Good list of 2010 predictions for social media

Oct 27 post by Jennifer Leggio (ZDNet):

2010 Predictions: Will social media reach ubiquity?

The predictions are from 31 people in Jennifer Leggio’s personal network.   It’s a great collection, and valuable to read through all of them together.   A lot focus on use of social media for marketing, PR, and enterprise collaboration (a lot of the predictors are engaged in consulting or software for those areas).

Common themes:  Social media will indeed be ubiquitous; will spread more in the enterprise; will need more privacy controls (or not); will have more location-based apps; will require more filtering.

Here are a few excerpts that especially interest me:

Caroline Dangson, IDC – @carolinedangson

“IDC survey data shows more than 50% of worldwide workers are leveraging the free, public social media sites like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook for business today. IDC believes the primary reason workers are using the consumer social media platforms is because their organization is not providing these types of tools itself”

(I believe there are other very good reasons for continued use of consumer social media platforms in organizations.  E.g., it’s hard to replicate the value of a global platform with 50+ million members .)

Peter Shankman, Help A Reporter Out – @skydiver

“We’ll update to let people know where we are and where we’ll be. And the best part is, we won’t have to. 2010 will be the start of the time where our devices do it for us. FourSquare will auto-update our location via GPS, which will tell Twitter, who will add the #fb tag and notify Facebook”

“we’ll start to accept the concept that hey – maybe we really DO only need one social network ,which will bring us to 2011 – the year of the consolidation.”

Brian Sibley, Sibley PR – @bsibley

“Domino’s experience taught us that when it comes to social media, you can’t just switch it on, like you can a traditional marketing tool. You have to invest the time to build a strong following in order to be able to use it as an arrow in your crisis communications quiver when the time comes”

Brian Solis, FutureWorks – @briansolis

“2010 will be the year that we save us from ourselves in social  media…we will stop drinking from the proverbial fire hose and we will lean on filtering and curation to productively guide our experiences and  production and consumption behavior and interaction within each network.”

I’m looking forward to reading 2010 predictions from others.  Thoughts?

How to Use Social Search to Find an Angel

Here is a meaning for “Social Search” that is a bit different from the applications that Google, Bing, Facebook and others are racing to perfect.  This one is already available and can be really valuable to entrepreneurs and other professionals.

I have a new friend (who found me on LinkedIn) who is self-funding development of a very interesting new product and Web service.  (A prototype of the product is cellalert.org - but an advanced version is now in development.)  The existing product has received finalist recognition in netsquared and other mobile challenges.  He and his partner (in different cities) are both working full-time in senior level high-tech jobs.   He has received some small funding amounts but will need more in a few months to keep going.   He needs an angel, but not sure how to find one.

My suggestion is to use LinkedIn; and I’ll give some examples below that can help him and maybe others.

From my own experience with social networking platforms, LinkedIn is way better than any other platform for this kind of thing, where a trusted introduction really helps, e.g., for finding partners, investors, donors, advisers, employees, friendly press contacts, etc.   But I would love to hear if others have had good results with other platforms.

OK, how to find an angel:

Social Search – What will float to the top?

Social search is on big companies’ minds:
Google’s New Social Search Is A Big Chess Move Against Facebook (ReadWriteWeb, 10/21)

So, Bing has Facebook and Twitter, and Google only has Twitter.

Where is LinkedIn in this conversation?  LinkedIn’s news sharing is worth looking at.  With a few changes it’s potential would be actually greater than either Twitter or Facebook updates.

Why is Twitter so useful?   Because I can choose whom to follow, and others can choose whether to follow me.  But Twitter has big limitations.   Even by creating a selected group of the people I’m following I still have to wade through a lot of non-relevant stuff, and I *mostly* miss a lot of stuff that disappears below the horizon surprisingly quickly – because I look at Twitter at most 2 or 3 times a day, and often go days without looking.   Also, 140 characters is very neat.   But not always appropriate.  It doesn’t really tell me enough in order to decide accurately whether to click through on the links.   And they don’t contain enough info to store and search.

I like LinkedIn News because I can quickly grab content from the Web and share it.  If I want to share it with a particular group or group of connections, this is great.  But something really crucial is missing.

