6 Ways Social Proof Shapes the Web
You’re walking down the street. You come across a group of 12 people, all curiously looking up at an open window on the 6th floor of a high-rise building.
What do you do?
You stop, look up, trying to see what it is that they’re all looking at.
This was a 1969 experiment done as part of a social contagion study. It demonstrated the effect known as social proof.
This single aspect of natural human behaviour is also responsible for;
- Football stampedes and the way crowds behave like an organism distinct from the individual
- The popularity of the iPod
- The dominance of Microsoft a desktop operating system
- The high levels of crime and corruption in South Africa
- High rates of obesity in many developed countries
- How some guys can consistently date women that are “out of their league”
- The development of complex languages and what we now know as “culture”
- Why yawning is contagious
- Why moods and attitudes are contagious
- Religion
This part of human nature, like so many other traits, is an evolutionary hangover.
The ability of human beings to learn rapidly and share knowledge is the single most important thing that set the species on the path to earthly superiority.
So what does that have to do with online behaviour?
Social Proof
“Social proof, also known as informational social influence, is a psychological phenomenon that occurs in ambiguous social situations when people are unable to determine the appropriate mode of behaviour. Making the assumption that surrounding people possess more knowledge about the situation, they will deem the behaviour of others as appropriate or better informed.”
Simply put, social proof is the way human actions are dictated by the actions of other humans.
Online, this tendency pops up all over the place…once you know to look.
Testimonials
Testimonials work. They establish credibility, they tell others that you’re a little bit of alright.
An effective testimonial conveys trust by drawing on the magic of social contagion.
SEO and link building
A big part of SEO relates to trust. The nature of search engines is such that relevant organic results depend largely on the opinions conveyed about websites by other websites.
Algorithms use various proxies for trust and opinion conference to score and measure the value of webpages.
This transfer of trust by 3rd (and 4th and 5th and beyond) parties is the reason inbound linkage plays a part in search results.
Social Media websites like De.licio.us, Technorati, Digg, StumbleUpon
Websites like those above are a great way to find premium content online. We know that it’s premium content because everyone else says it is.
Social network adoption
No-one wants to be the only person FaceBook, MySpace or LinkedIn.
There is no NETWORK without the SOCIAL.
The value of any social network is directly dependant on the other members of that network. People join social networks when others they know and trust tell them to.
The number of new members joining a social network will tend to increase exponentially. It’s what gives social networks an uptake curve that looks like this:
Ebay – seller ratings
Ebay is undoubtedly one of the most successful online trading platforms ever.
A huge part of that success was the way it handled the transfer of trust between buyers and sellers. A simple rating system that allowed buyers to rate the behaviour of sellers, and sellers to rate the behaviour of buyers, meant that a prospective buyer or seller could base their decisions partly on the experiences of other users.
This little bit of extra information lubricates the wheels of commerce especially in an environment where users are (rightly) apprehensive and cautious.
It can be argued that ebay revolutionised online trade in a very special way
Amazon – ‘other buyers bought’
This simple innovation – suggesting products favoured by other buyers – had a huge effect. Much like the more recent methods of making “most popular” content more visible to readers. “Here, you’ll like this. Others did”
Of course, there’s a lot more to be said on this subject – look out for the follow-up post.
In the meantime, read this, and this, and this…you’ll like it. Others did.
Where Are All The Black Web Professionals?
Last week, Mandy de Waal wrote a Who’s Who in the Web 2.0 Zoo story featuring some of the big names in the South African online sphere. (Let’s ignore for now the problems with talking about “Web 2.0 VS vanilla internet”)
One pull-quote from the piece caught my eye,
“White boy’s club
Empowerment seems to have touched every other industry sector, but this one. “
That reignited my curiousity on the question:
Where are all the black web professionals?
It’s a question I’ve raised many times over the past few years and I’ve never been able to come up with a satisfactory answer.
I remember, back when I was working with Quirk and they were trying to improve their BEE credentials, how much of a challenge it was for them and how much of a challenge it is for many traditionally white businesses trying to toe the empowerment line.
For sure there are black businesspeople operating in the online media space, but they are the barely visible minority.
