Web Social Architecture

What Is a Blog?

It's a perplexing question, when you think about it, and it gets more perplexing all the time. From a technical perspective, a blog is just a web site. Blogs tend to have certain features, but those features aren't unique to blogs, and not all blogs have them. Blogs are usually, but not always, published by individuals, but not all web sites published by individuals are blogs. Blogs are frequently-updated, but not all frequently-updated web sites are blogs. These days, blogs are not always even web sites per se--they are integrated with instant messaging, social media API's, mobile devices, and so on. Is your IM-driven Twitter stream, transmitted through your blog via RSS actually a blog when I view it on my cell phone?

The seemingly easy question of what exactly is a blog turns out to actually be pretty interesting.

And Lee and Sachi at Commoncraft have busted out a nice, basic answer. What I really like here is the focus away from technology and toward authorship, utility, and relationships. This is great stuff for a person who's unfamiliar with blogs and needs to grasp the basics:

 

 

What a great introduction to blogs! Give those two a hand.

Of course, for those familiar with blogs, it's not hard to see that there's much more to the story than Lee and Sachi included in this video. (They understand the complexities as well as anyone.)

You can see blogs as a set of conventions or features:

• Posts appear in reverse-chronological order (newest at the top of the page). Except when there's a persistent initial post or welcome page.
• People can comment on posts. Except when comments are disabled.
• Incoming links are displayed along with comments. Except when they aren't.
• There's a persistent link to an "About" page that introduces the blog and / or author(s). Except when there isn't.
• Posts are archived either by category or date. Except when they are organized by tags, or not archived at all.
• You can subscribe by RSS and / or email. Except when not.
• Blogs link to each other. Most of the time, but not always.
• A list of links to other blogs (the blogroll) is included in the margin. Usually, that is.
• Blogs are standalone sites. Unless they're integrated into a bigger site, excerpted, or aggregated.

These conventions have too many exceptions to meaningfully differentiate blogs from other kinds of web sites and services. So here's another way to look at it:

From a social architecture perspective, blogs are structured around a singular voice, even when that "voice" is multivocal and multifaceted. The voice is the container. Within that container, the individual post is the primary content object, and the secondary (comment) objects that attach to posts are important mainly as attributes of post objects.

Likewise the author or authors of a blog are secondary objects, experientially subordinate to individual posts and important mainly as attributes of posts. In other words, in the context of a blog, what you say is more important than who you are.

You can contrast that structure with the structure of social networks (Lee and Sachi have a video about this topic too), where the individual profile (or "about page") is the primary content object, and blog posts by the author are secondary content objects that are important mainly as attributes of their author. Here identity is primary, and blog posts, along with other types of secondary objects, are important mainly as attributes of identity. In other words, who you are is the thing--what you say is how you construct and transmit who you are.

For me, most of all, blogs are social. They include commenting, subscription, and trackback. You can contact the author. They are human, authentic, a little rough around the edges. If none of the above, then it ain't a blog. Architectural considerations aside, you know it when you see it. A blog is, ultimately, an aesthetic.

What do you think?

Consulting Skills: Word of the Day is "Tendentious"

From dictionary.com:

tendentious \ten-DEN-shuhs\, adjective: Marked by a strong tendency in favor of a particular point of view.

Over the years I've known a few consultants who embody this word. They've mastered a topic area or a toolset, and they seek ways to apply it in every situation. Need to improve brand perception? You need a corporate podcasting program. Need to reach loyal customers with product updates? You should think about podcasting. Need to reach 200 million impressions for your product launch? Do it, do it, do it with podcasts!

Don't be like that. Don't be a solution in search of a problem.

Saying don't be tendentious is just another way of saying DO be open-minded. So the real message is that good consulting is about good listening and creative problem-solving. This is hard to do, because when we get good at something, or have a success, we tend to want to repeat it. The trick is recognizing the problem and developing a repertoire of solutions, and the flexibility to invent new solutions, that can be applied as appropriate. Whether they know it or not, your clients need you to be a strategic partner. You're the one with the expertise.

It works the other direction, too: Clients hiring consultants sometimes do so precisely because they've prematurely settled on a solution and want a consultant to help them implement it. In those situations, consultants sometimes need to help define the problem and work through the solution.

As a consultant with a focus on social media, I field a lot of questions about online communities. When folks talk with me, they very often have already decided that what they need is some kind of online community, and very often they've started with the tool they envision implementing. ("We need a wiki!) Very often, I find myself redirecting those requests.

For one major client, I'm working on a community strategy pitch presentation that basically says their brand is the very opposite of community, and they should be thinking about word-of-mouth instead. It's possible I'll get eaten alive. That's consulting--light a candle for me.