I don’t always want to *push* news and ideas I find interesting to a particular group or set of connections.  And I definitely don’t want to spam all my connections.   I *do* want to be able to collect news and ideas and keep the items in a single place.  And I *do* want to be able to follow/subscribe to collected news and ideas from a selected group of connections and non-connnections.  And I want to also be able to go to a single person’s profile and see what news and ideas that person has collected, or to search my connections for news and ideas that match specific tags.

Those changes would make LinkedIn News much more powerful than either Facebook or Twitter updates – precisely because LinkedIn is much more focused on professional value rather than also flooded with personal messages, photos, etc.  Plus, LinkedIn profiles tell me much more than Twitter bios, and after all, I already have a lot of important connections on LinkedIn.  So LinkedIn’s search capabilities could allow me to find people who share my interests *and* who have impressive profiles and recommendations *and* who are sharing news and ideas from the Web.  This would be doing what LinkedIn does best.

What do Meta Networks Need?

(Continued from Basic Case for Meta Networks and Global Transformation)

Meta Networks are:

• Decentralized networks of people, organizations and networks,
• Bound together by shared goals, values, and experiences.

Meta networks are crucial for fixing global problems before they overwhelm us.

Meta networks need passionate, committed, and talented people, plus ideas, funding, and other resources.   But they also need methods and tools to make the individuals, organizations, and network as a whole more intelligent and effective.

Here are four types of methods and tools that meta networks need:

1.  Connecting people and organizations.

a.  Connecting people to people and organizations to obtain:

- Ideas, expertise and help (employees, partners, consultants, advisors, volunteers)

- Funding (investors, grants, donors)

- Inside Intelligence & Influence (related to potential customers, partners, investors, employees, and suppliers, and agencies, policy makers, communities, etc.)

Examples of tools:
Job, volunteer and consultant matching sites and databases; professional social network platforms for finding needed expertise and affiliations and obtaining trusted recommendations and referrals (e.g., LinkedIn).

Examples of methods:
Network weaving and social network analysis.

b. Connecting people to content
(to obtain news, ideas, opinions, research, experiences, knowledge)

Examples – Generic and specialized Internet search engines, content management and knowledge sharing applications and portals.

2. Sources for Reputation, Fact-checking, Due-Diligence.
(Supports other needs, e.g., connecting people, decision-making, etc.)

Examples:  Generic Internet search engines; professional social network platforms for checking professional experience and getting personally trusted insights and recommendations; reputation sites (most are not very mature yet).

3. Messaging campaigns to spread awareness and actions
(e.g., awareness and actions related to voting, contacting policy makers, talking to neighbors, donating, buying or boycotting)

Examples:  Social media sites and tools (Facebook, Twitter, messaging tools, etc.)

4. Collective Thinking and Action (big category!)

a)  Removing barriers to communication and collaboration.
(Dialogue, listening, finding common ground, consensus-building, conflict transformation, use of stories, symbols and rituals, collective consciousness effects)

b) Identifying, understanding and solving problems
(Collecting facts and perspectives from all relevant sources; Innovating (exploring/scanning/brainstorming); Integrating perspectives to reach consensus/decision on best strategies and tactics; Prediction; Deliberation and planning (evaluating ideas from different perspectives, consensus building); and Getting commitments for action.)

c) Collaborative Action – requiring complex coordination of actions by many people and organizations.

Examples of a, b, & c:   Online and in-person methods and tools for dialogue, deliberation, and collaboration.   For a partial list see NCDD’s Framework for Dialogue and Deliberation.

What is left out of this list?  Or what would you change?

Meta Networks and Global Transformation – Basic Case

Meta Networks are:

• Decentralized networks of people, organizations and networks,
• Bound together by shared goals, values, and experiences.

Mega organizations (like governments and corporations) are still important.

But the global problems we now face are too great to be solved mainly by hierarchically controlled mega-organizations.

Compared to mega organizations, meta networks are potentially:

• More intelligent and adaptive.
• More accountable,
• Better able to bring about needed shifts in global awareness and behavior.
• Better at distributing ideas, resources and talent to where they are most needed

Global-scale meta networks exist and are enabling great things.

