Are you being served?

This isn't the first time I've read about Zappos. But every time I do, the author seems genuinely surprised by some new wacky thing the online shoe retailer has done. Anecdotally, I understand Zappos has some interesting ideas about customer service, like offering it to customers. Amazing. 

Here's a link to an older post about an online contest Zappos ran with followers of its Twitter feeds (aka tweets). In short, a follower was randomly selected -- just cuz -- to win a free pair of shoes, as were three of her Twitterstream followers who also happen to follow Zappos (Confused? Go to the original post). It's a fine example of how tweeting for goodwill leads to some positive social capital for the company. I didn't know anything about the retailer before I started seeing posts about it and you know what? I'm curious. Score one for Zappos. 

Here's an optimistic article from the Wall Street Journal about the US Federal Government's forays into Web 2.0 waters. The author sites several examples of wikis that are transforming accessibility. I found this quote especially compelling because it relates so closely to my proposed research:

"Project Government 2.0 is based on the assumption that even governments can't fight technologies that give power to the people. 'If governments are to ensure their relevance and authority, they must move quickly to meet rising expectations for openness, accountability, effectiveness and efficiency in the public sector,' the project outline says."

I don't doubt at all that the wikis help to engage citizens who are interested in them. I do doubt the motivation behind a public service organization moving wholeheartedly to Web 2.0. There's a lot going on: org structures, power relationships in the system, the need for efficiency through a vertical structure (as we learned about in network analysis, effective and efficient are not synonymous). 

This brings me back to a panel discussion held today at the Uni about public deliberation, during which the panelists talked about new ways the public sector can work, much like in this article. I just think the assumption that government is somehow feeling itself irrelevant and lacking authority seems unfounded. Think of how much it affects citizens' lives every day. How others feel about the public sector is another matter. 

Political parties, on the other hand, do need to stay relevant among voters, as we can see in the example of the Democratic nomination in the United States. If social capital involves a trade of resources, what can parties give in return for support -- something that won't benefit Society At Large? 

Talk of viral marketing spreads

We're among many talking about viral marketing. Here's a post from the prolific Chris Brogan about a recent experience with an ad sent to him, which he turned around and blogged about, and which I'm blogging about, too. His timing was right: I am tuned into his message about the, ha! communicable diseases that are viral ads.

What I've noticed about the exemplary ads we've pinpointed in class and this one in Chris' example is that they are all narrative accounts. They're considerably longer than the 30 second made-for-tv format, they look sharp, and they appeal to something other than product features. They are, in short, connecting to a sense of self rather than the self . . . itself? Benefits, not features. 

OK. So why is this? I've been giving it a little thought today, even though I should be thinking about the volume of other work I need to get done this week. These little multimedia narratives are iconic, symbols of what we believe true in ourselves. Whether I choose to pass along an ad depends on how closely I can identify with it. Is it the same for you?

Since the currency of a modern society is largely symbolic anyhow (money, the production of labour -- at least for those of us in this cohort --, social networks), sharing icons is an act within a modern ritual of connecting and staying connected. Have I taken this too far? Just wait a sec.

What happens in your office when the network goes down? In mine, we reboot, jiggle some cables, wander out of our offices to check if anyone else is offline, then seize up because there's nothing to do in this bizarre, offline world. Never fails. I depend on my computer to get my work done and to stay connected with my at-work network. When it's down, I'm lost. When it's up, I have purpose and can resume my job as Office Worker.

Sharing a short multimedia narrative as a symbol of who I am (an Office Worker With a Computer) and what I identify with (likes, interests, style) makes sense. Those whom I send it to who share the same interests can share back a similar iconic offering. It's comforting. And it's purposeful: a currency in the market of symbolic social transactions. 

Ask not what your network can do for you . . .

After two solid weeks discussing social capital, I'm finding fewer original things to say in its defense or in opposition.

Perhaps what struck me most is the idea of being susceptible to the infection of an idea or a concept. Is there a way to gauge a group's potential response to a stimulus? It seems so random, like a sneeze well placed. You know when the flu comes around, there's always one person who will come down and someone who seems can never be felled by illness. Does any of this immunity relate to viral marketing?

