Crowdsourcing, Social Platforms, Business Models

I’ve been a bit shy — maybe too shy — to go on with my series of posts of prerequisites needed to launch a social network because my previous posting ended with a cliff hanger on “now we finally approach social networks”. Point is, my original notes on different kinds of communities were not as extended as one might expect. On the other hand, recently, some net prominent propagated charging for web services was a good idea, and I’d like to add a word or two on crowdsourcing. — After a second look, I noticed you actually need to know about crowdsourcing before you can go into the matters of discerning different kinds of communities. But commenting on David Heinemeier-Hansson’s presentation I leave out for now.

crowdsourcing

The previous post of this series, on crowdsourcing I stated: “Using that by-product of your users effectively is nothing but crowdsourcing. It uses the crowds to get some task done. Such as tagging all the items known to your service.” Or to collect those items first place. Crowdsourcing simply is to use a crowd — the collective of all users of your service — to get some task done. Such as gathering a excessively mostly complete collection of all things in a particular field of interest — such as the things which are/were in Wikipedia — or to apply some rule on all such things gathered once; some rule that requires mind, decision-making or knoowledge — such as tagging of music tracks on Last.FM or typewriting music track titles on CDDB/FreeDB.

Despite it might look like a win:loose situation at first sight, crowdsourcing in fact is a win:win situation: If the alternative is no chance for tagging at all, people love to get the chance to tag items — since that way they gain the valuable and real chance to re-find things they once decided to be useful for them. On the other hand, tagging performed by a crowd piles up, effectively creating a resource for the service. Which in turn can be re-used for extended services, such as determining similar music tracks (as Last.FM does and offers as an additional service). But also, such a resource can be traded. Which makes crowdsourcing a win for you — the service provider — too.

social platforms

But let’s take one step back. Previous to social networks, there are social platforms, such as Last.FM or Wikipedia. They do not even offer the most basic level of social networks, a contact list. Here I count Last.FM in, because its use mostly takes place off-site.

I see two core kinds of social platforms. Both of them have two things in common: They are after to tackle a problem and they apply crowdsourcing. As I am going to flipside that very sentence in a minute, let me make clear: By the problem that’s getting tackled by the users, I refer to a problem the users notice and want to get solved. Such as quitting to smoke (self-help forums) or loosing the need to enter the track titles whenever you rip a CD (FreeDB) or form a new software application (free software projects). And crowdsourcing does take place simply because lots of individual users contribute to get over that problem.

But this very note — the core commonalities of social platforms were tackling a problem and using a crowd to get over it — also can be seen from the opposite point of view, that one of a company that applies crowdsourcing to gather a resource: In their view, the problem might be to gather the resource, and crowdsourcing would be nothing but a tool for the company to get that task done. — Worthwhile to note, that there is a series of open/free software projects struggling, probably because of the dominance of such a company in the background (Asterisk, Asterisk front-end Asterisk@Home, Mambo). Anyways, that’s going to be off-topic, therefore let’s concentrate on social platforms again:

I think, you can discern two core kinds of social platforms — whereby some examples of both groups blur into the territory of social networks, as they feature something comparable to a contact list — the core of anything that deserves to be called a social network:

1. The one kind has some dedicated functionality — such as Last.FM or Twitter, which integrates cell phones simply but [in that] excellently as a user front-end, or 43 Things which in its functionality rewires the features of a blog to serve best to their users, so these get their goals done most easy.
2. The other kind of social platform has only basic common functionality but are targeted to one general common direction, by rules. Examples for this
   can be found in usual free culture projects, such as Wikipedia or free software projects, and in probably any network which builds upon white label (i.e. generic) social network platforms such as Ning or Mixxt: Those simply do not provide any special functionality despite contact list, about me, forum, event calendar, and a way to PR news (blog or newsletter). Often you (as a administrator-user) don’t even get news groups management.

Also, I see a tight relation between the two kinds of social platforms to as well only two different core types of communities. But I don’t see whether if a platform is of type one or two necessarily determines the community that will gather there (if at all, depending on previously analyzed factors such as usability or how you (as a platform provider) treat your users).

The one type of community I see in users whose participation in the ’social’ thing is only an effect, not an intend: The people work everyone for oneself, with the only intend to get benefit for everyone oneself. Contribution here is only a by-product. This can be seen on remote users of Last.FM: They send in the data of a track listened, and Last.FM can do anything with the data, but what they do about the data essentially is unimportant for the user — at least as long Last.FM guarantees for the users’ privacy, especially against man hunts for ‘robbery of intellectual properly’.

So, this kind of community as a by-product already can take place when someone manages to smartly set up crowdsourcing. An other case where being community is a by-product may be seen in self-help forums where people essentially go to to get help for themselves, to chitchat or to make new contacs. All these of course are social activities, but they do not imply that a community constitutes. That’s why I mention them here, and why I discern those social activities from actively forming a community.

The other type of users I see in folks who go after a particular, determined problem, to tackle, solve and get over it. This kind of users you find probably in mostly all free culture projects, such as free software projects and in Wikipedias (plural, because Wikipedias get developed in different languages by different teams). Clearly, you see a tight match between this kind of community and the kind of social platform that offers only basic common functionality but is driven by rules predetermined by the platform/service provider.

business expectations

So, as a service provider you might tend to provide a social platform that provides basic common functionality, select an arbitrary problem and hope the users to come. However, in my opinion that approach goes wrong, simply because for people affected by the problem, the problem is a real problem — other than for you — and they of course mind which tools to use to effectively and in the end get over that hassle that limits their lives. Note, although you’re after to form a community, you still do interact with an individual. Probably with millions of them, but nevertheless with each of them individually — by platform and, important to realize, by customer care.

I see the point that there remains a discrepancy between the company’s intend with the platform and the [individual] user’s intend to use that particular platform: The goal of the company might be to gather as many users as possible (to become able to take profit of The Long Tail approach to business) and to keep these users as long as possible — most hopefully even forever. On the other hand, for a user to take part on a community might immediately originate from a hassle the user wants to get rid of — and therefore the user’s goal is to get rid of that hassle and once to be done with that. — After that point in time there should be no more reason for the user to stay with that particular community, so they might want to leave. — I presume, in current business plans, this issue may be not regarded, and companies might assume they were after just gathering a ‘big enough’ share of global society to become their user base. I think, it’d be important for businesses to realize their platform, for the user, is not an end in itself but nothing but a vehicle — tool — to get over some issue. Therefore it’s part of their business model that they’re going to loose long-term users at some point in time; the only lesson for the companies too be learned is that this is the case, that this is part of their business model, even if they don’t do plan that.