But great as their achievements are, their potential is much greater.

That is, existing meta networks aren’t yet smart and coherent enough to accelerate positive global changes to needed tipping points.   Meta networks are fragmented; and most of the people and organizations in them remain hidden and inaccessible to any given person or organization with a need for more effective connections.

We need to do whatever we can to help meta networks realize their potential.

Next:  What do meta networks need?

See also:  Meta Networks and Global Transformation (March 2009)

108 Bowls: A Water Mala

Bonnie Myotai Treace, who is a Buddhist priest, and wife of my beloved brother, will be joining a celebration of Thomas Berry’s life today at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York.   As part of the celebration she has created a “Water Mala” of 108 hand-made bowls.   A mala is a string of beads as in a rosary, or a garland of flowers.

This site, 108Bowls.org, which is still developing, shows the bowls and explains their significance and how to incorporate them into a practice of caring for water, now in danger on our planet.   The video on the first page, and above, shows how the bowls were made and is set to the music of one of Bonnie’s students, Katheryn Hanz, a very talented singer and guitarist.

Collective Intelligence is Rewiring not just the Planet, but our Brains

A 6/23/09 article in New Scientist reports on “the first evidence that tool use alters the body map.”  That is, researchers have found that a human brain’s internal map of the body is adjusted to account for a tool that extends the body’s reach.  Researchers were excited to note that this means that a transplanted hand or a prosthetic limb would similarly be incorporated into the ‘body map’ inside the brain.  This is an important example of the plasticity of the brain.

What struck me about this article is the implication for collective intelligence and collective consciousness:

The more we use tools that embody collective intelligence, and tools that increase our awareness and use of the perceptions, knowledge and experiences of people in other parts of the world, the bigger and bigger becomes our brains’ “body map” — and “self map”.

As social media are evolving, they are becoming more and more tools for getting things done, visualizing and then solving complex problems, finding answers, getting support we need, etc.   A key is the shift from passive viewing of world events on nightly television news (which had its own expansive effects), to a much more intimate using of collective intelligence, and participating in it.

We are physically evolving into a new species – by rewiring our brains to encompass tools for accessing and using collective intelligence.

The two principles that shine through when collective intelligence becomes collective consciousness are:

The Whole is more than the sum of the parts.

And

The Whole is contained in the parts.

The gradual rewiring of human brains to encompass more and more of the whole species and planet is the physical embodiment of this second principle.

(Confession:  Whenever I write something like this, which I seem to like to do, I often hear an internal chorus of “Yeah, yeah, yeah, but now what?”  The “but now what” is the interesting part.)

In Love with Collective Consciousness, and Networks

How long have I loved thee, dear Human Network?  Let me count the years, since my birth into my loving family, and since my youthful awakening, at age 18, sitting at the feet of Père Pierre, saint of human networks, who wrote again and again about his powerful vision of the planetization of consciousness.

Every person I have loved, appreciated, talked with, liked or disliked, or noticed, has been an experience in the network of consciousness.  It is a network for loving, entertaining, trading, learning, making things and buying them, earning a living, and living.  It is a network for fighting, ha!  Competing, ha!  The network always both wins and loses.  It grows and shrinks, but now mostly grows, grows more and more threatened by its own incoherence, and ever more heartened by its own brilliance, and compassion, and inspired by its search for solutions to its – our — survival and fulfillment.

How long have I loved thee, dear Human Network? Let me count the years, since my birth, into my loving family, and since my youthful awakening, at age 18, sitting at the feet of Père Pierre, saint of human networks, who wrote again and again about his powerful vision of the planetization of consciousness.

Every person I have loved, appreciated, talked with, liked or disliked, or noticed, has been my own part in the network of consciousness. It is a network for loving, entertaining, trading, learning, making things and buying them, earning a living, living. It is a network for fighting, ha! Competing, ha! The network always both wins and loses. It grows and shrinks, but now mostly grows, grows more and more threatened by its own incoherence, and ever more heartened by its own brilliance, and compassion, and inspired by its search for solutions to its – our — survival and fulfillment.

