• 03:28 Chipped in to @ashPEAmama fund, fam­ily was not pre­pared for loss tinyurl.com/29h52x #
• 08:46 @anno­hio @jeffpulver if in Miami in Feb­ru­ary, please con­sider @barcampmiami and FOWA #
• 08:51 @jeff­pul­ver ah, ok … in that case, I look for­ward to your Feb So.Fla. SMB #
• 09:34 @devbear happy happy b-day! #
• 11:55 New blog post: “Social objects and the observer’s para­dox” tinyurl.com/ynrg4s … but will you tell me if I’m way off base with this? #
• 15:16 @zeroin­flu­encer thanks, i’ve been enjoy­ing your series of posts on social object as well, great food for thought #
• 15:19 last few hours in sao paulo, head­ing to the air­port soon, hope to catch the flight back tonight #

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My pre­vi­ous post about “social objects”, described how your pro­file, what you pub­lish and what share online deter­mines the impres­sion you make and pro­vides top­ics or hooks for oth­ers to get in touch with you. The term social object is a con­ve­nient short­hand for describ­ing such hooks, which rep­re­sent many of the rea­sons peo­ple social­ize with each other online; this the­ory is referred to by soci­ol­o­gists as “object-centered sociality”.

Other ways to social­ize include phatic com­mu­ni­ca­tion, although arguably even small talk may be car­ried out for ulte­rior motives.

“No Man’s Blog” has an excel­lent analy­sis of iden­tity man­age­ment and phatic com­mu­ni­ca­tion through the use of Face­book appli­ca­tions.

Objec­tions raised

My post gar­nered excel­lent, lengthy com­ments. Refer­ring to Hugh MacLeod posts here and here, one of the com­menters, Bernard Trem­blay voices a valid, if strongly worded, objec­tion on his blog to the use of the term “Social Object”. Bernard laments that the term seems prone to prof­i­teer­ing by mar­ket­ing “snake oil salesmen”:

The moment draws nigh when we take one more step: “you came over just to chew the fat with Pam” … right. But what hap­pens when we use “social objects” as our lens? We see that entirely social impulse in terms of trans­ac­tion … the title of the piece is “mar­ket­ing” and prop­erly so: what we’ve done here is reduced the whole to an exchange between providers and con­sum­mers [sic].

Yet the trend is clear …

There’s plenty evi­dence that brands are invest­ing heav­ily in online word-of-mouth mar­ket­ing. Accord­ing to PQ Media,

Spend­ing on word-of-mouth (WoM) mar­ket­ing jumped 35.9% in 2006 to $981.0 mil­lion and is expected to top $1 bil­lion in 2007, mak­ing it one of the fastest grow­ing alter­na­tive media seg­ments. Dri­ving the growth is the con­tin­ued con­sumer shift to alter­na­tive media and the mar­keters’ need for increased brand engage­ment and ROI. These are some of the find­ings of the first in-depth analy­sis of the emerg­ing word-of-mouth (WoM) mar­ket­ing indus­try released today by PQ Media, the lead­ing provider of alter­na­tive media econo­met­rics (www.pqmedia.com).

Help­ing to fuel this growth are a pro­jected 3.5 bil­lion brand-related con­ver­sa­tions per day in the U.S., accord­ing to Keller Fay Group, with nearly 80% of con­sumers trust­ing rec­om­men­da­tions from fam­ily, friends and “influ­en­tial” per­sons over all other forms of adver­tis­ing and marketing.

Need more evi­dence? Accord­ing to Nielsen, vehi­cle dis­cus­sions are up 40% since Jan­u­ary 2007. Inter­est­ingly, the same arti­cle dis­plays Nielsen’s “Brand Asso­ci­a­tion Map, which is a “a visu­al­iza­tion tool to map how con­sumers nat­u­rally think and talk about brands online.” This is how the social object plays out in con­ver­sa­tions. Here’s an exam­ple of a map of con­ver­sa­tions about Nike.

Pit­falls abound!

