need a buffer between you and all those authors/users. Don’t feel like you need to address every single question or suggestion as it rolls in: set up an auto-reply if you must (“thanks for your email, someone will reply soon”) and then do a daily (or for smaller sites, twice weekly) review of incoming reports, feedback, info requests etc. Decide which of these should be transferred to the queue for your dev team (if any), which you can and should reply to in detail yourself, and which can either be ignored or get a non-personalized follow-up (“We’ve reviewed your suggestion and will consider it for our longer-term marketing plans.)
Pay attention to what your dev team says is easy or hard. This is a longer-term investment, but unless you are going into web development yourself, the most useful thing you can know about how to build websites is what’s easy and what’s hard. That varies substantially from platform to platform and even version to version, but if you think you’re going to be working with the same web development tools or content management system in the future, it’s worth learning about what is easy to fix and what’s complicated. This is not intuitive, since things that often seem incredibly simple (changing wording on a field, adding a checkbox to a form) can turn out to be very tough, and things that seem hard (adding a rating system, displaying related tweets) could turn out to be incredibly easy. The more you listen to what your dev team says is easy or hard, the better you’ll be at prioritizing items during future dev projects (because you’ll know to prioritize easy-but-important tasks over hard-and-important ones).
You will not get it right. Even if you take all the foregoing to heart, your website (and especially your first website) will be full of shortcomings — if not outright errors and bugs. That’s not a sign you’re doing it wrong: it’s a sign you’re doing it right. If you waited until every last problem was fixed, you’d never launch. Better to get your site up on its wobbly legs as soon as possible –to “launch crappy”, as we used to say — and to start learning from your users before you invest any more money in building functionality they’ll never use, editing pages they’ll never look at, or fixing glitches they’ll never notice.
Get a mantra. When we were building our very first client website, our client gave us a crucial piece of advice: iterate. In other words, get it done, get it live, and start learning. We printed out that one word — ITERATE — and plastered it on the wall of our office as a touchstone. Choose the touchstone that will help you remember that you’re not trying to build the perfect website, and put it where you’ll see it every day.
Enjoy. One of the things my non-web friends often say they envy about my work is that I actually make stuff. This used to seem kind of funny to me, because I grew up in a world where making stuff meant actual physical stuff like cars and clothes. But with so many of my friends working in professional fields where there is truly no tangible work product — just ideas shared, organizations improved, people made less neurotic — I’ve come to see the miracle of a job that actually creates a visible outcome that other people can visit, experience and participate in. Looking at the site you’ve been part of and thinking, hey!! I helped to make that!! is almost the coolest part of building your own social website.

But not quite. Because the actual coolest part comes when your part is done, at least for now, and all those community members start moving in and posting content and talking and actually using this thing you thought you built. Because that’s when you realize you didn’t actually build a site at all: you built an invitation. And now other people are accepting that invitation, and using it to build something far more personal, meaningful and alive than anything you could ever have imagined.

What bits of wisdom would you pass along to someone working on a web development project for the first time? Please do share your thoughts in the comments below, or tweet them and link to this page in your tweet.

Engage your audience before your speech

Rob Cottingham — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 15:55:34 +0000

A lot of speeches begin with someone introducing you to the audience - reciting your background and qualifications, and then encouraging them to greet you warmly as you head to the microphone.

And once the applause dies down, you're looking at a sea of people who are probably as unfamiliar to you as you are to them. Your first few lines not only have to launch your speech, but establish a rapport and some degree of trust with your audience.

But in the era of the social speech, you don't have to speak to an audience of strangers. You can get acquainted and start the conversation days or even weeks before you break out the index cards. You probably won't get to know everybody beforehand... but you'll know at least some of them, and they'll know you.

