Most of the successful Internet businesses and entities are about building communities. Amazon, eBay, AOL are all prime examples.
Social software has recently been the hip stuff. One registers with one of these social websites, and introduces one’s own friends to join the same service. It works like a chain letter, and eventually a big network of participants is formed. With the tools supplied the participants may get to know new friends and organize events.
Howard Dean made use of the Internet in a spectacular way. On top of the typical PR stuff, discussion groups/forums and email, social software was also used. His campaign pulled in an amazing amount of contribution, and he was the most well-funded among the candidates.
In the 2003.7.1 Event email was used to great effect, but most of it was self-induced rather than being carried out by the organizers. A few months ago I gave some thoughts about taking local political campaigns to the next level, but never got around to writing this long-overdue entry. Then Dean’s campaign lost steam, and he eventually pulled out on 18/2. Much has been written about the relationship between Dean’s failure and his use of social software.
I was, and still am, a believer in collaboration software. We advocated the importance of knowledge management and collaboration to our clients, trying to sell them software to improve their communication, streamline their operation and organize their information. Maybe our client profile was not right for this kind of software, and our clients just didn’t care. We tried to eat our own dog food, but that didn’t work. In summary:-
- Grunts don’t have anything to say or write. They don’t even have a computer.
- Middle management don’t get paid to make decision or do work. They get paid to attend meetings and listen to what upper management has to say. They also don’t want to be caught making any mistakes.
- Upper management don’t want to know about technology.
- When there is noone to collaborate with, the system collapses.
With social software, everybody is a grunt. Most don’t have much to say. We could spend a huge effort building the infrastructures, but they will be too difficult to be used by most, and they will not be any more effective than email forwarding among personal networks.
3 responses so far ↓
1 James Mok // Feb 23, 2004 at 11:14 am
People generally have lots to say, especially politicians. It is just that most of them either don’t bothered writing what they have to say down or have them typed into a computer, or simply don’t want any records of what they have said. Lack of technical know how is one reason. Most might still think adding info on to a website involes a lot more man power than just typing them out which in itself is already to much for them to do. Some are too old to listen to new and much easier technology, but like you and Steve said – death will take care of them.
Now that the market is in a better shape, hopefully people will soon have more disposable income, and will look into ways to spend more money which might include better ways to communicate.
2 tin_the_fatty // Feb 23, 2004 at 5:10 pm
People make a lot of noises, but do they have much to say? You don’t take public transports very often, but it’s funny when people talk to their mobile phones in a bus. They keep repeating themselves, over and over again. They would repeat each sentence two or three times, and keep going over the same narrow points. They would litter their sentences with exclaimations and swear words which make no sense. Most folks in Hong Kong are just not very good in communication. Their kids learn from their parents, and will grow up no different to them, only able to express low-level coarse emotions.
New tools make those who communicate well do it better. For those who do not communicate all that well or have nothing to communicate, no technology could save them. A Nait 5 won’t make William Hung sound good.
OTOH, human message relay, this everybody could do. Observe the large volume of forwarded emails. Canned SMS messages also seem to be very popular.
3 James Mok // Feb 23, 2004 at 7:10 pm
They do have a lot to say, especially Hong Kongers; they just don’t know how to say them properly so they sware a lot just to get them off their chests. Everyone is saying something at all times, that’s why it is so noisy everywhere. Nothing could help them is right, and although death takes care of them, more of them will be borned.