Popularity: 67% [?]
You may be a community freeloader if you…
November 24, 2007 – 9:06 am
[re-posted from HorsePigCow]
q: What do you call someone who joins communities, adds friends and generally uses social networking tools to promote their own interests solely?
a: a community freeloader
Now, promoting your interests within a community isn’t a bad thing, per se. Having strong networks of people is a great advantage to furthering your causes, getting advice, meeting the right contacts to further your career and getting folks out to your events. However, where it becomes problematic is when you lose the balance of DEPOSIT and WITHDRAWAL in that Social Capital bank account of yours.
Balancing Your Social Capital Accounts
Now, I don’t want to reduce every interaction we human beings have with another person to being a transaction, but, in effect, it is. If I ask a friend for a favor, she is bound oblige. However, if I ask that same friend for ten favors, she may start to feel like I’ve depleted my ‘allowance’ on my account with her. Of course, with different people, we have more leeway. With our close friends and family we have loads of Social Capital to withdraw from and as our relationships get more casual, the less influence and favor we carry with others.
For instance, have you ever heard yourself saying, “I don’t want to use up my favors with him” or “It’s time to cash in those favors”? Well, whether we are aware of it or not, there is a transaction - even if it isn’t always direct or equally reciprocated - that happens between people. In the book that I’m currently reading, The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation, Matt Ridley points out that this isn’t unique to our culture or even to us as human beings. Tit-for-tat is a common tool for community balance amongst many cultures as well as animal groups. It ensures that people both contribute as well as benefit to the commons.
It is actually a very positive part of our relationships - especially when we do a favor for someone without expecting it in immediate return. Those favors add up to a great deal of future Social Capital. And that Social Capital goes a long way in the future.
What I’ve observed in the various communities I’ve been part of is the entrance of community freeloaders, or, really, the types of people who just withdrawal their Social Capital until their totally whuffie poor, then wonder why they aren’t getting ahead. These people are what economists call ‘rational fools’:
…far from being altruistic, the cooperative person is merely looking out to his long-term self-interest, rather than the short term….Amartya Sen has called the caricature of the short-sighted self-interested person a ‘rational fool’. If the rational fool turns out to be taking short-sighted decisions then he is not being rational, just short sighted. He is indeed a fool who fails to consider the (long term) effect of his actions… - p.137
It is rational (economically) to take advantages of people in the short-term to make gains, but as Ridley points out, it is the generous villagers who are almost always the dominant ones. (p. 98)
Deposits and Withdrawals
So what kinds of actions are DEPOSITS and what kind of actions are WITHDRAWALS? Well, it really does depend on the community and the individuals you interact with. For instance, most people would probably feel good about helping out an even casual acquaintance with an introduction to another acquaintance. Some may put a caveat on the introduction (”I don’t know him too well, but he comes highly recommended”, etc.). Of course, the size of that favor also matters to whether the withdrawal is too large for the relationship. If someone I just met asked me to introduce them to Jimmy Wales, I would probably feel that was a little presumptive and would need them to spend more time establishing their trustworthiness with me before I passed that introduction along as a misfired introduction may hurt my own reputation with Jimmy. But most first favors may actually be a deposit (leaving me with the feeling of having done something nice for someone else, I warm up to the person), then start to become withdrawals after that point.
