algumas reflexões sobre comunidades online

sim, sim, formar comunidades é um impulso natural nosso, isso não é novidade. mas, metade por intuição e metade por experiência própria, vejo que há algumas novidades em torno do tema "comunidades online": assédio de marketeiros, ataques de golpistas, auto-promoção, guerrilha, etc.

this is not kansas anymore...

estou publicando uma série de reflexões meio improvisadas a respeito na forma de podcast lá no bom e velho Roda & Avisa. se vocês tiverem interesse, ouçam aqui uma amostra: é o episódio número 4 "fogo, inflamáveis e fumaça".

Mudança de Hábito

Mais uma informação recente sobre mudanças de hábitos:

Pesquisa: internet está prestes a superar TV como mídia essencial
Mais americanos estão escolhendo a internet como meio de entretenimento e informação, de acordo com pesquisa realizada pela Edison Media Research.

Por COMPUTERWORLD
29 de junho de 2007 - 11h45
Consumidores americanos foram consultados para escolher "o mais essencial" veículo de mídia em suas vidas. Dos entrevistados, 33% selecionaram a internet, número muito próximo dos que escolheram a TV, com 36%.
Os números são significativamente maiores que os alcançados pelo rádio (17%) e os jornais impressos (10%), de acordo com pesquisa realizada pela Edison Media Research.
"Não é exagero dizer que a internet se tornou tão importante quanto a televisão como fonte de informações e entretenimento na vida dos americanos", disse Larry Rosin, presidente da Edison Media, em um comunicado.
Em 2002, 20% dos consumidores americanos afirmavam que preferiam a internet, comparado aos 39% que escolhiam a TV e 26% o rádio, segundo o mesmo estudo.
A pesquisa envolveu 1.853 entrevistas por telefone conduzidas entre janeiro e fevereiro deste ano, com um público acima de 12 anos escolhidos de forma randômica, segundo a Edison.
A pesquisa também apontou que para 35% dos ouvidos o jornal impresso é o meio "menos essencial", acima dos 31% declarados em 2002.
Para 38% dos pesquisados, a internet é o meio de comunicação "mais legal e excitante", índice que era de 25% na pesquisa de 2002.
No estudo, 37% afirmam que estão assistindo mais TV ultimamente, enquanto em 2002 o número era de 41%. Em 2007, o número dos que estão usando mais a internet que outros meios subiu para 34%, enquanto em 2002 era de 19%.
Linda Rosencrance - Computerworld, EUA

entrevista com Penelope Trunk

Ten Questions With Penelope Trunk: Career Guidance for This Century

li e adorei :)

Penelope Trunk is the author of Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success. She is a career columnist at the Boston Globe and Yahoo Finance. Her syndicated column has run in more than 200 publications. Earlier, she was a software executive, and then she founded two companies. She has been through an IPO, an acquisition and a bankruptcy. Before that she played professional beach volleyball.

My two favorite answers in this interview are #7 and #10. If I had a nickel for every time I had to answer questions regarding getting an MBA and a first job out of college, I would own my own ice rink by now.

1. Question: How much money does it take to be happy?

   Answer: It takes about $40,000. It does not matter how many kids you have or what city you live in—that’s splitting hairs because peoples’ happiness levels are largely based on their level of optimism and the quality of their relationships. So as long as you have enough money for food and shelter, your optimism level kicks in to dictate how happy you are.

2. Question: Is it more important to be competent or likable?

   Answer: People would actually rather work with someone who is incompetent and likeable than competent and unlikable. Most people nod in agreement when they read this. It’s the unlikable people who form arguments in their head.

   But there’s more. At work, if you are unlikable, people start thinking you are less competent. So stop thinking you can skate by on your genius IQ because you can’t. You need emotional intelligence as well. This situation is so pronounced that there are special-education classrooms rife with kids who could read when they were three. Social skills matter as much as intelligence when it comes to long-term success, even for the geniuses.

3. Question: Should I sue a boss who is sexually harassing me?

   Answer: In most cases, you will destroy your career if you report sexual harassment. So unless you are in physical danger, you should not report harassment. The laws governing sexual harassment don’t protect women who report. The law protects companies from being sued by the women who report. Human resource professionals are trained to protect the company, not the woman who reports.

   When you report harassment it is usually the case that you lose your job through retaliation. Retaliation is illegal but nearly impossible to prove in court. And, even if you could prove it in court, you would go through emotional hell, with no salary, and high-profile drama that makes you unable to get another job. All this for a settlement that will almost certainly not enable you to retire.