Start by finding out where your audience hangs out online. Are there professional groups on LinkedIn, or groups on Facebook where they get together? Is there an event or chat hashtag they use on Twitter? Do they frequent the sponsoring organization's blog? Do they go even more old-school, with discussion forums? Are there Twitter lists or public Google+ circles that can help you discover them? (Just be sure these are public-facing spaces, and not places where participants are expecting some degree of privacy.)
Now that you know where to find your audience – or a chunk of it – you'll want to introduce yourself. But before you do, listen to the public conversations they're having. What's the tone? What issues are high on their agendas? Who are the natural hosts and leaders in the conversations? Once you have a sense of the dynamics, then it's time to let folks know who you are.
Post a message in the various venues you've identified. Let people know who you are, and that you're excited that you'll be speaking at the event. Ask who else will be attending, give everyone an idea of what you're planning to talk about, and invite suggestions and questions. Unmarketing author and speaker Scott Stratten likes to do that through a webcam video he records before his speeches, greeting his audience and letting them know what it's in for. They get to see who he is and get a taste of his speaking style. (You'll find that and other fantastic Scott Stratten speaking tips in this blog post.)
Write a blog post referring to your upcoming speech, and dealing with one of the key themes you'll be covering. (If it's a theme you've posted on before, you can revisit a previous post with a few more thoughts.) Consider asking your audience a question, or assigning a little homework: "You'll get a lot more out of this presentation if you can come in with a list of the three things you'd most like to try this year in your organization's fundraising." And include your video, if you've recorded one.
Looking for a big-picture idea of your audience's interests or level of experience? An online poll (using a service like PollDaddy or GoPollGo) can allow audience members to score their skills, choose a favourite topic or place themselves on a spectrum of opinion.
Your host can make a big difference in the success of your outreach. Ask the event organizers to include links to your blog posts, polls and video on their blog and in their emails to attendees. (Chances are they'll be delighted that you're doing this. We'll look at more ways to collaborate with your organizer in a future post.)
Use Twitter to announce your arrival at the event (which you'll do early) and at the socials and networking events (which you'll attend), using the event hashtag. Aim to meet some of the people you've talked with online. The face-to-face contact strengthens your online relationships, and can give you a sense of the event's intangibles that can be invaluable in fine-tuning your presentation.
During your presentation, mention some of the people you've talked to and the conversations you've had. And if you've assigned homework beforehand, mention it and weave it into your speech — you can even call on a few of your new online contacts in the audience to read their answers. (In each case, clear it with them first; some people are happy to talk online, but squirm if they're singled out from the stage.)

What you've done is to bridge your online and in-person presence with these audience members. Your speech will be better, because you've had the benefit of some insight into your audience's thinking. You'll be more at home on stage, because you know there are friends — or at least some friendly acquaintances — out in the crowd. And you've laid the groundwork for ongoing relationships that last long after you leave the stage.

The social speech: How your friends and followers can help you write your next presentation

Rob Cottingham — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 22:44:21 +0000

Speechwriting is a notoriously solitary profession. You might have a few conversations with a client, their staff or — if you're writing for yourself — a mirror. But a lot of your work is going to be just you, a keyboard and the unforgiving blank screen.

At least, that used to be the case. But when you're crafting a social speech, speechwriting can be a team activity. And even though you still have to do the actual writing, you can draw on the ideas, experience and ingenuity of a large networked audience.

You may feel a little hesitant about asking your network for help, especially out in the open: aren't you supposed to be the expert? But even experts have to do research. When you ask for suggestions or ideas, you're acknowledging the collective knowledge, experience and expertise of your friends, fans and followers, and inviting them to make a contribution. That's not admitting a weakness; it's paying a compliment.

Here are five ways to bring your network in on the act the next time you're working on a speech:

Crowdsourcing: Find yourself falling back on the same old examples and cases? Shake things up by asking your network for their favourites. A tweet like "Speaking to HR conference tomorrow - what are your favorite examples of innovative recruiting? #HRINS11" can help you add a few new arrows to your quiver — for this speech, and future ones.
Storytelling: It's one thing to set out an argument and back it up with statistics. It's another — and a whole different level of emotional resonance — to illustrate that argument with a real-world story, attached to an actual human being. Ask your followers for their personal experience, and you can find some remarkable stories to share with your audience (with permission, of course). And if you want to go that extra mile, and you have a willing friend with a terrific story, a webcam clip can dramatically boost its impact.
Media: Flickr's Creative Commons archive and iStockPhoto can get you some great images. But many of your network members' hard drives are packed to the gills with their own photos and videos, some of them quite compelling. Put out a call for a specific image ("I'm looking for a photo of a really beat-up old car for my next presentation") and you may well get just what you're looking for. Alternately, you could consider having a series of related images — people making angry faces, beautiful shots of waterfalls, screenshots of error messages — and turn them into a mosaic or mini-slideshow that reinforces a particular theme in your speech. (Just do your due diligence about usage rights. Make sure the contributor is also the creator, and consider privacy issues around any identifiable individuals.)
Brainstorming: Want to see how an idea or a line of reasoning flies with people? Posting it and asking for feedback (or, if you're up for it, pushback) can help you sharpen your thinking. You may get some encouragement and validation — or maybe you'll hear an unexpected point of view that leads you to revise your approach. (Inviting perspectives from outside your organization and your usual circle can be a great way to break out of groupthink.) And even if you don't change your mind, you'll have a better idea of some of the objections your audience might raise... objections that you can address during your speech.
Polling: A service like PollDaddy, GoPollGo or Facebook Questions lets you create multiple-choice polls to unleash on your networks. Don't go looking to draw any valid statistical inferences from the results... but if you're looking for a general expression of sentiment, you'll be able to tell your audience things like "More than three-quarters of the people I asked in a Twitter poll said they feel extremely swamped by email... and not one said they felt like they were on top of it."