But if we were to speak in general terms about what is a DEPOSIT and what is a WITHDRAWAL, I would present the following table:
| DEPOSIT | WITHDRAWAL |
| First favor. Performing a favor. |
Second favor and so on. |
| Requesting simple advice. Implementing that advice. Giving advice. Rewarding those who gave you advice. |
Requesting a great deal of advice from an associate for your personal gain. |
| Asking for a lateral introduction. Introducing others for no personal gain. Sending a thank you for an introduction. |
Asking for a prestigious introduction. Second introduction and so on. |
| Promoting your event. Throwing a great event that people really enjoy and get lots out of. Attending other people’s events. Helping others promote their events. Volunteering at events. |
Promoting endless events. Expecting that people come to your events when you don’t go to theirs. |
| Telling someone casually about the work you do and your company. Asking someone else about the work they do and their company. |
Only interested in promoting the work you do and your company. Promoting your company. Selling. |
| Creating stuff and sharing it with others. | Keeping secrets and being closed. |
| Creating something with other community members for the benefit of your community. | Creating something that imposes your ideas and will on your community (even if you mean well). |
| Sending someone an exclusive beta test invitation to your hot new startup (that they already know about). Rewarding beta testers for the valuable feedback they give (by being open and communicative and implementing their ideas with credit). |
Sending someone a beta test invite if they don’t know who you are and you haven’t previously met. Requesting feedback constantly. |
| Giving your time to community projects. Encouraging people to get involved in your projects. |
Competing with other community projects. |
| Offering help to a n00b. | Only hanging with and being interested in the A-Listers. |
| Being there for the right information when someone needs to make a purchase. | Giving people unsolicited pitches when someone is busy. |
Of course, this list isn’t conclusive, the withdrawals aren’t all for the same amount and there are alot of grey areas for people, but you get the gist. What the things in the DEPOSIT column have in common is that they are reciprocal, relationship-building actions, whereas, the WITHDRAWAL column is about personal gain. Now, of course, there is personal gain in the relationships, but it is a long-term gain, rather than the short-term gains of the WITHDRAWAL column.
And don’t get me wrong, promoting your events, asking for connections and telling people about your company are totally viable, real and legitimate actions that are and should be performed within networks and communities every day. The trick is, just like a bank account, make sure you have a healthy account balance (ie. more deposited than withdrawn). As well, much like a personal bank account, it is beneficial to carry a higher balance. You never know when you’ll have a rainy day.
Popularity: 83% [?]
3 Ways to Raise Social Capital
October 30, 2007 – 11:23 pm
For those of you who are concerned with the possibility of raising your own Social Capital, it’s pretty simple, really. There are three major ways to do it and they all intersect:
- Be Nice
- Be Notable
- Be Networked
The Spread Love Project is firmly rooted in the first, Be Nice, because in the world of community, nice guys (and gals) DO finish first. That backstabbing crookery that sometimes happens when trying to raise financial capital (see the song: Money, by the O’Jays for examples ;) ) works antithetically to community building and the raising of social capital.
Being Nice just means that you act positively towards others. Some ways you can be nice are:
- Help someone out when they need it
- Make someone feel good about themselves
- Use some of your social capital (wisely) to help someone else raise their own
- Donate your time, money and/or expertise to a community project
- Listen to others
- Let others lead
Being nice doesn’t mean that you have to be a patsy, though. You can be strong and opinionated and nice all at once. In fact, don’t mistake being nice for letting others take advantage of you. Recognizing where someone crosses the line between being a recipient of your kindness and being an energy sucker is mondo important.
Being Notable means that you create something that enhances peoples lives in a significant way. You may be a music composer writing melodies that help people fall in love or a person who designs small gadgets to stop those irritating little things from happening in our lives, thus relieving stress. Either way and every way in between, you are doing something that is notable.
When people introduce you at a party, they say, “This is so and so, you know [that cool thing you invented]? She invented it!”
Zing! INSTANT social capital!
It’s what people are looking for when they ask you, “So, where do you work?” or “What clients have you worked with?” when they first meet you. If you give them something they can recognize as being significant, it raises their idea of who you are. Of course, much of this is superficial and in order to continue to gain social capital from these exchanges, you must continue to produce stuff that makes people happy, but doing notable things is a great way to build social capital.
Being Networked is strongly connected to the first two and especially being nice. Being networked means that you know and are connected to many people - mostly through loose connections. According to SC theorists, bridging capital, or the lightweight, looser connections are actually stronger for raising social capital whereas bonding capital, or the deeply bonded connections you have are better for maintaining social capital.