   This is simply how the legal system works. I am not saying this is okay. But I’m saying that if you care about your career, you’ll do everything possible to not report. Most women are not in the position to sacrifice their career—and their earning power—in the name of trying to bring down one harasser. The legal system needs to step in and take care of this.

4. Question: When should I ask for a promotion?

   Answer: Maybe never. The average salary increase is four percent. Is that going to change your life in any meaningful way? On top of that, someone is promoting you up their ladder, but their ladder is not necessarily your best path. So stay focused on where you want to go instead of the paths other people have created for you.

   Getting a promotion is so last century. Instead of letting last century’s carrots dictate your workplace rewards, figure out what will be really meaningful to you: training, mentoring, flex time, whatever it is that means more than four percent more money. These are all things that can really improve your life and your career.

5. Question: Is being a generalist or a specialist the path to the executive suite?

   Answer: In Hollywood, the best way to get your pick of any role in the industry is to become a specialist—funny guy, tough girl, action hero—get known for being the best at something, and then use that star-power to branch out. The same is true in business.

   Jobs that don’t require a specialty are low level. To move up you need to be great at something, and you have to let people know what you don’t do. No one is great at everything. Even if your goal is not to get to the executive suite, you should specialize. When you want to take five months off to hike in Tibet, if you are easily replaced, you will be. If you have a skill that is hard to duplicate, your job will be there for you when you get back.

6. Question: What do I do about the gaps in my resume when I traveled or couldn’t find a job?

   Answer: Talk about them well. A gap is really bad if you spent your days on your sofa watching cartoons. But if you watched cartoons to prepare for your next career move into children’s programming, then you sound focused and driven. Same TV, same sofa, two different stories.

   People don’t want to hear your life story. This is good news for people with sofa stints. In almost all cases, you learn something during a gap. Tell a great story about what you’ve learned and where you’re going, and your gap won’t get center stage. Leaving out details is not about lying; it’s about telling good stories.

7. Question: Will getting an MBA or any other type of advanced degree be a good use of time and money since I can’t find a job?

   Answer: No. If you can’t find a job, then you should invest in something like better grooming, or a better resume, or a coach for poor social skills. These are the things that keep people from getting jobs. Instead of running back to school, figure out why you can’t get a job, because maybe it’s something that a degree can’t overcome.

   Grad school generally makes you less employable, not more employable. For example, people who get a graduate degree in the humanities would have had a better chance of surviving the Titanic than getting a tenured teaching job.

   Unless you are going to a top business school at the beginning of your career, you should not stop working in order to get the degree. Go to night school because you will not make up for the loss of income with the extra credential.

   Law school is one of the only graduate degrees that makes you more employable. Unfortunately it makes you more employable in the profession where people are more unhappy. Law school rewards perfectionism, and perfectionism is a risk factor for depression. Lawyers have little control over their work and hours, because they are at the beck-and-call of their clients, and many are constantly working with clients who have problems lawyers cannot solve. These two traits in a job—lack of control over workload and compromised ability to reach stated goals—are the two biggest causes for burnout in jobs.

   [May I interject here? I went to law school for two weeks and quit when I was young! Guy]

8. Question: What’s the ideal length of a resume in a world where every resume is electronic and not viewed printed out on paper?

   Answer: A page. Still. Your resume is a marketing document, not a summary of your life, so every line should be about an accomplishment. The more amazing your accomplishments, the fewer you need to list. For example, if you can write “Evangelized Macintosh and made it one of the most beloved brands in the world,” then you don’t need any other sales and marketing bullets on your resume.

   If you have totally lost perspective, and you think you have two page’s worth of incredible and relevant achievements, consider that hiring managers spend ten seconds evaluating a resume, and a scanner looks for ten keywords, which certainly fit on one page.

   So unless you have a great connection with the hiring manager, and you know he’ll look at both pages, don’t bother sending them. And if you do have that great connection then you are probably going to get an interview even if your resume sucks.

9. Question: How should I prepare for an interview?

   Answer: An interview is a test you can study for. So memorize answers to the fifty most common questions. Most interviewers ask standard variations on standard questions, and there are right answers to these questions.

   Whether you are a stripper or a CIA agent, the answer to the question, “What is your weakness?” is a story about how your weakness interfered at work—in a specific situation—and you overcame it. Most of your other answers should be stories, too. This means you need to make them up before you get to the interview. Stories of your life are memorable. Lists of your life are not. Be memorable if you want to be hired.