My favorite twirler

My bonnie lass twirling to Cantrip at the Potomac Celtic Festival.

More info about the bonnie lass:  http://www.lisalindberg.com

Excellent sources of updates on Iranian election

Very interesting developments.   A promise of something good in the air, never forgetting the danger.

The best sources I have found for following what’s happening:

The Lede:  New York Times blog
Latest Updates on Iran’s Disputed Election
By Robert Mackey

www.twitter.com/Katrinskaya (Twitter posts from Iran)

Iran protests meet the social Web: What we’ve learned
(Gaurav Mishra Gauvranomics.com)

But of course there is a flood of good sources.

Five Causes of Media Inaccuracy – illustrated by reporting of the Iranian election protests

In her piece published yesterday about the reporting of the current Iranian “Green Revolution”, Cynthia Boaz identified five causes of media inaccuracy:

1. Intentional misrepresentations:  Spinning, twisting, distorting, or outright making things up for the purpose of bolstering a particular ideology, political party, or other limited interest.
2. Sloppy or hasty reporting:  “…the inability or unwillingness of reporters to engage in serious investigative or assiduous on-the-ground reporting.  For example, when in doubt – where information is sparse or of questionable veracity, and official (government) forces are being challenged by nongovernmental forces, media tend to default to the perspective of the officials, regardless of regime type or ideology.”
3. Fragmentation, which “involves covering the story in isolated, seemingly unrelated pieces”, which when taken together give a very different impression than a deeper reporting of the whole system would reveal.
4. Dramatization, which “occurs when the news is encapsulated in short, sensationalistic bits intended to provoke an emotional response on the part of the news consumer.”   This seems to be close to the “intentional’ type of bias, since it serves the narrow interests of the reporting agency.
5. Euphemism, for which Boaz gives the example of using the phrase “’huge crowds in Iran” which can then give the impression that these “crowds” are disorganized, spontaneous types of groupings, rather than strategic, organized and disciplined.

I see the distinctions, and it is important to understand them.  However, these five causes can still basically be lumped together as either grossly intentional, or as less intentionally lacking a holistic viewpoint.  Lacking a holistic viewpoint can be attributed to effects that may be out of the reporter and agency’s control, such as lack of access to sources or lack of funding; or else they can be attributed to factors that are directly the fault of the reporting agency: lack of competence (sloppiness), or lack of integrity (e.g., a desire to appeal to sensation-seeking consumers in order to be noticed and sell).

In the case of reporting on the Iranian election demonstrations, Boaz states that several of these types of media errors have together given the World the idea that the demonstrations have been chaotic, unplanned, isolated acts that are often violent.  In contrast, she says that

“These people are for the most part technologically and strategically savvy, especially when compared to the hardliners and mullahs that make up the ancient regime in Iran. They have studied the nonviolent struggles in Chile, South Africa and Serbia. They understand the dynamics of civil resistance and the power of simply withdrawing individual complicity in oppression. These are the people whose “tweets” and Facebook “status updates” the world is getting live via digital media…”

And that in contrast to what is mostly reported,

“the reality is much richer and more potentially encouraging. The Green Revolution is not just a series of ad hoc protests against a political theft, it is a story of widespread resistance to ongoing oppression. It is not the repression and violence that is most interesting about the news coming from Iran, it is that people continue to resist despite the repression.”

I would love to see more reporting about the intelligent and conscious components of this resistance.  How much in depth reporting is even possible in a country that obstructs investigation and punishes dissent?

Obama’s Radical Middle Messages

Barack Obama is a Radical Centrist, preaching and teaching dialogue, finding common ground, and listening and speaking “fair-minded words” with an open heart and an open mind.   These themes appear in all of his speeches on controversial issues, which are about the only issues he speaks about.   Controversy is everywhere, paralyzing us, provoking verbal hostilities and worse, wasting our time, energies and resources and producing ineffective solutions that seem to only get us into deeper troubles.

Here are some excerpts from two of his recent speeches.