Of course, the only way to build positive bridges with people is through being nice or being notable, so without #1 or #2 accompanying #3, it’s much harder to raise social capital through networking.
Networking can happen on or offline and I’ve met many people through the variety of online social networks I’m part of. Most of the time I don’t pay much attention to someone who has sent me a friend request somewhere, but if they send me a note to frame their request and it makes sense, I will connect with them. The beauty of social networks like Twitter or Flickr is that by being ‘friends’ or contacts, I get to know the person through the content they create. Through Twitter, a person’s regular updates will give me a sense of what they are doing and what they are working on, which may lead to some sort of overlap with projects I’m working on, or could also lead to my understanding of how to further connect that person to others they may have projects in common with. Through Flickr, I will see the world through the eyes of my new contact, which also could lead to me understanding and connecting through their point of view. Perhaps my new contact is a brilliant photographer. Then I will bond with them over their notability, or their ability to move me through their art form.
There is still nothing like offline networking, though, to build those bridging ties. Meetups with people who share your interests, reading groups, professional networking events and volunteering are just some of the ways you can meet and build bonds with people in person. I know one of my biggest downfalls is collecting someone’s information (on business card, etc.) and forgetting why later on. Using a program like Highrise helps keep people you meet straight. I also try to make a point of adding them on Twitter or Facebook shortly after we meet so I can build context around our meeting.
On a personal and a professional level, if you are looking to build social capital in order to be more influential (one of the benefits of having social capital) and be connected to various opportunities (maybe getting that dream job or meeting the woman/man of your dreams), being nice, notable and/or networked will help you achieve this.
Popularity: 92% [?]
Social Capitalists
September 22, 2007 – 3:58 am
From Wikipedia:
Social capital is a core concept in business, economics, organizational behaviour, political science, and sociology, defined as the advantage created by a person’s location in a structure of relationships. “By analogy with physical capital and human capital - tools and training that enhance human productivity - the core idea of social capital theory is that social networks have value. Just as a screwdriver (physical capital) or a college education (human capital) can increase productivity (both individual and collective), so too social contacts affect the productivity of individuals and groups”. It explains how some people gain more success in a particular setting through their superior connections to other people.
Ways to raise social capital:
- Give it away. Help others connect. Use it for doing nice things for others.
- Use it wisely. Never betray trust or use it haphazardly.
- Produce awesome stuff that people admire. Make beautiful art. Code the next cool website.
- Spread love. Make others feel great about themselves.
- Be human. Be accessible. Listen. Treat everyone with similar respect.
Ways to lose social capital:
- Horde it. Only use it for your own benefit or refuse to spend it.
- Show it off. Try to pull weight with your social capital. “Don’t you know who I am?”
- Try to take credit for other people’s good work.
- Take advantage of others who are trusting.
- Badmouth other people. Especially those with alot of social capital.
- Be snobby. Only act nice to those who can do something for you.
A Social Capitalist does alot of raising social capital and avoids losing social capital. Social Capitalists definitely spend more time giving it away in positive directions, building trust. A Social Capitalist is, by nature, more concerned with helping others raise social capital.
List yourself on the Social Capitalist wiki page if you think this sounds like you.
Popularity: 100% [?]
What does it mean to Spread Love?
September 22, 2007 – 3:25 am
Yeah, really, what the heck does that mean? It sounds a little namby pamby, doesn’t it?
Well, that’s because stuff like love and caring and compassion have been severely underrated in today’s world. I don’t know when it happened. One theory is that feelings and emotions, along with the arts, religion and humanities, were swept under the carpet with the Scientific Revolution. Another theory is that, because stuff like feelings, emotions, arts, etc. are more feminine, our male-dominated culture doesn’t take them too seriously. Of course, there have also been alot of scammers and grifters over the years who pray on people with the emotional sell that have given this stuff a bad name.
Either way (and it is probably a little of all of the above + a bunch of other stuff), invoking love as something to spread has become a bit of an eye-roll initiator. But that’s okay, we understand the apprehension.