   Another way to prepare is to go to the gym right before the interview. It doesn’t matter if you never go to the gym—although you should, because people who workout regularly are more successful in their careers. You should go right before an interview because people judge you first on your appearance, and if do heavy lifting with your back and stomach muscles you will stand up much straighter in the interview. This will make you look more confident, which is half the battle in being judged by appearance.

10. Question: What’s the right strategy for the search for a first job out of college?

    Answer: Don’t place too much importance on your first job. You’ll have a lot more. Most people have eight jobs before they turn thirty, and that’s fine. It is nearly impossible to know what career will be a good fit for you until you start trying things. So give yourself the latitude to try a lot. And don’t get hung up on a big soul search. To land a great job, you don’t need to know the meaning of life, just the meaning of hard work.

11. Question: Do only losers live at home after college?

    Answer: On some level it would be insane not to move back home, which is why more than fifty percent of graduating seniors do it. Moving back to your parent’s house is a smart step toward finding a career that’s right for you.

    Entry level jobs typically cannot cover the cost of rent, college loan payments, and insurance premiums—all of which are rising faster than wages. If you don’t have to worry about paying rent, you have more flexibility to wait for the right job and to take a job that feels very right but pays very poorly. The rise of the prestigious but unpaid internship intersects perfectly with trend to move back home.

12. Question: What should I do if I work for a jerk?

    Answer: Leave. I know there are classic Bob Sutton examples of revered jerks like Steve Jobs, but I wonder about the people who put up with him. Can they not find another visionary to work for who is not such a jerk?

    Staying in a job like this makes you look bad. People wonder why you put up with it. And, frankly, you should too. It’s like being an abused wife. The wife who stays always defends the relationship by how much she gets out of it, but to everyone else it is obvious that she should leave. The problem is a loss of personal perspective.

nove grandes mitos

encontrei essa pérola no blog do Guy Kawasaki :)

The Nine Biggest Myths of the Workplace by Penelope Trunk

I liked Penelop Trunk's interview so much that I asked her for more material. Here's her list of the nine biggest workplace myths:

1. You’ll be happier if you have a job you like.

   The correlation between your happiness and your job is overrated. The most important factors, by far, are your optimism levels and your personal relationships. If you are a pessimist, a great job can’t overcome that. (Think of the jerks at the top.) And if you have great friends and family, you can probably be happy even if you hate your job (imagine a garbage collector who’s in love).

2. Job-hopping will hurt you.

   Job hopping is one of the best ways to maintain passion and personal growth in your caeers. And here’s some good news for hoppers: Most people will have eight jobs between the time they are eighteen and thirty. This means most young workers are job hopping. So hiring managers have no choice but to hire job hoppers. Ride this wave and try a lot of jobs out yourself.

3. The glass ceiling still exists.

   The glass ceiling is over, not because people crashed through, but because people are not looking up. Life above the glass ceiling is 100-hour weeks, working for someone else, and no time for friends and family. And it’s not only women who are saying no to the ladder up: Men are as well. People want to customize success for themselves, not climb someone else rungs. So if no one is climbing to the top, the glass ceiling isn’t keeping anyone down.

4. Office politics is about backstabbing.

   The people who are most effective at office politics are people who are genuinely nice. Office politics is about helping people to get what they want. This means you have to take the time to figure out what someone cares about, and then think about how you can help him or her to get it. You need to always have your ears open for when you can help. If you do this, you don’t have to strong arm people or manipulate them. Your authentic caring will inspire people to help you when you need it.

5. Do good work, and you’ll do fine.

   For one thing, no one knows what the heck you’re doing in your cube if you’re not telling them. So when you do good work, let people know. It is not crazy to toot your own horn--it’s crazy to think someone will do it for you. Also, if you do good work but you’re a jerk, people will judge your work to be sub par. So you could say that good work really only matters if your co-workers enjoy hearing about it from you.

6. You need a good resume.

   Only ten percent of jobs come from sending a blind resume. Most people get jobs by leveraging their network. Once you have a connection, the person looks at your resume to make sure there are no red flags. So you need a competent resume and an excellent network. This means you should stop stressing about which verb to use on the second line of your third job. Go talk to someone instead.

7. People with good networks are good at networking.

   Just be nice, take genuine interest in the people you meet, and keep in touch with people you like. This will create a group of people who are invested in helping you because they know you and appreciate you. Use LinkedIn to leverage those peoples’ networks, and you just got yourself a very strong network by simply hanging out with the people you like.