Today Ramon Thomas, self-styled dating coach, motivational speaker, blogger and all round busy guy, wrote this follow-up, which is effectively a shadow list (no pun intended with the use of the word “shadow” – honest).
He closes his post with the question:
“Sometimes I wonder will South African media ever, ever be more representative. When white people own most of the media companies, produce most of the radio or television content, publish (edit) most of the newspapers, magazines or websites, what do you expect?”
It’s an interesting question, even if based on a somewhat flawed perception. Perhaps what we should be asking is,
“How are we, as participants in the new media industry, working to change the status quo?“
What these two pieces highlight is that there exists a network failure. The nature of social networks (the real world kind) is that there’s a tendency for homogeneity, especially in the short to medium term (long term always trends towards the diverse). Birds of a feather and all that.
To create diversity within specific sectors it’s important to sow the seeds of integration. Once you’ve done that things are more likely to naturally become inclusive.
With all of this in mind, for a while now I have been looking at creating an online network of black web professionals.
Something like the Forum for Black Journalists only without Jacob Zuma addressing the inaugural meeting, without throwing out the white people who want to contribute and without the assortment of coconut-flavoured high jinx that contributed to that particular organisation never getting off the ground.
My idea is simple. If we acknowledge the need for transformation within our sector then let’s be proactive and do something about it.
Where are all the black web professionals? Where are all the white web professionals who care about the fact that there are not enough black web professionals?
Some of the things to be debated would be:
- What exactly should such a network aim to achieve?
- How would such a project add value to the online industry in South Africa?
- How do we prevent the alienation of the white web professionals who arguably dominate the industry currently?
- Do black web professionals face challenges that their white counterparts don’t?
- What can the players in the industry do to speed up transformation within the industry?
- Should the end product be something like the Black Web 2.0 network from the US?
The idea is to create something that will:
- Propel black web professionals into the mainstream
- Help white businesses improve their BEE status in ways that create additional value
- Facilitate the transfer of skills to PDIs
- Help black businesses enter the modern web space.
The simple fact is that transformation is an important part of the South African business landscape and the online sector is lagging behind.
I am in the infant stages of putting something together but for projects of this kind, the more people involved the better.
If you agree that transformation is important and that there’s a need for this kind of initiative then give me a shout in the comments.
A contrarian view of The Contrarian’s view of Web 2.0
I’ve spotted this guest post over at CopyBlogger.
Written by Bob Hoffman, the author of “The Ad Contrarian,” it takes a very interesting look at how the web has changed (or not) marketing.
“…marketing on the web is evolving very much as marketing on tv evolved – people with stuff yelling at people with money.“
Some of the key points he makes are:
- The web is largely a passive medium for all but the geekelite
- Online marketing happens primarily through search, display or social media
- Search does not make content interactive any more than a library’s indexing system makes books interactive.
- Display ads don’t work. They’re “intrusive, wasteful, and inefficient” – everyone knows this yet it’s still the top revenue stream for many online publishers
- Social Media and “the conversation” – “the average consumer simply does not have the time or the inclination to have conversations with marketers“
I think Bob makes some very valid comments but I think marketing, much like anything else, should best be evaluated in relative terms.
Online media is MORE interactive than traditional media. Print advertising and TV advertising have been “not working” for years, yet advertisers still vote with their adspend.
- Users who search are looking for something. Helping them find it might not be a wholly interactive experience but it certainly does fulfil a marketing function when it associates your brand with the right kind of queries.
- Sometimes users DO click on display ads – especially when you’ve used imagery appropriate to your target market.
- Sometimes consumers DO want to have conversations with brands and their representatives – how you conduct these conversations can shape brand perception.
I think ultimately the point is that us interweb geeks must be careful of drinking our own kool-aid. We must learn to see the weaknesses if we are to maximise the strengths.
Singletasking Series: Part 3 – Understanding Multitaskalism
This is the third post in a series on Singletasking (in case you missed the bit in the heading that says, “Part 3″).
People around the world are multitasking with reckless abandon. They are addicted and they don’t even know it. This affliction is so widespread we don’t even notice it anymore.
For lack of a better word, I’ve decided to call this pandemic “Multitaskalism“
(OK, technically it already has a better name. ADT or Attention Deficit Trait.)