You can turn to a wide range of online services for inviting collaboration and soliciting contributions. Twitter is great for short questions and answers (if you're asking people to share links, for instance). LinkedIn Answers lets you reach out to your professional network. Your profile or page on Facebook or Google+ can serve as a more conversational venue for longer contributions. A Google or Wufoo form can allow people to submit structured responses (the tradeoff being a slightly higher barrier to participation and a much less social experience). And if you have the viewership or readership to reach the right crowd, your blog or YouTube page can be an even more targeted, effective way of connecting with people.

It can't just be one-way, of course, with your friends and followers giving and you taking. You need to thank your network members for their help, and encourage them to be there for you in your next speech:

Immediate thanks: Reply to everyone, if that's even remotely feasible. If you've been deluged, then you might have to consider a group thanks — but most of us should be so lucky.
Credit where it's due: If you're using someone's personal story, you want to attribute it to them (after confirming they don't mind). And you should consider crediting somebody who's provided an especially remarkable piece of information. Letting them know you gave them a shout-out in your speech is a great way to thank them.
Credit where it's due, part 2: If you've used a photo or video clip in your presentation, you'll definitely want to add a credit on-screen. Ask the contributor how they'd like to be credited – and keep the typeface readably large (without detracting from the image itself). If you've created a mosaic or a mini-slideshow, consider adding a credit slide at the end of your presentation.
Thanks afterward: A post-speech blog post or webcam video is your chance to thank everyone who contributed, and single out the folks you leaned on particularly heavily. And not just by name; linking to their online presence of choice is the sincerest form of gratitude.
Continued engagement: Now that they've contributed to your speech, your network members are going to feel vested in its outcome, and in your future presentations. Keep reaching out conversationally, even when you don't have a speech on the horizon, and reciprocate in kind. You're starting to build a more engaged, more committed following — one you'll want to devote some genuine attention to.

Is online activism effective? 5 ways to ask (and answer) the question

Alexandra Samuel — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 03:07:12 +0000

Can social media catalyze or support political change? To answer that question, you have to understand who is asking, and what they really want to know.

And it’s the fundamental question we addressed today in a panel on social media and political activism at Meshwest Vancouver. I’ve been part of a couple of similar panels recently, one hosted by UBC Journalism, the other at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI). What strikes me about each of these conversations, as well as in reading articles or online conversations about this topic, is how often we are talking at cross-purposes.

Even people who might reasonably be considered “experts” in online politics and activism approach the topic from radically different perspectives, different not (just) in their left-right orientation but in the way they understand the question. These differences can enrich the conversation about online politics, but only if they can actually converge on a common conversation. Too often, we end up conversing in parallel, using the same terms but meaning such different things that we can’t really understand one another. So let me share what I observe to be the intersecting but very different agendas and frameworks that inform how people approach the topic of online activism.

