Tag: jyri engestrom

Network + Context + Trust = Woah!

On 23/04/2012

So we have all heard, read, mused, spoken about network effects. What makes them strong, what makes them vulnerable, where they work and where they don’t (MyGuidie is an example where they didn’t). I am regularly speaking about the importance of context and am frequently borrowing the concept of object-centered sociality (never without attributing the amazing Jyri Engestrom who first made me aware of this all the way back in 2005) and the concept is so clear (or at least can be presented in a way that it makes it so clear) that most people “get it” immediately. However, there are (too) many real-life examples showing a horrific misunderstanding of it.

Now (drumroll), today, I came across a real-life example that shows you how can work. Here’s the backdrop: My rather wonderful son managed to get his hands on a work-placement at CERN (no, I don’t know how he managed either). As CERN is in Geneva and we live quite a way away from there, we needed to find him somewhere to stay (CERN’s own hostel only accommodates people over the age of 18 and he will be a shade under 17 by then, so doesn’t qualify).

What does one do? Ask a few friends who live and/or work in Geneva or have in the past. Look at Air B’n’B. Check cheap hotels. Etc. All done. Result? I now know that a) in Geneva, apartments are scarce goods, b) people I know don’t have flights of spare bedrooms available, c) hotels (and Air B’n’B places) are relatively expensive (a variation of a), I suppose).

But then one friend recommended I check out glocals.com. This is a site specifically for expats in some Swiss cities, amongst which Geneva. You have to subscribe and they will vet you before they accept you. So I did. With photo and all. Then I posted in their forum for newbies: “hey guys, here’s the thing. I am looking for a room for my son…”

12 minutes in, the first reply. Check this, check that. Hope you’re lucky. 23 minutes in: a lady (and never has the term been put to better use) offers a room. Free (I asked. Twice). She has two sons around the age of my son, thinks what he’s doing is cool and would love to support. And, oh, it would be great if he could speak a little German to her boys, that’ll be great, because they’re only bi-lingual French/English (yeah, right)… Bam!

I am still gobsmacked!

Besides that though, what made this happen, or shall we say more probable? Is it because there are angels living in Geneva (possible although it would shake my atheist convictions)? Is it because I am such a trustworthy soul (I’d rather not comment)? Or is it because this is a forum that is particularly tightly-knit, comprised of people who have a common need (they’re all expats in town) and have hence a common object? Me Ferrari (yes, she even has a cool name!) certainly is an angel but she would almost certainly never have dreamed of offering something like this on a site that didn’t have that type of context or towards people that were unvetted; she would probably not have been on such a site in the first place.

A site like glocals offers a social object (the city) to people who have similar contexts (expats). Because it vets its members, people tend to trust more. Also, the combination of context and trust makes it more likely for people to engage and help where there’s a need. Why? Well, because it could also happen to you, couldn’t it? And in a situation where you feel or have felt vulnerable (everyone who has ever moved to a foreign country knows how vulnerable you can feel there), you are more likely to offer advice, help, solutions.

And so we will go see the angels of Geneva in a couple of weeks time. How’s that for network effects in context working, huh?

Mobile Social Gaming?!

By Volker

On 26/01/2009

In Social

I’ll be giving a presentation at Casual Connect Europe in a few weeks and have hence been looking a little at the concept of social gaming. In particular with the iPhone success story, this concept has received its fare share of the limelight recently – and rightly so: the unique distinguishing factor of a mobile phone is that it is always with its owner and that it’s always on, making it the perfect tool for connecting with people (well, this is what they were invented for in the first place), and the iPhone does that well not only with voice or SMS…

The “social” aspect of mobile gaming has mostly focussed on this connectivity and this is also what has been haunting it, at least in most parts of the world because of the horrendous fragmentation on the carrier and handset side. To make a fully integrated connected mobile game, one needs to integrate with a vast number of carriers (in the US, the situation is a little different – integration in only the 3 or 4 biggest carriers – Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint/Nextel and maybe T-Mobile, and you’re in business big time; there is e.g. WPT Texas Hold’Em that scored tremendous commercial success, including full web-to-mobile-to-web play), and they cannot seem to resolve on a common standard; nearly every carrier runs its own little system…

However, do games really have to be fully connected multi-player with in-game chat, buddy lists, alerts, etc, etc, in order to be “social” games? I do not think so. They “merely” have to become a social object, and set in an environment to leverage the social aspect of this (there’s more from Jyri Engestrom on object-centered sociality). This does not work for every game in every case but there are plenty of examples out there both in mobile and online: Playfish (founded by mobile games veteran Kristian Segerstrale) runs a number of games on Facebook that are stand-alone single-player games but integrated into Facebook in a way that pushed them all the way up the rankings. Digital Chocolate runs a very successful franchise with TowerBloxx on mobile and online – again a single-player game with hooks into existing social networks (the latter providing the environment that facilitates them becoming a social object). Orange Israel recently created a raft of online destinations around Totomi: a micro-site, a Facebook Group is all you need to create a community around a game.