From his May 17 speech at Notre Dame in which he focused on abortion:

About dealing with conflict:

“Understand – I do not suggest that the debate surrounding abortion can or should go away. No matter how much we may want to fudge it – indeed, while we know that the views of most Americans on the subject are complex and even contradictory – the fact is that at some level, the views of the two camps are irreconcilable. Each side will continue to make its case to the public with passion and conviction. But surely we can do so without reducing those with differing views to caricature.”

About finding common ground:

“So let’s work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions by reducing unintended pregnancies, and making adoption more available, and providing care and support for women who do carry their child to term.”

From his June 4 Cairo speech to Muslims around the world: 

Dialogue and the Radical Middle

Dialogue is radical.  It’s not just “love your enemy;” it’s actually talking to them.  Loving someone is nice and abstract, and easy to do especially from a distance (including a morally superior distance).

Dialogue is much more challenging since it involves not only talking, but also listening, respecting, and suspending (stepping back from your own position — and ego — in order to listen more clearly).

The idea of the Radical Middle, or Radical Center, is closely related to “bi-partisanship.”  It doesn’t mean joining the mushy Center.  You can keep your ideas and your perspectives, but you have to take the radical step of actually listening to other perspectives and looking for solutions together that can take many views, needs, and experiences into account.

Dialogue and the Radical Middle are examples of collective intelligence (combining many facts and perspectives) that take a giant step towards collective consciousness.

(written 5/20/2009)

Concept: Surrender to the Lord

Why, I ask, do I want to write about this?

Here’s a thought:

This phrase, “surrender to the Lord” has deep meaning to hundreds of millions of people on our planet – Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, and others.

It is also a phrase that has very little positive effect on millions of others, or in many cases, makes them want to run away.

So it is an important concept.  If more of us could get more clarity about both the sublime and the disturbing interpretations of this phrase, that could be a good thing.

It is these two words, “surrender” and “Lord” that cause the biggest impacts for either attracting or repelling people.

Throughout history there have been good authorities (kings, judges, land-owners, bosses, etc.) and bad ones; but all equally had to be called “lord.”   So when put together with the word “surrender”, the phrase can naturally be interpreted as a need for unquestioning deference and obedience.

How is that historic, very “earthly” interpretation compared to the spiritual interpretation?  Is there a close fit?  Or not?  

Disagreement is a puzzle, not a problem

Disagreement is a puzzle, not a problem.

Disagreement is an opportunity to learn, to create a greater whole.

The problem is hostility.

Arrogance, ridicule, self-righteousness, disrespect, spurious and misleading arguments are all forms of hostility – non-physical violence.

The good news is that many of us who disagree on important things, still agree that hostility is a mistake: We don’t have to defend ourselves from each other. We are only defending ourselves from the hostility we fear coming from others.  

Yet,  many also attack to gain control, or to defend, pre-emptively.

When the dominant paradigm (social rule) is to gain control and defend, then forget learning, forget creating a greater whole, ultimately, forget keeping the Earth alive.  Fortunately, at least, this is becoming more obvious.  Competing desires to gain control is finally becoming a threat to everyone.

OK, so now the problem is that while many of us agree that we keep making the same mistakes, we’re still having trouble agreeing on common solutions.  

Learning to listen, and talk without defenses, has become a very tricky thing !  This is what we have to work on.

How Bohmian Dialogue makes use of 2300 Year Old Ideas

I’m now reading two books.  One was written ten years ago and its ideas are still influential and appreciated among tens of thousands of people.   The other was written at least 2300 years ago, and its ideas are influential and appreciated among hundreds of millions of people.

I recently discovered the same point made in both books.  One is about the practice of Dialogue in groups.  The other is about the practice of Yoga for achieving a “settled mind.”

I’m sure there are many more points in common, but here are the two points that just stood out for me as the same: 

Training for Focused Conversations and Consensus

For anyone interested in the methods mentioned in the post below, here is info on upcoming training on Focused Conversations and Consensus:

In Brooklyn, NY on May 12-13 (click on “View Schedule to see all places and dates)

In Toronto on July 9-10

Creating wholeness in collaboration.

(Continued from here.)

Feelings are most primal, and hardest to ignore.