So let’s all hop on the word-of-mouth band­wagon, and let’s do it by cre­at­ing social objects for peo­ple to engage in object-oriented social­ity, but under own terms, right? Not sur­pris­ingly, this type of think­ing is fraught with pit­falls. Some exam­ples come to mind:

• Should brands join or build social net­works? Con­sider the $2 to $3 Mil­lion “Con­nect­ing with Cook­ies” site, whose short­com­ings are described here by Kami: “Con­nect­ing with Cook­ies is pure adver­tis­ing and the site is a brochure. There is noth­ing wrong with that, but if Pep­peridge Farms was sold a social media site, this isn’t it.”
• McDonald’s strained effort to cre­ate a Starbuck’s-like expe­ri­ence in its stores, which accord­ing to this Fast­Com­pany arti­cle, is cer­tain to bomb: “Remem­ber McPizza? Me nei­ther. I’ve read it was nei­ther bet­ter nor worse than Pizza Hut or Domino’s Pizza, but it was a mis­er­able fail­ure. Why? Because when you go into a McDonald’s, you’re going to be bul­lied out of your pizza-eating mood (assum­ing you entered with one in the first place) by the sweet stink of the flag­ship fare. The place reeks of fries and beef. McDonald’s has spent mil­lions of dol­lars devel­op­ing chem­i­cal aro­mas for its fries, burg­ers and chicken, and they are every bit as intox­i­cat­ing as they were meant to be. You know that frus­tra­tion you expe­ri­ence when you try to hum one song while another is play­ing on the radio? That very dis­so­nance was the demise of the McPizza, and will claim McCof­fee next.”
• And more gen­er­ally, some com­pa­nies and brands are pay­ing blog­gers and social net­work­ers to advo­cate their prod­uct, for instance by using Pay-Per-Posts’ rebranded SocialSpark ser­vice (good intro­duc­tory video, though and props for the greater trans­parency with the dis­clo­sure badge). From the video: “… the per­fect way for brands who want to engage blog­gers in a more con­trolled atmos­phere” … lol. As if you could craft real con­ver­sa­tions between peo­ple to mir­ror the laun­dry deter­gent ads on TV.

Cen­sor­ing or attempt­ing to con­trol the word-of-mouth is equally mis­guided, as in the case of Microsoft doing away with the Blue Mon­ster; accord­ing to Robert Scoble: “@gap­ingvoid: yeah, some­one inside Microsoft killed the Blue Mon­ster. Sigh. Microsoft’s com­mit­tees kill every­thing cool.” The alter­na­tive would have been to let the Blue Mon­ster live its own life and retire itself when Microsoft does start chang­ing the world again.

The Observer’s Para­dox:

Zero Influ­ence points out that “Brand as a Nar­ra­tive pre­vents the Brand exist­ing as Embod­i­ment. Brands need to live within the archi­tec­ture of life, not on the per­cep­tion plane. Try­ing to get a pur­chas­ing audi­ence to care about a Brand is costly com­pared to using your Brands affor­dances to improve the infra­struc­ture of life. In this case giv­ing is cheaper than adver­tis­ing.”

In “The Gift”, Lewis Hyde makes this point by describ­ing an Eng­lish fairy tale of a …

“… Devon­shire man to whom the fairies had given an inex­haustible bar­rel of ale. Year after year the liquor ran freely. Then one day the man’s maid, curi­ous to know the cause of this extra­or­di­nary power, removed the cork from the bung hole and looked into the cask; it was full of cob­webs. When the spigot next was turned, the ale ceased to flow.

The moral is this: the gift is lost in self-consciousness. To count, mea­sure, reckon value, or seek the cause of a thing, is to step out­side the cir­cle, to cease being ‘all of a piece’ with the flow of gifts and become, instead, one part of the whole reflect­ing on another part.”

Because life is grainy and each bit, the good and the bad, make up your expe­ri­ence. The things we love most may have lots of defects. When things are too easy, we take them for granted. And when things sound too rosy, we dis­trust them. And if you look into the source of your gift, you’ll lose the shine in your own self-consciousness.

The same thing applies when design­ing spaces for con­sumer inter­ac­tion with your social objects.