8. Work hard and good things will come.

   Everyone can put in a seventy-hour week. It doesn’t mean you’re doing good work. So here’s an idea: Make sure you’re not the hardest worker. Take a long lunch. Get all your work done early. Grand thinking requires space, flexibility and time. So let people see you staring at the wall. They’ll know you’re a person with big ideas and taking time to think makes you more valuable.

9. Create the shiny brand of you!

   There is no magic formula to having a great career except to be you. Really you. Know who you are and have the humility to understand that self-knowledge is a never-ending journey. Figure out how to do what you love, and you’ll be great at it. Offer your true, good-natured self to other people and you’ll have a great network. Those who stand out as leaders have a notable authenticity that enables them to make genuinely meaningful connections with a wide range of people. Authenticity is a tool for changing the world by doing good.

Mudança de Hábitos

Colegas do Social Computing,

Me peguei sem paciência para TV por assinatura recentemente. Tentei entender. Muitas propagandas de programas geniais. Tinha um com o Jared Diamond, outro com o Thomas Friedmann, outro sobre a descoberta de um tal Jesus, filho de José....
O problema : Nenhum deles naquela hora. As propagandas falavam os horários só que, é claro, não me programei para assistí-los. Mais fácil: descobri que boa parte eu encontro atravé sdo e-mule.
Mudança de Hábito : quando estou interessado em algo procuro na Net. Vídeos e áudio-books são facilmente encontráveis no e-mule ou limewire. Nao preciso me programar e me satisfaço sobre o que quero aprender naquele momento.
Sobre os programas, aqueles que eu consegui me agendar, no momento eu já estava focado em outra coisa e fui procurar na web...

Forte abraço a todos

Multitarefa??? Vejam o que encontri no blog da Lúcia

Você é multitarefa?

Tudo acontece ao mesmo tempo. O telefone toca, a resposta a um e-mail está pelo meio, alguém chama e o alerta de mensagens instantâneas pisca sem parar, avisando que há três pessoas querendo lhe dizer alguma coisa. E você, como reage? Faz uma coisa de cada vez ou todas simultaneamente?
Se você é multitarefa, sinto informar que está perdendo tempo e correndo mais riscos de errar. É o que indicam estudos recentes nos campos da psicologia, da neurologia e da relação homem-máquina. Uma dessas pesquisas, realizada pelo centro de neurociências da Universidade Vanderbilt, revela que o nosso cérebro não consegue se concentrar em duas coisas ao mesmo tempo.
Quando o ser humano tenta executar duas tarefas de uma vez só, a execução da primeira atrasa a segunda, devido a um gargalo no processamento da informação. Das duas tarefas propostas aos participantes da pesquisa, a segunda apresentou atraso de até um segundo. Para a maioria das tarefas, um segundo não é grande coisa, mas pode ser fatal se for falar ao celular num carro a 120 km por hora.
Além das limitações do cérebro, temos o efeito dispersivo da tralha tecnológica, como o aparentemente inofensivo alerta de chegada de mensagens. Segundo estudo da pesquisadora Shamsi Iqbal, da Universidade de Illinois, é comum o indivíduo atender ao alerta, dar uma olhada nos e-mails e voltar para o que estava fazendo cerca de 9 minutos depois, pelo menos. Em um grupo de desenvolvedores da Microsoft, o tempo de retorno à tarefa inicial chegou a 15 minutos. Nesse ritmo de dispersão, dez interrupções consumiriam 2 horas e meia, um tempo muito precioso.
E você, quanto tempo perde do seu dia de trabalho com telefone, alertas de e-mail, messenger e outras interrupções? Seja qual for o resultado, checar os e-mails só a cada uma hora, desabilitar os alertas e desligar o celular durante a realização de uma tarefa que exija concentração pode ser um bom começo para poupar tempo.

web 2.0 e o fim da regra de três

posso dar um toque inusitado ao nosso blog? hoje fiz esse videocast rápido sobre um aspecto fundamental dessa nova fase da web: o crescimento exponencial :) para aprofundar mais o tema, gravei um podcast também ;)

(caríssimos, se esses experimentos informais e improvisados não forem compatíveis com o conceito original do blog moderem à vontade, ok? juro que vou entender)