Maybe.

Or maybe it's a bit of social conditioning -- something that predates electronic technology.

The division of labour in hunter-gatherer societies was pretty clear. Men hunted meat; women gathered nuts, berries, etc. Those who were most effective in their roles gained status in their communities.

Zoom ahead about 10,000 years and we're repeating the same actions . . . with a couple of twists:

• hunting and gathering have become symbolic processes. Even our currency transactions happen virtually when I hand over a credit card that a cashier swipes into a machine, which links to a distant network to verify my credit (and credibility), hands back my card, and gives me my purchases. I hand over my signature. Really, for the amount of symbolism involved, this should be a rite.
  
• both genders are fulfilling both roles, now, though in my experience, it seems women still do more gathering. The communal aspect of gathering seems greatly diminished. At least for me. I feel I need to maintain this space I call home and yard (and office) without anyone else's help, just as I do not go elsewhere to help others care for their spaces. Only if there's a symbolic exchange of money or goods does it seem appropriate. In other words, if I were to pay someone to clean my windows, then that would be ok. But I feel strongly against it, since I can do the work myself. So I hunt at the office to bring home a few numbers on a computer that assess the number of kills I have made, which, in turn, I can use to procure goods.
  
• Meanwhile, I gather food, supplies, and sundry other things to provide for my family.
  
  Using a computer means I only get symbolically bloodied at work.

NetWork

Social capital talk comes with some specious reasoning about how it works. At heart, I think we don't really know how it does, since our knowledge of human behaviour is spotty at best. 

What we do know is that contention abounds, which is why I'm presenting, just for you, a couple of articles that popped up in my feed reader before SI began. As I read them, I starred them, thinking they might come in handy some day. Ta da! Welcome to some day. 

The first is an interview with Duncan Watts, who explores the issue of Gladwell's hubs. You may recall that Barabasi also mentions Watts in at least one of the three chapters we read. His experiments with social cartography (what a great phrase) shows that Influentials--individuals with many social ties--may be able to spread their influence to a broader network, but they are no more likely than someone with few ties to start a trend.  

Second, Rob Paterson, who blogs for the FASTForward blog, recently talked about the idea of the long tail of Internet content development. Plotting this along a Fibonacci sequence, he says something like, 'hmm, maybe my weak-ties have more breadth, but my few strong-ties sure have a lot of pull.' In this case, he sees growth being in the little circles of trust that crop up out of the endless content. 

I left my math brain behind in junior high school. I'm starting to regret that.

Homo sapiens narrator?

Back in high school, I wrote a play for my high school biology class. The whole five-minute reader's theatre production explained mitosis through an allegorical retelling of the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The experience taught me there's always a narrative to explain complex topics. 

The same teacher who let me pull this together also encouraged me to read Lewis Thomas' Lives of a Cell, which she thought might help me better understand the world. This week, S. gave us a chapter of Lives of a Cell in the context of human networking. Critters like ants and wasps -- communal critters -- are not so very different than we are, says he. They respond en masse to certain stimuli; they can venture on their own, but they work for the community and have survived for over 100 million years because they work with their environments. 

How belittling a thought that after our triumphant push out of the primordial amniotic ooze, we evolved only to a certain point, and then just got more superfluous by evolving emotions. Yes, we can talk and fly and build social capital and make music. Really, though, isn't this more about scale than anything else? Don't other social critters accomplish a lot . . . without the angst?

I'm teasing only a little bit here, for vanity's sake if nothing else. Emotion gives us the thrust to try, to extend ourselves, to create, to solve, to improve on the boundaries of what we know. And it gives us narrative. Maybe emotion is just another narrative structure explaining some pretty elaborate behavioural math (thanks, N., for starting that idea with your reference to The Matrix, and thanks, B., for the link). If only I could find my copy of Thomas' book, so I can see what he says about this. It's here, somewhere, under the laundry mess of my grad school experience.