Talk­ing about Rela­tional Aes­thet­ics and art, where the audi­ence is envis­aged as a com­mu­nity, French the­o­rist Nicholas Bour­ri­aud, cura­tor at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, says,

“There are two ways of build­ing an insti­tu­tion. One way is to build a jew­elry box to present objects and the other one is to con­ceive of it as an open mar­ket where every­thing is remov­able and you can change things all the time. .…

I think that maybe the idea of being rel­e­vant, of being use­ful, of being per­ti­nent is more impor­tant to artists than just doing some­thing new .…

Ten years ago, it would have been com­pletely impos­si­ble to con­sider a DJ as an artist for exam­ple. Now, it’s nor­mal. Nobody would even think of say­ing ‘you’re already play­ing pre-existing records, so you’re not an artist.’ That’s van­ished. The idea of the artist as a kind of demi-god cre­at­ing the world from a blank sheet of paper is some­thing that has just van­ished from our every day cul­ture. The fact that the DJ or pro­gram­mer or artist uses already exist­ing forms in order to say what they want to say is some­thing that is cer­tainly the most impor­tant thing at the moment because it totally goes beyond the art world.”

If you’re a brand, con­sider becom­ing a DJ with your prod­ucts and ser­vices. There are plenty of exam­ples, includ­ing Radiohead’s lat­est album, Amazon’s cus­tomer ser­vice (“Jeff used to say that if you did some­thing good for one cus­tomer, they would tell 100 cus­tomers”), and Dell’s Ideas­t­orm.

So Design for Hack­a­bil­ity (pdf file, via PLSJ). Design for play and join your audi­ence. Just don’t make it slick and stop your bean-counting, if you want to build engag­ing expe­ri­ences with your com­mu­nity around your social objects.

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• 08:08 @john­niemoore your blog issues a 403 error tinyurl.com/2lrxb6 … might you repost the pod­cast else­where? #
• 12:44 Uploaded pic­tures taken in Rio de Janeiro www.flickr.com/photos/adc/ #
• 14:41 @eigen­macx voltando as nos­sas men­sagens da sem­ana pas­sada (social media no brasil) … vc topa um chopp hoje? tou na zona sul / lagoa #
• 14:42 @hyku have you tried using Feed­hub? #
• 15:10 Ogilvy: “cuts are nec­es­sary pri­mar­ily b/c the nature of the busi­ness is chang­ing [from tra­di­tional to dig­i­tal]” tinyurl.com/25rk94 #
• 15:19 @mickou t’as le lien pour ca ? #
• 16:46 being left out of rel­e­vant con­vos just plain bites: why must it be this way? exclu­sion com­mu­ni­cates indif­fer­ence, neglect, even con­tempt #
• 16:54 @infin­i­typro thx; i thought issues had already been resolved but i learned oth­er­wise today; may be long process now + must set expec­ta­tions #
• 18:28 Social objects can be com­plete fic­tions with real out­comes: cre­ation­ist museum on YouTube tinyurl.com/36oukg #
• 19:18 Tonight’s sun­set in Rio flickr.com/photos/adc/2176756324/ … off to din­ner now #