Acho que tem haver com nosso último encontro

Jovem frauda Wikipedia e atua como professor
Terça-feira, 06 de março de 2007 - 17h14
SÃO PAULO - Um jovem se fez passar por professor de teologia com título de PhD apenas fraudando um verbete na Wikipedia
O estudante Ryan Jordan, 24 anos, conseguiu dar aulas de teologia no Kentucky, Estados Unidos, e escrever artigos para revistas especializadas após mentir sobre suas próprias qualificações na Wikipedia.
O jovem, conhecido pelo nome de usuário Essjay na enciclopédia livre, era um contribuinte assíduo da Wikipedia e tornou-se editor do site, com poderes para arbitrar discussões da comunidade, bloquear verbetes alvo de vandalismo e retirar do ar textos publicados.
Entre outras contribuições, Essjay editou um verbete para Ryan Jordan, seu nome real, e atribuiu ao nome excelentes qualificações acadêmicas, entre elas um título de PhD.
Graças à credibilidade conferida pela enciclopédia, Jordan conseguiu trabalhos como professor e concedeu uma entrevista para a publicação New Yorker em julho de 2006. Sua fraude foi descoberta esta semana, quando jornalistas da New Yorker faziam um cadastro de seus entrevistados e não encontraram o nome de Jordan nas listas de ex-alunos dos locais onde ele disse ter estudado.
Pressionado, Jordan admitiu a fraude e confessou ter conhecimentos superficiais sobre religião. A revista pediu desculpas pela publicação da entrevista com um falsário.
O co-fundador da Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, também lamentou o episódio. Wales afirmou, no entanto, que a enciclopédia livre é baseada em relações de confiança e, por isso, sofre abalos sempre que alguém desaponta a confiança da comunidade. Jordan teve seus direitos de editar a Wikipedia suspensos.
Felipe Zmoginski, do Plantão INFO

falando em web 2.0...

caríssimos, gostei muito da nossa conversa e das experiências (e inquietações e dúvidas e risos) que compartilhamos.

falando em compartilhar, eu costumo usar bastante um produto nosso do Yahoo! para compartilhar bookmarks, o My Web!. vocês usam também? querem convite? de qualquer maneira, eu publico todos os links novos que eu salvo no TudoPeloSocial, dá pra acompanhar por ali.

(eu tenho vários blogs, aliás... o OraVejam , o Roda&Avisa, a própria usina... espero que vocês gostem)

e se vocês quiserem uma imersão nessa história de web 2.0, o RadinhoDePilha é todo ouvidos... e muitas bocas :)

Social Networking

Será que fora do ambiente de tecnologia Social Networkings Pegam???
Veja o caso do IMNO - International Mentoring Networking Organization. Uma opensource comunity que facilita com que qualquer pessoa possa ter como mentor alguém ocupando posições relevantes no mundo. Já existe a algum tempo e, por exemplo, nos Estados unidos, tem apena 138 mentores. Muito pouco para sua pretensão. Vejam o texto:



The International Mentoring Network Organization (IMNO) began when three University students identified the lack of professional mentoring available to the general population. If you did not belong to a university, club, or professional association; you could not access the knowledge, advice, and vision of the alumni in their respective organizations. Chris Deaver, Jetmir Hysi, and Patrick Tedjamulia began to ask "Why?"
After studying the open source methodology, they connected the concepts of open source and professional mentoring and created an opportunity for young aspiring professionals to develop themselves in proactive, powerful ways no matter where they lived, what school they attended, or what organization they belonged to. The idea was to empower individuals with an honorable reason to interview their ideal mentor. The honorable reason is to share the mentor's advice, knowledge, and vision with the rest of the world. Chris, Jetmir, and Patrick labeled the idea "open source mentoring".
n October 2003, the International Mentoring Network Organization was founded to launch the open source mentoring movement, as an official 501c3 non-profit, IMNO membership is free to everyone. Because of IMNO, individuals can interview their ideal mentors and post the interviews on IMNO to make them available to everyone. IMNO gives you an honorable reason to approach your ideal mentor and ask for an interview.
In addition, IMNO has become a neighborhood for powerful, philanthropic mentors to share experiences and vision. Thousands of individuals from over 50 countries have since joined the Network, becoming heirs to an unparalleled opportunity to share their own success stories. Newspapers, magazines, and broadcasting stations have caught on as well, joining in the IMNO mission to creatively inspire aspiring professionals to accomplish meaningful objectives through open source mentoring.

A amoralidade da Web2.0

Enfim, uma crítica...uma discordância...

Nicholas Carr ganhou notoriedade internacional quando publicou (em 2003) na HBR um artigo dizendo que TI não tinha importância (IT doesn't matter) . O professor Carr, em seu blog, volta suas críticas para Web2.0. Vale a leitura. Desde que foi postado há cinco meses, o artigo referenciado acima tem sido fartamente comentado.