Really, we just want to inject compassion and caring back into culture. We think it is the core of connections and connections is at the heart of community. Without community, we’ve grown a bit of a dark pit of despair in our lives. We can’t trust our neighbors. We spend more time worrying about our future than enjoying today. We feel lonely too often. We are talked at, not with. There seems to be a big, grey, negative cloud hanging around us as we move throughout life.
But, when we are around friends and loved ones - people we can trust and who we care about - we can relax. Smile. Laugh heartily. Troubles seem a million miles away. Or, at least we have someone to share them with. We feel like we matter. We are given confidence to face the world.
According to research by both Dan Gilbert and Daniel Goleman, there are many positive effects to being loved:
- We live longer.
- While we live longer, our immune systems are stronger, so we are healthier.
- We are more beautiful. Healthy people with strong immunities look younger, longer.
- We do better in our careers. When we are loved, we feel more confident, which leads to others seeing it, which leads to better opportunities.
- We make more money. Okay, so I’m extrapolating, but I’d bet that there are studies out there that would show that people with positive relationships make more money in their lifetimes.
- We pass it along to others who also benefit.
There are instantly positive effects to spreading love, too. When you do something nice for another person, they are not the only ones who benefit. In fact, according to Social Intelligence, both the giver and the receiver get a boost that raises immunity. Doing nice stuff for others can be an entirely selfish act.
So, then, how do you spread love, then? Well, there are millions of ways to do it, but here are just a few we want to promote:
- When you see an opportunity, pay a stranger a compliment. It’s tiny, but effective.
- Reward someone for their own good deeds. If someone you know spends alot of time giving to others, tell them that you recognize their generosity. Even better, take them for dinner or buy them a card.
- On the flipside, if someone is nasty and selfish, point out that these aren’t great attitudes. Approach them with compassion, though. Nastiness and selfishness are often products of not getting enough love. You may have to show this person the way.
- Tell the people who you care about that you love them. It sounds basic, but many people forget.
- Practice empathy. Everyone has a different point of view. Even if that P.O.V. is something you think is totally backwards and idiotic, put yourselves in their shoes to try and understand where s/he is coming from. You’ll also do better in debates.
- Book off time for your family and friends. Work is important, but people time is important, too. We’re bad at this. We love our work so much that we forget to step back at times.
- If you know alot of people, find ways to help them connect. Share your network. Share your connections.
- When someone is talking to you, pay them your full attention. If you can’t, schedule a time when you can.
- Find out as much about someone you just met as you can and always be watching out for opportunities to help them out. Tim Sanders talks alot about this in Love is the Killer App. People WILL remember when you’ve remembered them.
- Be interested in what people do. What they are passionate about. What matters to them. Not what you can gain from them.
As you spread love, you will raise whuffie (a.k.a. Social Capital). And whuffie is the capital of the future.
Popularity: 93% [?]
Spread Love
September 21, 2007 – 7:26 am
[reposted from HorsePigCow]
In my recent presentation at e.day, my “5 sure-fire steps to transforming yourself from a spammer into a connector” (said with booming voice) were:
- Turn that bullhorn around: stop talking and start listening
- Be part of the community you serve: get out of the boardroom and into the community
- Design for maximum happiness: design products that delight people
- Embrace the chaos: stop overplanning and recognize the everyday magic
- Find your higher purpose: figure out how to give back to the wider community and do it often
Empty Hope
Now, last time I openly talked about that higher purpose stuff, it led to all sorts of issues…both because of a reference I used that was unfortunately anti-semitic (it was an ignorant mistake, not an intended one, but a mistake nonetheless) and because my talk of higher purpose smacked of self-helpy stuff.
The issue with self-helpy stuff is that, well, 99.9% of the time, it lacks any substance or self-reflection. Authors like Deepak Chopra and Tim Robins come to mind as leaders in this realm. Loads of people buy their materials every year in a hope to change their lives from miserable to luxurious after listening to an inspirational lecture. Do these 5 things or take those 10 steps or repeat this mantra in the mirror when you wake up every morning and it will change your life. Well, of course people buy this because it represents some sort of hope…albeit an easy answer to complex issues. Of course, these materials very rarely change anyone’s life for the better permanently, but there are plenty of stories of success that can be found in the rare cases.