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• 05:17 @david­michaels @rmedina thanks for the add, here’s a list of more South Florida Twit­ter­ers tinyurl.com/3b72su #
• 10:47 @ben­trem qual­ity of objects is imma­te­r­ial: they’re social con­structs tinyurl.com/3y73h4 + #the­me­words are objects for the inter­ested #
• 10:51 got great, lengthy com­ments on last night’s post on social objects, I’ll address them later on tinyurl.com/2x2r8m #
• 12:11 @ben­trem impos­si­ble to describe w/140chars, I’ll post later; essen­tially, objects (phys­i­cal or not) acquire life thru sto­ry­telling +exchange #
• 12:37 Haber­mas in “Dis­course Ethics”: Every­one is allowed to ques­tion / Every­one is allowed to intro­duce any asser­tion what­ever into the dis­course #
• 12:58 @cschick thanks for that ref­er­ence! “The way a Claddagh ring is worn con­veys the wearer’s roman­tic avail­abil­ity, or lack thereof” #
• 13:33 @jess­es­tay know­ing @guykawasaki and @chrispirillo ‘s adds came from a script isn’t very encour­ag­ing; also, how to fil­ter out spam­mers? #
• 13:40 @jess­es­tay thanks, good idea about the black­list and i get your point; i pre­fer man­ual add but see how auto­matic adds makes sense #
• 14:10 Twit­ter greatly accel­er­ates dis­cov­ery of new peo­ple and build­ing deeper rela­tion­ships, com­pared to most other soc­nets (imho) #
• 14:31 Hello @teeg @godfree ; now at 800 and <wav­ing to all> #
• 14:32 Tex­ting in 140 char­ac­ters is fraught with dan­gers; it’s often impos­si­ble to estab­lish con­text and thereby avoid sen­si­bil­i­ties #
• 15:09 Rio de Janeiro: quem se inter­essa em social media / bar­camp? Tou no Rio ate o dia 9 de janeiro, seria um prazer con­ver­sar #
• 15:33 @jess­es­tay yes the big advan­tage of auto fol­low is that now we can DM the big names on Twit­ter #
• 15:34 @brbres­lin twit­ter is help­ing me dis­cover and get to know peo­ple bet­ter than Face­book in most cases #
• 16:12 @brbres­lin direct com­mu­ni­ca­tion is far eas­ier (and more effi­cient?) on Twit­ter than Face­book, except for the 140 char­ac­ter lim­i­ta­tion #
• 16:28 @cwsay­lor yes, i think the twit­ter 3rd party tools + mobil­ity are a large fac­tor in adop­tion, usage and addici­tion; open APIs drive usage #
• 16:30 @mis­s­rogue my 2 cents: the @ replies com­plete the con­ver­sa­tion and belong to you like email replies #
• 19:24 @flo­ri­anseroussi c’est n’importe quoi, lol! Study should include a ben­e­fits analy­sis … or is Twit­ter exclu­sively a pro­duc­tiv­ity drain? #
• 19:34 @flo­ri­anseroussi i’m not sure pro­duc­tiv­ity cost can be used to set com­pany value; rev­enues or ben­e­fit per user, yes #
• 19:39 @jud­man indeed #
• 19:42 retweet: frozenpeafund.com now very close to goal, please donate for @susanreynolds if pos­si­ble #

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• 11:44 If it weren’t for Scrab­u­lous, I’d hardly use Face­book tinyurl.com/yp4u4t #
• 11:47 Uploaded 14 new pic­tures of Rio de Janeiro www.flickr.com/photos/adc/sets/72157603550212994/ #
• 11:52 @kr8tr run your twit­ter and an @kr8tr ter­ra­minds search RSS through Pipes tinyurl.com/2a4wfu then Dap­per tinyurl.com/27nozj #
• 11:52 @trula thanks! vacation’s over and I’m now work­ing from Rio for the next week #
• 11:58 @kr8tr on Pipes, you can reverse chronol­ogy your tweets and join with the ter­ra­minds search results; Dap­per dresses it up and can add to FB #
• 12:37 Re-reading Fred Stutzman’s learned post on object-centric social net­works tinyurl.com/yvfonr #
• 12:47 @armano sez: “inti­mate brand rela­tion­ship is formed through a col­lec­tion of expe­ri­ences + rein­forced thru sto­ries” tinyurl.com/2r3vge #
• 12:52 Urban leg­ends (and lol­cats) are social objects, they’re socially con­structed fic­tions; lessons for mar­keters: tinyurl.com/2bsuhd #
• 15:20 @chip­grif­fin I saw ur Seesmic: what bet­ter solu­tions other than RSS exist for syn­di­ca­tion? It is a rea­son RSS goes hand in glove w/ soc­me­dia #
• 15:27 @eigen­macx voce ta no Rio? tou aqui mais uma sem­ana … que tal se encon­trar pra falar sobre social media no brasil? #
• 15:28 @fseixas te man­dei uma men­sagem direta ontem, vc rece­beu? #
• 15:33 Witness.org is look­ing for an exec­u­tive direc­tor tinyurl.com/yszztv #
• 15:39 @lin­dash­er­man i’m not dis­put­ing sin­gel­rin­gen is a social object: it cer­tainly breaks the ice; it may grow into more sig­nif­i­cant S.O. w/ time #
• 15:42 @lin­dash­er­man if sin­gel­rin­gen is a “real-life” (as opposed to online) sub­sti­tute for Match.com, it will remain only as an ice breaker #
• 15:44 @lin­dash­er­man if sin­gel­rin­gen wear­ers take pride in being sin­gle as a lifestyle, even tem­porar­ily, then that’s really dif­fer­ent and wor­thy #
• 15:45 @eigen­macx legal, quando vc quiser entre amanha e terca … meu cel: 21–9111-0030 … valeu! #
• 15:57 @van­der­wal I’m famil­iar with that paper, I’ll look for it when I get back in about 10 days — if you haven’t got­ten it by then #
• 15:59 @mari_posa i agree, looks great … maybe send this for­wards to your con­tacts? #
• 17:15 @jspep­per fly­ing to Brazil, per­chance? #
• 19:14 New blog post -> “Social objects as arte­facts for iden­tity man­age­ment” tinyurl.com/2x2r8m #
• 05:17 @david­michaels @rmedina thanks for the add, here’s a list of more South Florida Twit­ter­ers tinyurl.com/3b72su #