Eu terminei de ler o texto com a impressão de que ele faz uma análise preconceituosa da web2.0 - uma crítica encomendada... Como se estivéssemos analisando um tigre e concluíssemos que o projeto do animal é deficiente porque ele não consegue voar, nem se alimentar de vegetais... Por exemplo os exemplos citados para criticar as deficiências da Wikipedia (coisa que ninguém discorda que existem muitas) são muito particulares. Para cada um desses, milhares de outros exemplos contrários seriam facilmente encontrados.

Talvez eu também esteja sendo preconceituoso.

De novo, livros... Agora, o livro como sempre conhecemos em parceria com WEB

Google, with the cooperation of prestigious libraries, has been digitizing books to make them findable. The practice excites futurists but angers some publishers. Of necessity, digitization creates virtual copies. The publishers claim that such duplication violates copyright, even if the book’s content is hidden from the public. The New York Public Library, one of Google’s partners in the project, recently hosted a public debate on the subject. [Jeffrey Zeldman]

Big Brother

Europa quer saber quem está online

Victoria Shannon
em Paris

Os governos europeus estão preparando uma legislação para forçar as empresas a manterem dados detalhados sobre o uso da Internet e do telefone pelas pessoas, algo muito além do que os países serão obrigados a fazer, segundo uma diretriz da União Européia (UE).

Na Alemanha, uma proposta do Ministério da Justiça basicamente proibirá o uso de informação falsa para a criação de conta de e-mail, tornando ilegal a prática padrão na Internet de criação de contas com pseudônimos.

Uma lei esboçada na Holanda igualmente irá além do que exige a UE, neste caso obrigando as companhias telefônicas a guardarem os registros de exatamente onde alguém está durante toda uma conversa por telefone móvel.

Herald Tribune

modelo Chris Meyer

Qual o valor que queremos criar em nossa social network?

Conheci o Chris Meyer em 2001, na época em que a Monitor Group comprou a GBN (da qual fazíamos parte como Zumble desde 97). Foi ele quem trouxe o Jaron Lenier para um projeto de cenários que fizemos para a BellSouth (lá e aqui, no Brasil). Ele hoje é o principal executivo de um negócio da Monitor chamado Monitor Networks e eu pedi a ajuda dele por e-mail para o nosso tema de Social Networks (que é a proposta de valor da Monitor Networks aos seus clientes). Vejam a resposta abaixo:

I'm happy to tell you that this year is finally when the "rubber meets the road" down here in Boston. We are finally turning our Monitor Networks conversations into actions, projects and making some dollars for Bill and Glen (who you know well!!). We gave up the idea of a general theory of human networks and concentrated our efforts in producing practical guidelines for the projects leaders we have in the joint engagements along with Monitor Consulting. I need to be honest with you: what we have in our hands is just what emerged from the first few years of experience. Getting payback on investment in a social network is too hard yet. But our clients know exactly what kind of value they want the network to create. I hope the following model can help you and your counterparts at DBM to organize your efforts - this is a public material I´ve been exposing in different venues everytime I´m asked to. So, feel free to share it with your colleagues. In the recent HBR "Breakthrough Ideas for 2007" I explore this concept based in our experience so far. Any other comment, question or idea, please let me know.

Entendo os Influenciadores - Duncan Watts

Uma parte muito importante do entendimento que estamos tentando criar a respeito da Computação Social pode ser obtido no recém publicado guia "Breakthrough Ideas for 2007" da Harvard Business Review. Copiei abaixo alguns trechos e recomendo o livro do Duncan Watts (Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age, Norton).

In his best-selling book The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell argues that “social epidemics” are driven in large part by the actions of a tiny minority of special individuals, often called influentials, who are unusually informed, persuasive, or well connected. The idea is intuitively compelling—we think we see it happening all the time—but it doesn’t explain how ideas actually spread.

The supposed importance of influentials derives from a plausible-sounding but largely untested theory called the “two-step flow of communication”: Information flows from the media to the influentials and from them to everyone else. Marketers have embraced the two-step flow because it suggests that if they can just find and influence the influentials, those select people will do most of the work for them. The theory also seems to explain the sudden and unexpected popularity of certain looks, brands, or neighborhoods. In many such cases, a cursory search for causes finds that some small group of people was wearing, promoting, or developing whatever it is before anyone else paid attention. Anecdotal evidence of this kind fits nicely with the idea that only certain special people can drive trends.In recent work, however, my colleague Peter Dodds and I have found that influentials have far less impact on social epidemics than is generally supposed. In fact, they don’t seem to be required at all.

