Social Networking provider Facebook has definitely garnered attention with its recent media announcement. Bloggers such as Paul Allen are predicting the day when Facebook will be the largest social network in the world. The Wall Street Journal ran a front page article on how members of Barack Obama’s campaign are using Facebook to raise funds and coordinate activities among supporters. Social networks, such as Facebook certainly have tremendous potential for providing platforms to facilitate coordination, communication, and other forms of collective activity, but if we’re really going to leverage collective activity, I think we need to look beyond the social network platform provider paradigm.
I believe the greatest collaborative technologies are the most transparent. Technologies like the telephone systems (landline, cellular, VOIP, etc.), radio, and e-mail are killer applications for collaboration, because they are largely transparent to the user. Furthermore, these are technologies that can sustain themselves without large inversions of ad revenue. I recognize that millions of people rely on hosted email that is funded by ad revenue, and that centralized Internet services such as Google, Yahoo, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, etc. will likely have a hay day of prosperity in the coming years. But beyond that horizon, I believe that social networks will evolve along the same path the telephone networks did–from a collection of closed networks of subscribers to a specific provider to an interconnected network based on standard protocols. Instant messaging applications are gradually moving in that direction.
I’m picturing a future of collaboration with cellphone / handheld computing devices playing a more central role. I’m thinking about billions of people in Africa, Asia, and Latin America who do not have the luxury of spending hours at work streaming videos and clicking on targeted ads through their employer’s broadband connection. I’m thinking of power-crunched and war-torn economies trying to utilize network technology despite intermittent access to Internet Service Providers. I think mobile ad hoc networking will play a prominent role among collaborators in both devleoped and developing nations. And hopefully, in such an environment, interaction will surpass broadcasting as the favored mode of online communication. In such an environment, I can imagine viral networking taking on a new meaning. What if each person in the world had an addressed electronic device with wireless connectivity that served as a router on the Internet? Individual social networks would function as address lookup tables to route messages from one individual to another. Such a network would be more redundant than the backbone & hub modeled Internet we currently rely on, but it would also be more capable of self-healing. In such a day, I think Cisco would finally have a legitimate reason to rename the Internet into the Human Network.
I’m not suggesting the demise of the fantastic broadband capabilities enabled by miles of fiber-optic cable, sattelite connectivity, etc. I think ad-hoc peer-to-peer networks will complement such infrastructure in ways we can’t currently imagine. But with such emerging, disruptive technologies, I can envision a day when social networking will not be carried out in these online gated communities.
As an information systems scholar, I think it’s important to understand the phenomena associated with social networking communities. We will likely spend years analyzing social capital, migration among online communities, and technology infrastructures and revenue models for hosted services like Google Apps and Facebook. But I believe the best technologies have a way of becoming transparent over time, and that as information sytems scholars, we are not just trying to understand individual interaction with information stored on a dispassionate hard drive. We are trying to support collaboration through human-to-human interaction mediated by technology.
Relationship Economics: Part 1
Author: Jay Deragon 08 9th, 2007
Relationship Economics
Ever wonder where all this “networking activity is going?” For months I have been formulating my own predictive models and attributes using numerous sources of information. At the risk of sounding a little “futuristic” allow me to provide a picture of what I consider to be a realistic model which will emerge in the not to distant future. First I will categorize my findings into what I call “Relationship Economics” and provide appropriate definitions.
First the word “Relationship” being defined as connection or association; the condition of being related. Second is “Economics” being defined as the study of resource allocation, distribution and consumption; of capital and investment; and of management of the factors of production. So I will define the collective meaning of Relationship Economics as: The people and things we are connected with or have an association to which distribute or consume our “capital” which influences our individual production outputs. We will use the term “capital” meaning that which we give or take that creates numerous forms of value.