When people buy any sort of marketing message, really, it’s because we hope. We hope that this cereal will make us skinny like the woman in the ad who lost 30 lbs. We hope that that liqueur will give us that european sophistication and appeal. We hope that by booking at that hotel, we are supporting a company whose sole purpose is to help people be kinder to one another (re: Hilton’s latest ads that represent people doing nice things for one another).
This is not at all what I want to represent.
Well, let me rephrase that. I DO want to represent hope, but I DON’T want to represent EMPTY hope. I’m very very sad that positive messages have been conflated with empty hope, which is why I have thought for many years that marketing has been its own worst enemy and dangerously short-term thinking. So now, positive messages have become so distrusted that negative messages are, too, being co-opted. Basically, we’ve gotten to the point that messages no longer mean anything at all. Actions truly do speak louder than words.
Higher Purpose
So, coming back around to Higher Purpose and keeping in mind that actions speak louder than words, I proposed another list of 5 ways that a company can give back to the community they serve in very real ways:
- Democratize something: create tools to empower the disempowered…to make something inaccessible, accessible
- Open source your work: donate your code or a deep API to giving others a platform for building their businesses
- Build bridges: work with open standards like Microformats and OpenID as well as WITH your competitors to build bridges between websites and web apps for better customer experiences. I’m not talking ‘lifestreams’, either.
- Spread love: create communities and ways for people to connect on deeper, more positive levels. There is enough spreading of hate. Dissent is encouraged, of course, because homogeny is not good for anyone. But disagreement needs to be approached with compassion, not “You are an idiot”.
- Value something bigger than yourself: Is there something unrelated to your company that you believe in? Put your energy into it.
These are only 5 overviews of more action-oriented ways to give back to the community, and my favourite of all of them is to spread love. I’ve been a huge fan of Jane McGonigal’s work at AvantGame since I saw her speak at ETech this spring. Even though these are ‘merely’ games, the impact she has made in the people’s lives who play them is pretty significant. She gave endless examples of people whose lives have been transformed and whose faith in humankind has been restored. I think Jane’s work represents something that is growing in general, too: compassion for one another.
I - It and I - You
In 1923, a really smart philosopher named Martin Buber published his philosophical thesis on human existence, I and Thou. Basically, he states that the basis of our existence is our relations to others (he was influenced heavily by the work of Kierkegaard and Feuerbach) and we, basically, relate to others in two ways:
- I-It
- I-Thou (I-You in modern terms)
In the case of I-It, I relate to another as an object. Something to be used. An example of this is how many people treat waiters. I did a stint being a waiter in university and was told that the best waiters are as invisible as ‘background’ that delivers food and drinks in a timely manner. The people I served didn’t want to know who I was as a human being, in relation to them, they wanted their food. Ever since that experience, I pay more attention to my waiters’ existence…even if they are not so great. I-It, as Buber pointed out in later texts, is also what happens in the case of racism. When a person lacks compassion for another person, the other person becomes an It. I think it is safe to say that the many people who view the awful images of war victims on the news start to see them as Its as well. We start to numb ourselves to the idea that the dead have left behind families and had lives that are to be mourned.
I-It is also how ‘consumers’ and ‘users’ are framed in a transactional economy as it is a very efficient way to think of relationships. These are masses, numbers and generalized unmet ideas of people.
The opposite, I-You, is the relation between two people where both are, basically, equal and have agency. As in my example of someone waiting on me in a restaurant, I make certain to pay attention to that person as an individual. Even though our relationship is brief and for a single purpose, I don’t think of someone serving me food as my servant or as ‘background’. Tomorrow, they may come into my office and need help with their startup community and I would want them to treat me with the same level of respect. Basically, on whatever level, fleeting or deep, a relationship is formed with an I-You interaction (or a relationship is already formed).