They are powerful triggers to action, and also trigger cycles of thinking, interpretation and meaning.  The “most important facts” then become dominated by whatever triggered the most powerful feelings.

Interpretations are heavily influenced by feelings because feelings focus and filter thinking to derive interpretations.  The interpretations also loop back to explain or justify the feelings, and to justify the actions that the person has taken or wants to take.

Feelings are important and have to be recognized and understood.  But feelings shouldn’t dominate thinking and action.

The only way to break the dominance of feelings is to step back and see them in the larger context of a group of people who have different feelings and interpretations about the same set of circumstances – and whose help is needed to create solutions..

The dialogue process intentionally trains participants to both listen to others, and to suspend judgment in order to make listening possible.   When people stay with the process long enough to get the hang of it, the process can present to everyone a bigger whole that no one person was seeing before.

The focused-conversation method has a similar result by taking the whole group through a process of collecting facts, expressing (and listening to) feelings, and stating (and listening to) interpretations before attempting to reach a decision together.   They get to see not only how other people feel about the situation, but also how they are all coming up with different interpretations based on different experiences and knowledge.

David Bohm’s On Dialogue especially explains how the evolution of individual consciousness is closely related and essential to development of collective consciousness. For example, he relates the ability to suspend and step back from ones own feelings and biases to the process of meditation.  Both dialogue and meditation involve a method of suspension (drawing back) to help individuals expand their awareness to greater wholes than they were previously capable of understanding.  The dialogue process trains individuals to think in more expanded ways by suspending personal judgments and getting a taste of the greater whole that comes from multiple perspectives.

Other references:

One of the best books on the practice of dialogue, by William Isaacs.

A pdf and book describing the Focused Conversation method, by Brian Stanfield and ICA Associates.

Tweets are sutras; blogs are commentaries

I’m reading a great translation of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, translated by Alistair Shearer, a Sanskrit and Vedic scholar and a genuine yogi. In his illuminating introduction, Alistair notes that a “sutra” as a literary form is an aphorism of extreme brevity. Each short thread is packed with meaning, which is why a tradition of commentary has arisen. “Each new commentator brings the light of his own understanding to bear on the original gnomic texts; his conclusions then become part of the ongoing tradition.”

Here is what the Yoga Sutras would look like if Patanjali had a Twitter account:

http://twitter.com/yoga_sutras

(Much to Patanjali’s amusement, someone else already took twitter.com/patanjali)

Sutras are the opposite of shallow. Tweets, likewise, can be packed with meaning and insight. Hence the need for urls that point to blogs for commentary.

So far only Patanjali’s first four sutras have been converted to tweets. These four sutras form the essence of the entire teaching of 194 sutras. I’m sure that if the tweets get more followers, more sutras will be added.

Is Social Media Shallow?

This article appeared last week reporting on recent neurological research that, according to a media scholar, shows that social media can lead to bad moral reasoning.  The reasoning goes like this:

• Moral decision-making requires time for reflection (according to common sense and now backed by neurological research).

• Likewise, compassion and admiration are two essentially human social emotions; and both take longer to develop than simple reaction to pleasure or pain in oneself or others.

• “Fast-paced digital media” are not conducive to reflection, and thus “may direct some heavy users away from traditional avenues for learning about humanity, such as engagement with literature or face-to-face social interactions.”

The author backed away from a blanket denouncement of digital media:  “‘It’s not about what tools you have, it’s about how you use those tools,’ she said.”

The article begins with this title:  “Tweet this: Rapid-fire media may confuse your moral compass.” As a result, for a scientific article it got tweeted a lot.  In the first hundred tweets or so many people were simply tweeting part of the article’s title.   Later tweets ended up including a lot of ironic play with the “moral compass” term.

With Twitter people get rewarded for tweeting posts and links that are most likely to get people’s attention.   With many articles, especially those with provocative titles, there’s very little need to actually read the article.  Just tweet it.  Cool!  This behavior of course proves the article’s point.  And so does the use of a provocative title for the article.

However, the best tweets are of course packed with meaning.  There is an art to it.  Social media is part social artistry, and part compass confusion.