Practical Relationship Economics Examples: We have relations with people and things. Both either take or give to our “capital“. People and things take or give us time (capital). People give or take information and knowledge (capital). We work with people to make money (capital). We strive in business to create or loose money (capital). We use machines and technology that either give or take value (capital). We interact with “things” that either give or take value (capital). We participate in institutions that both give and take value (capital). Our governments provide the means to gain or loose our freedoms (capital). In essence we have relationships with people and things that give, take or both in terms of our individual abilities to be “productive with our capital”. Collectively “Relationship Economics” is about people and things we give or take which influences numerous forms of value, our “capital“.
When you think about the primary means of most interactions we have with people and things it is technologically based. Whether your working, playing or relaxing you ultimately interact with some form of technology, everywhere and in everything. For the most part technology increases the value of our interactions with people and things. It is hidden and assumed. Initially any new technology takes your time (capital) to learn how to optimize it. However, once proficient you begin to appreciate the value but expect more from it.
When we engage in human relations it takes time to learn whether the interaction creates value and whether the values are in common. When relationships become “disconnected” the primary basis is usually differences in value given or taken and differences in “values”. The primary difference between our interactions with people and things is one of values vs. value. Technology produces value while people dictate the “values” that technology enables for either the building or tearing down of relationships and the related capital.
Relationship Economics is just beginning to take shape and its future has significant rewards. The future,not to distant, will naturally emerge into a convergence of collective technologies which connect us to everything, everywhere. Imagine the following scenarios:
We will have our own network “ Link to Our World” in which we define what is interfaced into our world. Our mobile phone, PDA, Automobile, Television (s), landline telephones and any device in which we receive or transmit communications will be integrated and connected to our Link to The World. Our World portal will have a set of “button” interfaces with people and things categorized by a matrix of relations. Said buttons will appear on our desktop, our mobile phones, our PDA, Televisions, our car screen and any other communication device we use. Some of our devices will contain voice recognition software so we’re able to multi-task safely, i.e in our automobiles, boats or planes. I think you get the picture, everything and everywhere we are able to connect to people and things.
So How Do We give and receive value?
Many of us currently sell products and services in exchange for economic value. The future of Relationship Economics will be based on “value taken vs. value given“. The oldest exchange of value is that known as tithing and it is largely tied to religious organizations. Another exchange of value is that of “tipping for services rendered“. Another old paradigm which the masses have adopted as socially acceptable and expected. Fast forward.
In a world connected to everything everywhere we as individuals are enabled to profile and exchange our value and our values. Already, in today’s market, we’re seeing an exchange of value in terms of relationship introductions and the process of using the means for job recruitment. Job recruiters make money off of placement, an old model of exchange for value which HR departments have adopted as a better method to internal staffing and screening. Now combine the old models of value exchange with a new model. A model in which in the “networked world” we buy tokens of economic value globally. When some one provides us value it is assumed and expected, but not written in contract form, that we would be rewarded according to the perceptions of value by the receiver. The receiver would simply credit our token account with a value they deem appropriate for the benefit gained. In turn we would do the same for those that deliver us value.
Since the technology of the “networked world” provides us with the luxury of efficiency and effectiveness we are able to produce value to whatever degree we choose. The choice is individual. Some will work overtime because others will compensate them for their ability to produce. Others will receive and not compensate, they will be quickly identified as takers, not givers and the entire network will know the difference. The Global exchange of value ignites competitive propositions but the rewards provided are an individual choice, not unlike today’s market of products and services. Deliver value and you gain customers, Deliver defects and you loose them, period.
Relationship Economics will create new mediums, new measures and accelerated exchanges that will displace traditional mediums and totally disrupt and displace existing paradigms. A new world order driven by value exchanges and relationships will emerge and mankind will learn to adapt or lose. Those that don’t adapt and create value will be quickly identified and set apart from the larger network. Value migration will build momentum and create significance, individually and collectively.
More details on this prediction and the related models later. For now: Far fetched or realistic?
We’re building an entire case study supported by models and references as part of our ongoing research. Interested?
What say you?