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• 11:44 If it weren’t for Scrab­u­lous, I’d hardly use Face­book tinyurl.com/yp4u4t #
• 11:47 Uploaded 14 new pic­tures of Rio de Janeiro www.flickr.com/photos/adc/sets/72157603550212994/ #
• 11:52 @kr8tr run your twit­ter and an @kr8tr ter­ra­minds search RSS through Pipes tinyurl.com/2a4wfu then Dap­per tinyurl.com/27nozj #
• 11:52 @trula thanks! vacation’s over and I’m now work­ing from Rio for the next week #
• 11:58 @kr8tr on Pipes, you can reverse chronol­ogy your tweets and join with the ter­ra­minds search results; Dap­per dresses it up and can add to FB #
• 12:37 Re-reading Fred Stutzman’s learned post on object-centric social net­works tinyurl.com/yvfonr #
• 12:47 @armano sez: “inti­mate brand rela­tion­ship is formed through a col­lec­tion of expe­ri­ences + rein­forced thru sto­ries” tinyurl.com/2r3vge #
• 12:52 Urban leg­ends (and lol­cats) are social objects, they’re socially con­structed fic­tions; lessons for mar­keters: tinyurl.com/2bsuhd #
• 15:20 @chip­grif­fin I saw ur Seesmic: what bet­ter solu­tions other than RSS exist for syn­di­ca­tion? It is a rea­son RSS goes hand in glove w/ soc­me­dia #
• 15:27 @eigen­macx voce ta no Rio? tou aqui mais uma sem­ana … que tal se encon­trar pra falar sobre social media no brasil? #
• 15:28 @fseixas te man­dei uma men­sagem direta ontem, vc rece­beu? #
• 15:33 Witness.org is look­ing for an exec­u­tive direc­tor tinyurl.com/yszztv #
• 15:39 @lin­dash­er­man i’m not dis­put­ing sin­gel­rin­gen is a social object: it cer­tainly breaks the ice; it may grow into more sig­nif­i­cant S.O. w/ time #
• 15:42 @lin­dash­er­man if sin­gel­rin­gen is a “real-life” (as opposed to online) sub­sti­tute for Match.com, it will remain only as an ice breaker #
• 15:44 @lin­dash­er­man if sin­gel­rin­gen wear­ers take pride in being sin­gle as a lifestyle, even tem­porar­ily, then that’s really dif­fer­ent and wor­thy #
• 15:45 @eigen­macx legal, quando vc quiser entre amanha e terca … meu cel: 21–9111-0030 … valeu! #
• 15:57 @van­der­wal I’m famil­iar with that paper, I’ll look for it when I get back in about 10 days — if you haven’t got­ten it by then #
• 15:59 @mari_posa i agree, looks great … maybe send this for­wards to your con­tacts? #
• 17:15 @jspep­per fly­ing to Brazil, per­chance? #
• 19:14 New blog post -> “Social objects as arte­facts for iden­tity man­age­ment” tinyurl.com/2x2r8m #
• 05:17 @david­michaels @rmedina thanks for the add, here’s a list of more South Florida Twit­ter­ers tinyurl.com/3b72su #

