Stowe, Love the juggling metaphor! I agree w/ you that studies on multi-tasking address only part of the picture. Context of activity matters, and what we do online is integrated into other routines. There's something to be said of how this reflects on flow, however, for flow is not just a term that applies to working online. A focused stretch of time is flow, too. Writing flows when you're in the groove, it stutters when you're distracted. So measuring flow by the objects of one's attention may not be the best way to do it. Perhaps there's an internal flow and an external flow, or flow that issues from within and which is guided by one's own stream of consciousness, and flow which involves a stream of incoming news and events. Perhaps there's active flow and reactive flow. Or generating flow and responding to flow. If seen from the user's perspective, it would come down to attention flow and whether this is continuous or discontinuous. In the former, the user stretches out flow for the duration of focused time. In the latter, the user connects segments of discrete flows and draws out a line of his own between them. I sometimes think of this in terms of the arbitrary -- the internet does connect us with a lot of arbitrarily given, or disconnected and unrelated events (items, news, information, what have you). Arbitrary is noise until the user synthesizes, connects, and integrates, creating signal. Whether this is distracting or focusing then makes a difference in productivity/output. Or something like that, perhaps!

Bingo! I've written about this several times myself. Social capital and social currency -- I like to distinguish between the "value" and its "circulation" for value is only potential influence until it is "spent" or actualized by means of communication -- are relational. The comparison to money fails because the social "economy" doesn't reproduce itself out of exchanges mediated by a currency mapped to exchange value (classical economics). It is built on relationships and is thus relational. And being social it is not a market. Critical to understanding social influence then is that it is not owned or possessed but is communicated. Communication is what engages social capital and communication is how it is "spent." Note that it is "spent" in the form of attention paid by followers (attention is paid to the influencer, and possibly even given to the influencer in form of RTs, @reply, links, etc). Social power is always held by the people, not the leader -- and the people can withdraw their trust or relationship whenever they want. So the better comparison would be to political capital probably, not to money-based economies. One implication of this suggests an answer to the fungibility or transferability of social capital question: in some cases influence is bestowed by position or role; in some cases it is attached to the individual. Oprah's influence likely belongs to Oprah as personal superbrand -- not to her role as television show host. If she left her network she would take her capital with her. But many others get their influence in part from their position (which likely comes with authority, budget, decision making power etc). Are these transferable? Answer would depend on the context -- if the influence is personal (jeremiah owyang will be able to transfer his influence from Forrester to whatever he does next) then yes. If it is by position, then possibly not (ask any former politician). Implications would affect companies interested in assimilating an influencer's social capital. An influencer employed in a role intended to leverage that influencer's audience may find that the audience is much less receptive to the influencer when s/he is employed to represent corporate policies.

Stowe, Totally with you (and Kevin) on this. Not only is it flow, but to me it's conversation (not publishing, not information). Flow but asynchronous, where messages are loosely coupled and where the flows are disaggregated/reaggregated into different contexts by services like FB connect, Js-kit, FF, etc. I posted similar thoughts on realtime curnchup, focusing more on the fact that we need to understand better the two-sided statement/response mechanics of conversation (statements often want responses); and that as discontinuous and asynchronous flows, these kinds of conversations result in a more time-based attention economy (what i've been contrasting as social capital vs social currency). my post is here: http://bit.ly/FVHQS cheers, adrian

Ross, Too many good and well-articulated points in here to note separately! But I really like how you shift emphasis from functional transactions to conversational transactions, from the old KM model of captured Knowledge to Knowledge as a byproduct of flow (of conversation). You complement that nicely with a corresponding shift in emphasis on Knowledge as a supply side solution to Knowledge as a demand-driven solution, a product of your move from organizational control of K to shared control of K. Ultimately, that shifts emphasis from the organization's definition and management of K to the user's need, interest, and management of K. And yes, user participation is then the social in social crm. I have thoughts on corresponding user interests, personalities, and competencies that would flesh out the internal organizational social dynamics of social crm (getting to the Relationship aspect). Thanks for this. Extremely cogent, and dare I say, relevant. cheers, adrian

If iTunes goes social I wonder if iTunes genius will go social too -- there could be some very cool discovery possibilities there. Combine your blues tracks with my jazz rock, for example, and see what a social genius comes up with... (charlie hunter trio?!)

Thanks for reassembling this thread for us. Overtones of Monty Python notwithstanding, there is a debate here, though it's possibly in another room. Focus here is on links, and links as currency, part of some new economy Seems a silly proposition imho. However, there is a paradigm shift of sorts underway. --I'd think the "new" economy is talk or conversation, using social media as a means of production, if you will. --The currency is in part social capital, in part information: it's talk. --There is exchange, but it's non-economic; it's just social. -Some kinds of exchange look like economic transactions, some have an economic form: gifting, retweeting, following back, etc. --The cost of production is zero, because it's talk. --The "nature" of the new economy is not scarcity but surplus (in the digital world copies proliferate and distribution is essentially frictionless, or free) --Alongside the economic activity of talk is the passive consumption of talk: attention. --Attention paid, spent, or received is human attention for the most part -- individuals who belong to or use social media. --But attention economy is increasingly home to institutional players: media companies, celebrities, commercial brands and properties --This will disturb social media from end user experience perspective, and also complicate new economy and its rules for institutional participants That's how it seems to me, at least. cheers man, adrian

Totally agree that there is a lot worthwhile to do/learn from here. As to why the ratio is so unbalanced, I think some of it is our own fault (meaning those of us in social media). Because this social media tool was adopted first by social media folks, it quickly gained a reputation w/in social media circles that was bigger than its real life adoption. Social media people need something new to talk about, a tool or service that neither related industries (marketing, advertising) yet understand, nor that the public has quite figured out, and twitter was it. I rather doubt the stats, tho. But I dont know who was polled and how the question was written.