So whilst I am and will remain a big fan of connected games (phones are to connect with people!), some simple data streams out (high-scores, etc) AND links into existing social networks are actually likely to activate a lot of the potential in there.

I will be continuing to ponder this, and I would be most grateful for any input!

Twitter's pains & (chance of) gains

By Volker

On 06/04/2008

I have been dealing with Jaiku and Twitter, the micro-blogging machines, a lot recently (see here, here and here). Today though, I stumbled across an article that put a rather different twist to it, and it makes you wonder… The piece is written by a mother of 3 daughters who tries to use Twitter as a mass communication tool (broadcast SMS) only to be utterly frustrated as none of her “super-communicating” daughters takes it up – too complicated, too onerous, too cumbersome, too – as one academic has it – surveillance-style.

Now, is that so? It would counter my (borrowed) argument of the intrinsic attraction of objects to social circles around such objects. It doesn’t seem to work with daughters though… Well, I wonder: The mom, a tech-savvy NY Times journalist, tries to put Twitter to a use, namely to shorten communication with her 3 daughters (no need to having to tell each of them – separately – that she is on the way to XYZ). However, the object of interest to each of the daughters is very different to the ones of the others (cardigan, pizza, shopping, …). So, no stumbling block after all: Twitter, et al are for people who group around a common object, which must be of common interest (e.g. the status and availability of black cardigans in the NY youth scene), not around one that only seems to be common (mom). Mom only happens to be at a point of interlinking circles, different objects that all touch her; she is not – at least not in the examples elaborated upon in the article – the central object herself.

Adoption-wise, this does of course not make things easier as the Twitters of this world need to migrate user behaviour: fans of Cheshire golf clubs or the NY indie music scene, Parisian vernissage goers and Seattle jazz fans will all have had ways to communicate prior to Twitter’s entry on stage; they need to be convinced that this is a superior tool to keep the community buzzing. And because there is slightly less vanity space involved (Twitter doesn’t allow you nearly as much room to put your wares on display), the communication bit must be utterly compelling to pull people across. It is the only USP the concept has. And this explains why the take-up is not as quick as for other social media: this is the raw core of it, and the simple truth is – as we know never simple.

I am hopeful though that they’ll find a way: object-centered sociality is the way!

Google goes "livestreaming", acquires Jaiku

By Volker

On 09/10/2007

In Social

Now, this is not strictly mobile BUT then it is considering that the target of which I report here today is heavily using mobile as a tool to feed its community, namely SMS (plus web and IM). It morphs online and offline worlds (nicknamed “bothline”; see here), and mobile is a huge component of this.

Anyway, Google, it was announced, has acquired the good folks from Jaiku. For those not that familiar with the radically new web 2.0 applications: Jaiku is a Twitter competitor where you basically “speed-blog” or “live-stream”. Jaiku adds proximity settings: users in the same area can/will be able to get in touch with each other and interact.

At PICNIC’07, I recently had the pleasure of listening to Jaiku’s co-founder, Jyri Engestrom (plus the good guys from Twitter, Plazes, Dopplr and Hyves), talking about the relevance of applications such as Jaiku. There is a video of the session available here.

It is (still) all about relevance and context. Jyri observed that context evolves around objects (such as office, Manchester United, kite-surfing, babies, red Bordeaux, and, yes, location…). The object defines the (social) context: you might be interested in the capability of webservers in your professional environment and discuss this wholeheartedly with someone else with who you would not have a single point of mutual interest outside of work. Change the object, change the context. Jyri (in his rather interesting blog) calls this object-centered sociality (yes, he is a sociologist).

Jaiku supposedly helps making focus on any object easier as it provides quick and universally accessible tools to see the activity streams of your contacts. The mobile version does this by getting those streams directly into your phone’s contacts. Cool stuff.

However, why would Google buy them (apart from it being cool and Google being cash-rich)? Relevance and context, again. These are the core pieces around which Google’s core business evolves: put ads in a relevant context and you improve click-through. Jyri characterized this by drawing the history of content discovery from catalogue (Yahoo!) via pagerank (Google) to what he termed “facerank”, combining the power of the search algorithms from Google with the power of the social network from Facebook. The latter is e.g. a search result that would take the social context of the, say, search string (the object). Friends, people close to you, colleagues, other fans of your club, etc are more likely to have come across something that is relevant to you than someone who has no touch-point with you whatsoever. You don’t have to know them personally: connoisseurs of Bordeaux wines might only have “met” in the virtual world. Still, since the context evolved around a common object (Bordeaux wine), it is more likely that you will hit a relevant spot through them. The higher the socially-enhanced rank of a search result, the more relevant it is likely to be… Compelling and rather inspiring!

So this is what Google may have in mind: bring the context to the people — again! Well done, guys!