Multitaskalism can be defined as the result of the mental reprogramming that occurs over time when people habitually try to tackle multiple tasks simultaneously.
Symptoms of Multitaskalism:
- The knowledge that you could and should be producing more than you are;
- The feeling that you’re smarter than your output seems to suggest;
- Responding to questions more hurriedly and with less well-considered answers than you should
- The feeling that the reservoir of new ideas is starting to run dry and that the few new ideas that are coming through are sometimes only half-formed;
- Working longer hours but producing less;
- Sleeping less and having less free time for exercise and socialising;
Causes of Multitaskalism
- Access to an increasing number of inputs and outputs
- Living in the digital age, we presume that human brains are like giant organic CPUs and we tend to treat it as such
- Switching attention from one thing to another has a stimulant effect, caused by the release of chemicals within the brain. This form of chemical stimulation is addictive
- The diversity of the average workday, so critical in alleviating boredom, means our mental resources are constantly pulled in a variety of directions
- The increase in the number of communication channels and the ease of communication means that the nature of interpersonal interaction has changed. It’s more frequent and often brief, which equates to regular interruption.
- Intake of stimulants like caffeine may also be a compounding factor.
Possible long-term effects of Multitaskilism
- Rewiring of the brain, making it function in a specific way
- The diminished ability to hold on to and fully develop specific and complex ideas
- Emotional strain due to the reduced ability to understand and manage emotions
- Reduced ability to process and structure information, especially complex information.
- Reduced ability to store and recall information – i.e. reduced memory function
- Reduced ability to break complex tasks down into simpler individual tasks
- Reduced ability to order and prioritise tasks
Have you experienced any of these symptoms or effects? Are you a victim of multitaskalism?
Is this even a real phenomenon? I’d love to know what you think.
Single-tasking Series: Part 2 – Why and How we Multi-task
(Click here if you missed Part 1 in this series)
“A hidden energy crisis threatens our world. Society throws people into chronic physical, emotional, and spiritual depletion. Multi-tasking lets us manage a deluge of very real duties, but it also jeopardizes the now.”
I’ve found some great reads on the subject of multitasking:
- The most entertaining, and longest, has to be the Autumn of the Multitaskers – (definitely worth a read if you’ve got the time and attention span.)
- Time Magazine‘s article on The Multitasking Generation gives some insight into the effects of multitasking on the new (they’re younger than me so I can call them “new”) generation,
- the most eye-opening article thus far has, without a doubt, has been Why can’t you pay attention anymore?
What’s become clear from reading these articles is that this phenomenon is not really new. It has been studied and talked about for years now, yet no-one really pays much attention (pun intended).
To better understand it, I think it important to look at the processes and mechanisms at work.
How the brain handles multitasking
The human brain IS able to multitask BUT ONLY in a limited number of ways.
I can type this blog post and chew gum at the same time.
I can also drive while listening to music or maybe even an audio book.
If I were to type this blog post while driving however, I’m pretty sure there’d be a problem. What about typing while listening to an audio book?
The effects of multitasking are largely related to the how the brain is used when performing certain functions.
Generally speaking, tasks for which you have reached the level of unconscious competence (you can perform these tasks effectively without thinking about performing them) are more suitable for multitasking.
“Passive” tasks (e.g listening to music) too are easier to multitask.
Tasks that use the same part of the brain are less suitable for multitasking (e.g. having a telephone conversation while typing an email). When one part of the brain needs to handle two or more tasks, it needs to take care of them one at a time.
While the brain can multitask in limited ways, conscious attention can only be focussed on a single activity at a time.
The problem is that everyday we are faced with more things competing for that attention. (The Attention Economy).
What this leads to is a tendency towards trying to tackle more tasks simultaneously than your brain can handle. for many of these tasks, it is simply not possible to truly multitask. Instead, you sequenci-task – tackling each one briefly and incompletely before cycling through to the next task. To compensate, you have to give less than 100% to each of them.
Stimulation vs Performance
When we switch from one task to another, it triggers a chemical response within the brain, creating a stimulant effect.
The old idiom of, “Change is as good as a holiday” may hold a deeper truth – stimulants are a substitute for rest.