Perhaps it's me but I can't quite tell which side you're coming down on here: that twitter is a grand waste of time and energy, or that advertisers need to set better expectations, and execute strategically. No way is twitter a SecondLIfe. But even if it were, the cost of using twitter is far less than was the cost of establishing a branded storefront inside of SL! Personally I think part of the problem is that in spite of all the punditry around social media, what *it* is, and how to use it, we still want for a faceted and insightful set of strategies and practices. Twitter has only relatively recently become viable for commercial uses (as in, it has 45 million users -- however they be defined, for granted, many are DOA). What are conversational strategies? Which ones work? --Are there strategies based around and used to build trust? --Are there strategies, borrowed from everyday conversation and interaction, that create debts or goodwill by means of gifting? --Are there strategies for information sharing? --And strategies for reciprocated and mutually-beneficial exchanges (following, RTing, @replying, linking) that build more dense and more durable "networks" in tools that are open and conversational (twitter?) I think we're just not there yet -- still apply many strategies inherited from web advertising that emphasize views, traffic, and the other numbers we live by. Conversation is flow, speed, distribution. Talk, not pages. Now if the user experience on twitter collapses, and it turns out that it was just another shiny new thing, the conversational practice has still been established and other conversational tools will come along. We need to learn how to get what we need from them, whether that's in better definitions of ROI, better conversational marketing strategies, new "narrative marketing" approaches, who knows. Conversational media are not about image, they're about talk. It's about the creative. cheers, adrian

Peter, As obvious as it seems, this is a point worth making. The world turns on daily routines, local habits and what we might call communities of practice (but many would just call the "everyday"). Local and real world habits are arguably much more binding and strong than offline ones. We all need face to face, regularly and with regulars! It's the reason I still use my corner store -- not price, product selection, or some other "incentive." Incentives are necessary when the relationship is too loose or thin to provide cause for return. it seems the challenge for many businesses that do have a strong local following is to leverage and extend that loyalty online, through use of social media. And the reverse challenge for brands big on social media is to deepen and anchor that loyalty in grounded and local communities of practice (as you put it). I'm not sure a brand can ever "create" a community of practice, but it can certainly try to attach or embed itself in one. These are mutually reinforcing efforts, different and unique in their own ways but increasingly cross-pollinating as a result of the proximity, presence, and immediacy effects of (new) social media. There's an implication to your post that i like -- it's that online "relationship" are not all that; and offline get-togethers are not just that. Online our relationships are driven by "talking" -- messaging, sharing, etc: messaging and communication is the emphasis and it's a reason that brands take to the medium. Offline, our relationships drive talk and conversation according to our natural social articulations: friendships, peer relations, and so on. In other words, online the communication seeks to become relationships; offline our relationships bring conversation to life. The two are different, and while I hesitate to say that they are co-dependent (the online world can appear bigger and more meaningful than it is), a commercial strategy that recognizes the mutually reinforcing benefits of pursuing both "communities of practice" is smart and firm. cheers, adrian

Mike, Love the story, and for another point that I think it makes very nicely. One I was hoping to communicate myself: practitioners (young fish) have a direct experience with the medium. The ability to call water by its name, or to describe its properties, being inconsequential to the practice of swimming. However the task of description -- which requires the abstraction provided by mapping -- does necessitate a language. (Some call this a second order system, while some say that the description can never be commensurate with the practice). Whether or not an un-reflected use of social media is "inferior" is not for me to judge... analysis of user behaviors and attempts at explanations of those behaviors require abstraction and reflection. But they are not "superior" to direct experience. In my view these are two distinct kinds of experience. Social media analysis, if it could be developed as a kind of forensic discipline, would do well if it were able to anticipate and predict forthcoming user behaviors! It would need its own language of observation, and a sense also of the direct experience and practices of social media. Any attempt to describe social media practices is bound to falter somewhat on the language of observation and description. As long as we remember that descriptions are not a full accounting of experiences, however, we should be fine.

John, I think they are two distinct levels of analysis, one being the skill, competency, and insider know how of the practitioner; the other being the analytical, observerant, and critical perspective of theorist/designer/professional. Some coaches played football, but not all. Some composers play, but not all. Many cooks taste their meals, but not all... I'm of the mind to ask that we not be blinded by our expertise or "insight," and remain open to new practices, and keen as observers. New things continue to happen in social media, in spite of the fact that we made frequent use of common or "best" practices. I'm personally fascinated by this -- that in a particular culture, the technology or design can be repurposed easily by users against the intentions of designers, architects, and engineers. It would take both the insider and the observer together to produce a narrative or description around what's happening: the insider who knows the interaction codes, signals, rituals etc; and the observer who can see the role played by architecture/design (structure), etc. So yes, I think they're different -- and should be paired up. Much as a geologist might hire a guide when navigating a new mountain range... a