Our argument stems from a simple observation about social influence: With the exception of celebrities like Oprah Winfrey—whose outsize presence is primarily a function of media, not interpersonal, influence—even the most influential members of a population simply don’t interact with that many others. Yet it is precisely these noncelebrity influentials who, according to the two-step-flow theory, are supposed to drive social epidemics, by influencing their friends and colleagues directly. For a social epidemic to occur, however, each person so affected must then influence his or her own acquaintances, who must in turn influence theirs, and so on; and just how many others pay attention to each of these people has little to do with the initial influential. If people in the network just two degrees removed from the initial influential prove resistant, for example, the cascade of change won’t propagate very far or affect many people.

Building on this basic truth about interpersonal influence, Dodds and I studied the dynamics of social contagion by conducting thousands of computer simulations of populations, manipulating a number of variables relating to people’s ability to influence others and their tendency to be influenced. Our work shows that the principal requirement for what we call “global cascades”—the widespread propagation of influence through networks—is the presence not of a few influentials but, rather, of a critical mass of easily influenced people, each of whom adopts, say, a look or a brand after being exposed to a single adopting neighbor. Regardless of how influential an individual is locally, he or she can exert global influence only if this critical mass is available to propagate a chain reaction.

To be fair, we found that in certain circumstances, highly influential people have a significantly greater chance of triggering a critical mass—and hence a global cascade—than ordinary people. Mostly, however, cascade size and frequency depend on the availability and connectedness of easily influenced people, not on the characteristics of the initiators—just as the size of a forest fire often has little to do with the spark that started it and lots to do with the state of the forest. If the network permits global cascades because it has the right concentration and configuration of adopters, virtually anyone can start one. If it doesn’t permit cascades, nobody can. What seems in retrospect to be the special influential quality of a particular person (or group) is, therefore, mostly an accident of location and timing.

Although at odds with the dominant interpretation of the two-step flow, our results are actually consistent with a great deal of influentials research—in particular, the finding that influence in any given circumstance depends not only on such personal characteristics as expertise, charisma, and popularity, but also on the details of the circumstance itself. Sometimes people are influential because they are outspoken and gregarious, other times because they are introspective and reflective. Sometimes they are central members of particular groups, and other times they are peripheral. Sometimes they are innovators, and sometimes they are laggards. There are, in fact, so many ways for people to be influential, and so many kinds of influentials, that it is almost impossible to generalize from one situation to another. What our work clarifies, however, is that such generalizations are difficult not because of insufficient data but because any focus on individual attributes alone overlooks the importance of network effects.Understanding that trends in public opinion are driven not by a few influentials influencing everyone else but by many easily influenced people influencing one another should change how companies incorporate social influence into their marketing campaigns. Because the ultimate impact of any individual—highly influential or not—depends on decisions made by people one, two, or more steps away from her or him, word-of-mouth marketing strategies shouldn’t focus on finding supposed influentials. Rather, marketing dollars might better be directed toward helping large numbers of ordinary people—possibly with Web-based social networking tools—to reach and influence others just like them.

Duncan J. Watts (djw24@columbia.edu) is a professor of sociology at Columbia University

Jornais deixarão de ser impressos. Livros seguirão?

Em artigo apresentado no site www.haaretz.com, a jornalista Eytan Avriel descreve conversa que teve com Arthur Sulsberger (foto), em Davos, na qual o dono e Presidente do The New York Times fala sobre a vida depois da Internet.

Segue em inglês:

Despite his personal fortune and impressive lineage, Arthur Sulzberger, owner, chairman and publisher of the most respected newspaper in the world, is a stressed man.

Why would the man behind the New York Times be stressed? Well, profits from the paper have been declining for four years now, and the Times company's market cap has been shrinking, too. Its share lags far behind the benchmark and just last week, the group Sulzberger leads admitted to a loss of $570 million because of writeoffs and losses at the Boston Globe. As if that weren't enough, his personal bank, Morgan Stanley, recently set out on a campaign that could cost the man control over the paper.

Question - Given the constant erosion of the printed press, do you see the New York Times still being printed in five years?

"I really don't know whether we'll be printing the Times in five years, and you know what? I don't care, either," he says. He's looking at how best to manage the transition from print to Internet.

"Internet is a wonderful place to be and we're leading there," he adds. The Times has doubled its online readership, and now has 1.1 million subscribing to the print edition - and 1.5 million readers online, each day.