I-You, of course, is the basis of communities. Communities are filled with relationships between people. The only way a company representative becomes part of a community is by a. not being a company representative, but a community member…an equal in the community and b. never looks at their relationships to others within the community as the accumulation of numbers. That’s when I-It creeps back in.
Now, what we work on as part of our higher purpose is creating more instances of I-You where I-It has existed for so long. I-It is incredibly disempowering for the ‘It’. I’ve been the ‘It’ too many times in life. It feels shitty. I’m an ‘It’ quite often as a woman in technology. I’m an ‘It’ when a PR person emails me an impersonal note that says something like:
Dear Tara,
I really enjoy your blog. I especially enjoyed your recent post on blah blah blah. That is why I think you will enjoy this unrelated company’s site. Some sort of description…If you enjoy the site, you may even want to blog about it. Perhaps we can set up a meeting between you and CEO who doesn’t give a damn about who you are, but wants your linklove so that he can explain more for you.
Sincerely,
Joe PR* [name protected]
Of course, there are far worse examples of the I-It experience than receiving a spammy note, but every level on which we think we can treat people like objects, numbers and targets contribute to the overall disenfranchisement we feel from one another. When we live in a world where trust breaks down to the extent it has now, it can only get worse.
I want to spend as much of my time turning this around as I possibly can.
Spread Love
Since e.day, I’ve been thinking of additional ways in which Citizen Agency could practice what we preach. We generally work on democratizing stuff (Coworking, BarCamp), opening stuff up (history with Firefox, Drupal and CivicSpace), building bridges (Microformats and OpenID) and valuing stuff that is bigger than us (we work on many sustainable projects, including the upcoming GreenDevCamp)…but we’ve lacked a bit in the spread love department. Sure, we do this in our day-to-day relationships and the way we personally treat people, but we haven’t really stretched ourselves outside of that.
So, the other day after thinking about the whuffie stuff, I went an registered the domain Spreadloveproject.org, where there is currently nothing, but I have started a wiki, a bookmark group and a Google Group. I’m not entirely clear yet on the projects, but have put down Ping Whuffie and SmoochyBot (formerly known as The Lovendar) as two of mine. As for what kind of other projects, some of them will be app based, some of them task based and others…I don’t know. You decide.
I want everyone to consider this their project waiting for their ideas, too. I figure it will unfold as we move along. Either way, I’d love to see people share their ideas of how to turn I-It situations into I-You situations. Maybe it is as simple as being more aware of the people who serve us as people. Maybe it is as deep as uncovering stories of individual war victims. Maybe it is as light hearted as playing ‘killing with kindness’ games. All I know is that the goal of the overall project is to work towards creating a culture of generosity and kindness between people.
Currently, the wiki is pretty sparse, so feel free to add your own ideas, projects, stories and initiatives - you can also promote the work you are doing elsewhere there, too. I’ve named the contributors as Social Capitalists, kind of a fun play on words.
Like I said above, I don’t want this or any of our projects to be empty vessels of nothingness with a pretty coat of paint on top. I’d like to actually have this mean something, even if they touch a few people and are simple, the projects need to have substance and be directly related to the end goal of creating a culture of generosity. As well, anyone and everyone is encouraged to lead their own projects and movements. The project, itself, is un’owned’. I see it as another starfish project with many leaders. I only provide my ‘leg’ of the journey. ;)
Popularity: 93% [?]
Hello world!
September 20, 2007 – 6:13 pm
Indeed! On a whim, I decided that I would try to install my own blog and forum to give it a shot here, and guess what? It seems to be working fine…complete with some snazzy plugins and a theme I tweaked (the original is called Moo-Point and was one of the winners of the very cool Sandbox Design Contest recently).
I would love to have multiple people blogging here…not just me, so drop me a line if you have posts that you think would fit!
Popularity: 99% [?]