A Simple Formula for Online Trust

Online consumers, bless their hearts, are skeptical. Rightly so. Their communication channels are saturated with ads from people who want their money. From web site banners and popup ads, it gets worse: Having long since ruined our inboxes and mandated "fake" email addresses (I have three dedicated to spam-inducing activities like online shopping), advertising has moved on to our IM clients, our social network sites, even our mobile devices via SMS.

Everyone's selling. And gosh darn it, online sellers are pushy. And, frequently, they're deliberately deceptive. (The whack-a-mole banner ads get me every time!) This creates a challenging situation for marketers who want to create genuine value in online social spaces: Internet users are extremely sensitive to, and generally averse to, online marketing.

Getting it right is tricky. Everyone's after the most elusive of brand qualities: Authenticity. Everyone wants to create relationships with their customers, to be trusted. And the difficulty of accomplishing that can be measured by the rise of the host of online marketing consultants and technology startups with turnkey solutions for all your trust needs.

In that spirit, I'll offer up my own solution:

Creating a trustworthy brand presence in cyberspace couldn't be easier. Just follow this simple formula:

 

                        

 

 

 

 

 

Of course, I'm joking, kinda. Because the real key to being trusted is to be trustworthy in the first place. And ironically, being worthy of customer trust is harder than it sounds.

Still, the ideas in this "formula" are important.

By "authority," I mean visible expertise, the undeniable kind that makes you a resource for people needing accurate, comprehensive information. By "passion," I mean emotionality. Excitement, fired-upness.

The combination of authority and passion is critical. Neither works without the other, because trust requires both credibility and emotional connection. Consumers want to connect with humans, not brands, and when we need information--to keep our gadgets running, or to make a health care decision--we want to get it from a human we trust.

Transparency is the antidote to online consumers' skepticism. To some degree, exposing your mistakes helps. Giving air time to your critics helps. Admitting you were wrong helps. The occasional typo helps.

My overall message: There is no formula for online trust. Start by being trustworthy. And from there, seek out ways to bring your whole self to your online relationships, speak with confidence, be right (most of the time), show your excitement, and take your customers on tours behind the curtain.

The Shared Value of Online Shoppers: Amazon's Presentation of User Reviews

When it comes to user-generated content, Amazon was among the very first to recognize the value of smart, contextual presentation and emergent display. Waaaaaaaaay back in the '90's, they were pioneering use of customer ratings and reviews in e-commerce.

Naturally, they had a business reason for this early focus: Books are hard to sell online, because you can't pick them up, flip through them, and read the back cover (well, you couldn't in the '90's anyway). The opinions and recommendations of fellow consumers will always be important, but in the early days of e-commerce they mattered more, because other kinds of input supporting the purchase decision were less accessible.

Amazon has mastered presenting consumer opinions:

 

Here's a breakdown in the words of Justin Marshall, one of my respected colleagues at ZAAZ:

First, they give the landscape: all decisions by stars (top-left corner). Then, they pit pro vs. con to convey the spectrum of opinion. (I'd like to think they stole that from The New Social Etiquette's "Most Controversial.") And, finally, they present the rest by "Most Helpful."

Amazon has architected a conversation out of the bits and pieces of content provided by its customers, and in doing so has created an additional value within the shopping experience: A dynamic, informative, multivocal, and authentic source of peer opinion, understandable at a glance and rewarding of deeper inquiry.

One might even call this a community. Obviously unconventional, it nonetheless meets all the usual criteria I can think of, and above all, it provides value to customers--value that also drives sales.

One of the real puzzles here is the source of users' motivation, None of the architectural elegance of Amazon's system would be meaningful without users' participation.

Why do people participate, providing, at the low end, product reviews (mind you, book reviews are mostly happening on a different visit than the purchase visit, so the threshold is not trivial) and at the high end, detailed and thoughtful reviews. Why do they bother, when the conventional wisdom suggests shopping is the most task-oriented of online behaviors? Why do they return and provide feedback?

Naturally, I'll venture a guess: The Amazon customer community is a community of shared values, In fact, it's a community of a single shared value: Value.

What I'm suggesting is that users are motivated to participate in Amazon's customer community by their shared interest in getting good value for their dollars. Helping others make good purchase decisions, and receiving a (designed) measure of socially-driven feedback for their help, is motivating. Customers are on the same side, and in e-commerce community, where the social value surrounds purchase choices, everybody wins.

Have you rated an item on Amazon? Written a review? Created a list? I'd love to hear about it.