Policy makers, including both public servants and politicians, want to understand how to weight, respond to, harness or control the online pressures for policy change. They are often eager to fit the phenomenon of online engagement into established, well-understood channels of public engagement, so that they have a template for how to respond: e-mails are treated like letters (but may be taken a little less seriously); online policy consultations are structured like paper surveys or town hall meetings. Channels that don’t correspond to traditional channels, like Facebook or Twitter, leave policy-makers more perplexed, so they want to know how social media participation reflects the intensity of political preferences (if I “like” the page of a given issue campaign, am I really invested in that issue as a voter?) and what kind of formal response, if any, is warranted (does every tweet to a government official require an answer?)
Political organizers and social change organizations, who are trying to catalyze large-scale participation (usually, but not always, to pressure policy-makers), want to know about proven and emergent strategies for online organizing. They typically have some theory of social change: an explicit or implicit causal model of how a given form of political expression (votes, letters, sit-ins) translates into a given form of influence (on public servants, elected representatives, citizens who pressure politicians). They are interested in how social media and other online tools compare with other mechanisms for aggregating voices and converting those voices into political pressure, or often, in how online tools can be used to drive participation in the offline forms of political expression that they recognize as politically influential.
Political scientists and academic observers typically approach the question of online activism with some kind of intellectual framework for understanding how political change occurs. This framework may be a highly formalized, recognizable school of thought, such as “institutionalism”, “realism”, “rational actor theory” etc. They will typically analyze the dynamics of online activism according to their usual analytic framework: if they are used to explaining policy change as a competition among different interest groups, they will be inclined to see the story of online activism as the story of how competing interest groups vary in their effectiveness at catalyzing grassroots pressures on policymakers.
Internet geeks are typically interested in demonstrating how the technological or social characteristics of the Internet make social change possible, or sometimes, in talking about which types of online tools or strategies enable which kinds of social or political change. By “Internet geeks”, I’m talking about a wide range of players, including digital strategists, web developers, and social media enthusiasts: in my experience, these different groups approach the question of the Internet’s political impact with a common passion for showing how the Internet matters. If they have a a priori theory of social change that tells a story about how change happens, they may try to map the Internet’s political significance onto that map of how change happens; if they haven’t got a theory of social change apart from online politics, they may construct a narrative of online political engagement that has no corresponding explanation for how political change occurs offline, and thus, may be limited in their ability to weigh online activism in relation to offline activism.
Citizen-activists are interested in how to allocate or amplify their activist efforts and political voices. They are interested in online channels that can provide the various benefits of political engagement (social interaction with other activists, identity claims, a sense of efficacy/impact) at potentially lower cost (if it’s easier to “like” an issue on Facebook than to show up at a rally). Unlike political organizers, organizations and policy makers, they are not necessarily invested in affecting policy; they may derive the benefits of activism through forms of online participation that have other kinds of pay-offs. They are interested in how online activism can make them feel politically effective, connected and/or identified, in away that is more fun or less effort than offline activism.

When you realize how differently each of these groups approaches the question of whether and how the Internet supports political change, it comes as no surprise that you get wildly varying answers. In today’s panel, for example, I found myself underlining the way in which online activism can defy the label of “slacktivism”, and have a potentially greater impact than traditional forms of offline engagement; in the process, I obscured the fact that high-efficacy forms of online activism (like the example I used of coders distributing banned software) are far less common than low-efficacy forms (such as “liking” a cause on Facebook), and that many forms of offline activism (like sophisticated pressure politics) can still have a greater impact than that Facebook “like”. No wonder that an argument that the Internet can support meaningful and consequential political engagement (as is typical for an “Internet geek”, above) often ends up sounding like a claim that the Internet is the most important or powerful source of political change.

Conversely, when you’re listening to a policy-maker, political scientist or political organizer, it’s helpful to note that the impact of online activism may well be under-estimated. If you’re evaluating an online political effort strictly in terms of its policy impact (which is often not the focus of an online political effort), or if you’re trying to make sense of it by fitting it within the framework of offline organizing, you may end up missing or misunderstanding a big part of the story.

Perhaps it is the citizen-activists, then, who are best placed to assess the absolute and relative significance of on- and offline organizing. Think of citizens as “consumers” of political change, making rational decisions about where to spend their political change dollars (or just as often, their political change-making hours) in order to get the most bang for their buck (or the most political impact for their hour). If online organizing provides the greatest pay-off, they’ll do their activism online; if they feel they make a greater impact in the street, then that’s where they will pitch their tents, metaphorically (or these days, literally) speaking.

But that assumes a level of rationality that citizens may or may not apply to their political activism; I, for one, am deeply skeptical of so-called “rational actor” models. I’m even more skeptical of any constructive political change coming out of a model that treats citizens as consumers, or policy change as a product to be consumed. Most of all, I’m skeptical about citizens having access to credible information about where their time will be best invested: if experts can’t provide a coherent answer to the question of whether online activism has an impact, or even a coherent way of analyzing the problem, I’m not sure how the average voter is meant to make sense of the choice between on- and offline activism.

The reality, I suspect, is that few citizens make that choice per se. They are living their lives online, and they are engaging in political action there because that is where they live. Or they are living their lives offline, as much as they can, and want to keep their political engagement in what they perceive as the “real” world. They’re not asking whether online or offline activism is more powerful. They are engaging where they live. The policymakers and the organizers and the analysts and the Internet geeks can only choose whether and how far to follow them.