The New York Times is on a journey, Sulzberger says, and its end will be the day the company decides to stop printing the paper. That will be the end of the transition. It's a long journey, and there will be bumps in the road, says the man at the driving wheel: but he doesn't see a black void ahead.

Postado por Edson Fregni.

Apophenias, Taxonomias e Folksonomias

Gostaria de retomar a discussão do superficial. Ocorreu-me a idéia de "apophenia" (encontrar novas relações que não existiam antes, com um novo olhar).

Por exemplo as núvens de rótulos (tag cloud) fazem emergir novas taxonomias não pensadas antes, que têm até nome: folksonomia. Imagino que folksonomia se distingue da taxonomia porque aquela é informal, apenas emergente, enquanto que esta última é oficializada por especialistas, dogmática.

Eu me pergunto se esse superficialismo de que estamos falando, acompanhado pela enorme extensão do território de informação navegado, não faz emergir na nossa mente uma espécie de nuvem de conceitos rasos. Essa núvem traz condições novas para que a apophenia se manifeste: novas relaçoes - não existentes antes - emergem da visão da enorme planície das informações superficiais. Teríamos então um efeito secundário criativo da visão superficial.

Vou parar. Já sei, voei. Mas vou deixar o comentário. Talvez alguem tenha um melhor lampejo (êta mania de falar português...).

Postado por Edson Fregni.

Trocar direitos por popularidade

Gostaria de chamar a atenção para um novo aspecto: o da propriedade intelectual. Acho que nada melhor que o texto recentemente postado por Chris Anderson no seu site:
The Long Tail

Ali, ele fala de seu livro (The Long Tail), pirateado no BitTorrent, e demonstra sua satisfação com isso. Ele se justifica com uma uma frase de Tim Reilly: "Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy".

Parece-me que isso marca um novo paradigma no mundo da criação intelectual (e artística). Aceita-se trocar direitos por popularidade.

Postado por Edson Fregni.

Mais rápidos, porém mais superficiais

Uma das questões levantadas em nossa primeira reunião de discussão sobre os efeitos da Internet no Social foi a da velocidade vs. a superficialidade.

Hoje, o encontro de informações se dá de maneira quase instantânea. Num clique, conseguimos acesso a conteúdos que em outros tempos levaríamos semanas, meses ou sequer encontraríamos. As conseqüências e as causas do Efeito Estufa são reveladas em segundos nos nossos monitores. Podemos levantar quantos e onde estão os famintos no mundo com apenas um "enter" do teclado. Tratamentos para doenças antigas como nossa própria espécie ou tão novas que seu nome ainda é investigado entre suspiros e angústias são apresentados num virar da ampulheta eletrônica. Teses, ações, soluções e propostas para questões filosóficas, teológicas, sociais, ambientais, econômicas etc. são visualizadas na mesma velocidade. O acesso à informação, mais do que em qualquer outro momento da humanidade, é garantido.

Porém, se desviar da imagem da criança famélica e chorosa e passar para uma página com vídeos da estrela do momento fazendo sexo na praia se dá na mesma velocidade e com a mesma facilidade. Passamos pelas informações como se construíssemos um gigantesco mosaico de imagens. Imagens que se unem pela cola da indiferença produzida pela anestesia do constante, da proteção da virtualidade, do não-aprofundamento, da fome pelo novo.

A caudalosa onda de informações pela qual surfamos nos deixa de visão ampla de horizontes quando estamos em sua crista. Mas dificilmente mergulhamos na superfície espelhada do oceano físico e sentimos sua consistência, suas águas geladas ou mornas. Passamos por cima sem sentir o sabor do sal.

Ganhamos um mosaico exuberante de informações, mas que não tem espessura maior que o vidro que separa esse texto dos seus olhos neste momento.

Ou, por outro lado, os rápidos fragmentos seriam em tal quantidade que, pela dimensão, compensariam sua disposição plana?

Sei que, em geral, o contemporâneo pode nos parecer raso à primeira vista. Lobato e os da Semana de 22 que o digam. Mas a velocidade que nos move hoje é tamanha que deixa pouco espaço para a reflexão. Vivemos como lagartos corredores patinando na superfície para não afundar. Se pararmos, afogaremos? Sabemos para onde vamos tão desabaladamente? Temos consciência do percurso? Do que deixamos pra trás? Ou seguimos movidos apenas pela nossa natureza? Neste caso, deixamos o leme em boas mãos?