The relationship between stimulation and performance is a bell curve – with low-level stimulation there are increases in productivity but beyond a certain point, the level of productivity decreases. One cup of coffee wakes you up, gives your neurons a jump-start and improves mental performance. Five cups is likely to make you feel wired and restless, decreasing productivity.
Relating this point back to the earlier one, it’s clear that multitasking helps fight boredom and stimulates the mind. It gives a mild, almost imperceptible buzz. However, excessive multitasking puts us at risk over-stimulation, which creates that feeling of being ‘all over the place’ mentally.
We multitask because we can and because it makes us feel good. It becomes habitual and it becomes chronic.
Are you a chronic multitasker?
Single-tasking Series: Part 1 – Does Anyone Have My Attention?
Is modern living spreading your mental faculties like too little non-dairy butter substitute over too much gluten-free toast?
That’s the gist of this entire series of posts really.
To start with, take a look at the Carte Blanche Web 2.0 segment from a few weeks ago:
This piece has already generated a fair bit of comment on the local blogosphere (note to self: must find a better word for this) so I’m going to refrain (for now at least) from discussing how it missed the mark.Instead, with regard to the topic of multi-tasking, a couple of quotes stand out for me:
Dave Duarte: “The pace of change now is not only unforeseen, it is unmanageable. So we’ve got so much stuff coming at us, the expectation for us to keep up with it is not really realistic. “
Rafiq Phillips: “It’s continuous, it’s always happening. Someone is always asking you a question or asking you to send them an email. You’re always communicating…Continuous partial attention, that’s what it’s about, because you’re always busy with something.”
That last line especially – always busy. partial attention.
Gail Curtis (CEO Saatchi & Saatchi SA): “What the new generation is doing and particularly the youth market, they’re doing their homework, they’re talking on the mobile phone they’re playing games and they’re watching TV. So they’re multitasking and working very, very quickly.”
Working very, very quickly – but what’s the quality of output like?
What I’m (unsubtly) trying to point out, is the bias towards multitasking in the digital age and the presumption that an increased number of inputs sources and output mechanisms equates to increased productivity and efficiency.
I’d have to say that in my own experience this is simply not the case.
In the past 10 years I have effectively (and unwittingly) reconditioned my brain to function through continuous partial attention – constantly shifting focus and spreading efforts across multiple simultaneous tasks.
In effect, I have cultivated an attention deficit and I know I’m not the only one.
Do you find yourself increasingly stretching your attention budget?
Can you honestly say that doing more things simultaneously makes you more efficient?
PS – As an example of the multi-task overload I’m talking about, right at this minute I have open and active:
- 8 Firefox tabs,
- 2 MS Word documents,
- an MS Visio diagram,
- a Visual Studio project,
- my RSS feed reader,
- My email client and two individual emails opened for editing,
- MSN Messenger with 2 conversation windows,
- a notepad text file(with some javascript code I’m playing with)
- and a Windows Explorer window.
That’s around 20 tasks competing for my attention and I wouldn’t consider that above the norm.
Zen and the Art of Singletasking
“You can’t pay attention to two things simultaneously. You’re switching back and forth between the two. So you’re paying less concerted attention to either one.”
Something that has really piqued my interest over the last few days has been the concept of “singletasking” – effectively the antithesis of “multitasking”.
Over the past few months I have become increasingly aware of the overheads that result from over-committing limited processing resources. In other words, I’ve noticed that trying to do too much results in too little getting done.
This very blog post is a perfect example.
I started writing it four days ago. In that time I’ve also half-written about 5 other posts. So in four days I’ve written six posts, which would be great if any of them were a) any good, b) complete, c) publishable.
Sadly it’s failure from a to c.
As my awareness of the scatterbrain-tasking phenomenon has grown, so has my determination to reverse the effects of what has, over the past few years, become a thinking-habit.
I’m also curious as to the aggregate effect – if my own experience is an indicator then the broader issue has potentially far-reaching social consequences.
I’ve come across a number of blog posts and articles that has had me thinking about the situation from contrasting angles. For ease of digestion, and not oblivious to the irony of it, I’ve decided to publish these as a series of individual posts rather than as a comprehensive single post.
That way, you (the reader) can pay your full attention to each of the sub-topics and so start down the path to single-tasking utopia.