Gmail's new design offers plenty of white space... and a good example

Rob Cottingham — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 18:54:03 +0000

Gmail has had a very interesting redesign. (I love the big fat red "Compose" button. Doesn't work on me, though; I press it, and I'm just as anxious as ever.) You can read about some of the details on the Gmail blog, including an account of the choices they made around designing the left sidebar.

That redesign has a number of people upset at the amount of white space it involves. I get that: it's great to be able to skim tons of information at a glance. And nobody leaps out of bed grinning from ear to ear and says, "I get to do lots of scrolling today!"

But white space has its virtues, too. In the hands of a skilled designer, it can guide a user's focus to the handful of things that matter the most on a page - maybe even letting you think about one thing at a time. (I know: heresy!) Yes, lots and lots of information can be great, but there's real truth to the adage that when everything's important, nothing's important.

Back when I was designing leaflets and mailings for Members of Parliament, there was a constant battle between those of us who wanted to maintain some structure on the page and a sense of hierarchy, and the MPs who wanted to add just one more paragraph of information. "It can go right here - see that blank space? Oh, and there's more blank space over there. You know, if you dropped the type size to nine points, we could fit a lot more stuff on!"

Thing is, for a small number of constituents, the jam-packed-with-information, looks-like-a-Dr.-Bronner's-Castile-Soap-label leaflets actually worked. They loved 'em. And for those few dozen people, if we'd had the time and resources, it would have made sense to create a separate version.

But for the thousands of others we were trying to reach, not so much.

Google does have the resources, and in addition to the airy default (or "Comfortable") layout, you can choose "Cozy" and "Compact" (or, as I call it - affectionately - "Bill Blaikie mode"). If you're feeling the need to flood your eyeballs, by all means make the switch.

But maybe give "Comfortable" a chance first. You may surprise yourself.

And then ask yourself if your web site has enough room for your users to breathe - even if it means a little scrolling.

Using social media to turn your next speech into an ongoing conversation

Rob Cottingham — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 21:44:18 +0000

For all the effort that goes into a speech - especially a big one - they're over surprisingly quickly. You reach a few dozen, a few hundred or (if you have a huge crowd) a few thousand people for a brief while, and then you walk off the stage, and the audience walks out the door.

For a few minutes, you've made a significant connection with those people. But all the potential relationships and conversations that could arise from that connection walk out the door with them.

That's why a growing number of speakers are using social media and online networks to start building those relationships, and expand both their audience and their impact. From Twitter hashtags to YouTube clips, public speaking - the oldest broadcast medium there is - is rapidly embracing the digital realm.

And over the next few weeks, this blog will look at some of the ways you can use social tools to turn those one-speech stands into ongoing relationships.

I can imagine a lot of speakers' and speechwriters' hackles going up right now. You're already going to an incredible amount of effort: writing, reviewing, rehearsing, preparing slides. Why would you add even more work?

Actually, because you're going to so much effort. You want to see as much of a return as possible on all that hard work. And just as social tools have dramatically increased the potential audience for everyone from writers to photographers to (cough) cartoonists, they can do (and are doing) the same for speakers.

You have an audience far outside the walls of whatever meeting room, banquet hall or conference center you're in. Why not address them too? And for that matter, the people who are attending your speech are probably going to be interested in what you have to say before and after your speech as well as during those 20 minutes when you're behind the mic. Why not give them a way to engage with you apart from sitting and passively listening?

And while right now that's an opportunity to stand out from the crowd, it won't long before it's the norm. Audience expectations are changing, as nearly every one-to-many communication channel they use is opening up to many-to-many conversation. It won't be long before participating in Twitter backchannels is the minimum level of engagement many speakers are expected to offer.

Just what that looks like differs from speaker to speaker. For some, it means expanding their reach by posting clips from their speech on YouTube and Vimeo, and uploading the slides to Slideshare. For others, it means crowdsourcing some of their material by posing questions on LinkedIn and Facebook. And for still others, it means carrying on conversations with their online and face-to-face audiences — via their blogs before and after their speech, and via a hashtag-based chat while they're on-stage.

All of this can be powerful... but much more so when those individual tools are integrated into an overall strategy to connect, converse and collaborate.

One caveat: there aren't any guarantees. It's not like social media magic will turn a dull speech into a viral success (at least, not one you'll appreciate - a few million views on a YouTube video labelled "Can You Believe How Long This Guy Goes On About Carriage Bolts?" may not be what you're looking for.)

But when you do have a compelling message (and what other kind of speech is really worth giving?) then your network can magnify it many times over - and help it become a conversation with many of the people you want to reach the most.

Platform requirements for delivering an online course to 4,000 businesses

Alexandra Samuel — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 18:26:22 +0000

What's the best way to deliver online training to individuals and small businesses?

At Social Signal, we've explored a number of options over the years. Now we're developing content for an online course that launches in January 2012, and the team we working with needs your help in identifying the best courseware solutions or courseware developers/integrators.

This course offering will be seen by 4,000 companies within the first 90 days of launch, so it needs to run on a robust and polished platform. We are considering both pre-existing course delivery platforms, and custom-built solutions.

I've documented the high-level project requirements (below) and would love to hear recommendations. Have you taken an online course that wowed you -- not only with its content, but with the ease and polish of the online interface? Have you delivered an online course using a platform or working with a developer that you would recommend? Are you a vendor with a proven solution or a portfolio of online training projects you've built for other customers? I'd love to hear from you, either in comments below, via Twitter, or via email (alex [at] socialsignal [dot] com). (Vendors, please read the note at the end of this post before e-mailing.)

Requirements: Essentials

Web-based course delivery
Intuitive, polished interface: this should look great and be a pleasure to use
Support for multiple media types: video, text, imagesRobust, per-segment paywalls (i.e. students should be able to buy 1 course unit, all 24 course units, or any combination)
Speed of deployment: platform must be live, with all content loaded, by Jan 15 (client to supply all media files and all text in HTML)

Requirements: Important

Alternate distribution channels: apps in app stores (Android and iOS), ebooks (Kindle, Nook, iBooks) and/or physical distribution (DVD/USB drive); purchasing a course on one platform (e.g. web) gets you access on all other distribution channels (e.g. iOS, Kindle); same set of options to buy individual courses or complete package
Social network integration (ability to share selected quotes/videos beyond the paywall via Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook etc)
Interactive worksheets & tests
Some mechanism for student-to-student discussion, e.g. through forums or comments
Tech support: Ideal solution will include a tech support option that you support, addressing any user issues with lost passwords, confusion about how to use the site, etc.

A note to vendors

I am open to direct pitches by vendors, but we will only schedule demos or test drives with a handful of highly likely candidates. If you would like us to consider your platform, please include in your email:

Examples of past projects and clients
Link(s) to your platform or client projects
Paywall approach/expertise
Whether & how you support distribution via non-web channels (e.g. apps, DVD)
Licensing/development model: How are your fees structured (if a licensing model) or what are likely to pay (ballpark costs for a custom dev project building a platform for a 24-unit course)

Thanks in advance for your thoughts and suggestions. I'll let you know what we choose -- and when we're able to share more details about the course itself!

Good news: you don't have to follow people back on Twitter

Rob Cottingham — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 06:31:05 +0000

I've just read another blog post about someone who was accused of arrogance for not following people on Twitter just because they happen to follow him. And it's driving me crazy - crazy enough to have left a comment on his post, and crazy enough to adapt it below.

There are many people out there who will tell you it's a hard-and-fast rule of etiquette: if you don't follow back, you're a boor. (Some of them have suggested it's a crime.)

This arbitrary law of mandatory reciprocity actually makes Twitter less useful, because unless you're incredibly lucky, there are going to be people who follow you who aren't that interesting to you. Maybe they tweet about their cats all day. Maybe they're zealots for a religion, a political view or an operating system (cough) that you don't believe in, share or use. Maybe their entire Twitter feed is devoted to complaints that other people don't follow them back.

Or maybe they're following a few dozen people, but you have several thousand following you, and if you follow them all back, then it's going to flood your feed and you'll miss some conversations you'd really like to have.

The functional purpose of following someone is because you want to hear what they have to say. That's why Twitter created the feature; that's how they suggest you use it.

If you just want to show your appreciation to someone for having followed you, then courtesy already offers a tool for that: the thank-you. It's been around for millennia, and it has the virtue of being unambiguous. Twitter's pretty good at delivering it, too.

What's being invented here with the creation of arbitrary rules like following back isn't etiquette; it's a whole bunch of new reasons to take offense at someone else's behaviour. And when we tell people have to make a tool less useful in the name of being polite (which is what demanding that people use lists to follow the people they're actually interested in boils down to), all we're doing is throwing up barriers to genuine connection and conversation.

Isn't that the opposite of why we have courtesy in the first place?

Update: Jeff Haden, whose post sparked this one, has posted that he's reconsidering his policy of not following anyone on Twitter. "I won’t follow people just because they follow me. But I will start tweeting when I find cool people or ideas I think others might benefit from. I will start engaging in conversations."