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• 11:44 If it weren’t for Scrab­u­lous, I’d hardly use Face­book tinyurl.com/yp4u4t #
• 11:47 Uploaded 14 new pic­tures of Rio de Janeiro www.flickr.com/photos/adc/sets/72157603550212994/ #
• 11:52 @kr8tr run your twit­ter and an @kr8tr ter­ra­minds search RSS through Pipes tinyurl.com/2a4wfu then Dap­per tinyurl.com/27nozj #
• 11:52 @trula thanks! vacation’s over and I’m now work­ing from Rio for the next week #
• 11:58 @kr8tr on Pipes, you can reverse chronol­ogy your tweets and join with the ter­ra­minds search results; Dap­per dresses it up and can add to FB #
• 12:37 Re-reading Fred Stutzman’s learned post on object-centric social net­works tinyurl.com/yvfonr #
• 12:47 @armano sez: “inti­mate brand rela­tion­ship is formed through a col­lec­tion of expe­ri­ences + rein­forced thru sto­ries” tinyurl.com/2r3vge #
• 12:52 Urban leg­ends (and lol­cats) are social objects, they’re socially con­structed fic­tions; lessons for mar­keters: tinyurl.com/2bsuhd #
• 15:20 @chip­grif­fin I saw ur Seesmic: what bet­ter solu­tions other than RSS exist for syn­di­ca­tion? It is a rea­son RSS goes hand in glove w/ soc­me­dia #
• 15:27 @eigen­macx voce ta no Rio? tou aqui mais uma sem­ana … que tal se encon­trar pra falar sobre social media no brasil? #
• 15:28 @fseixas te man­dei uma men­sagem direta ontem, vc rece­beu? #
• 15:33 Witness.org is look­ing for an exec­u­tive direc­tor tinyurl.com/yszztv #
• 15:39 @lin­dash­er­man i’m not dis­put­ing sin­gel­rin­gen is a social object: it cer­tainly breaks the ice; it may grow into more sig­nif­i­cant S.O. w/ time #
• 15:42 @lin­dash­er­man if sin­gel­rin­gen is a “real-life” (as opposed to online) sub­sti­tute for Match.com, it will remain only as an ice breaker #
• 15:44 @lin­dash­er­man if sin­gel­rin­gen wear­ers take pride in being sin­gle as a lifestyle, even tem­porar­ily, then that’s really dif­fer­ent and wor­thy #
• 15:45 @eigen­macx legal, quando vc quiser entre amanha e terca … meu cel: 21–9111-0030 … valeu! #
• 15:57 @van­der­wal I’m famil­iar with that paper, I’ll look for it when I get back in about 10 days — if you haven’t got­ten it by then #
• 15:59 @mari_posa i agree, looks great … maybe send this for­wards to your con­tacts? #
• 17:15 @jspep­per fly­ing to Brazil, per­chance? #
• 19:14 New blog post -> “Social objects as arte­facts for iden­tity man­age­ment” tinyurl.com/2x2r8m #
• 05:17 @david­michaels @rmedina thanks for the add, here’s a list of more South Florida Twit­ter­ers tinyurl.com/3b72su #

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• 11:44 If it weren’t for Scrab­u­lous, I’d hardly use Face­book tinyurl.com/yp4u4t #
• 11:47 Uploaded 14 new pic­tures of Rio de Janeiro www.flickr.com/photos/adc/sets/72157603550212994/ #
• 11:52 @kr8tr run your twit­ter and an @kr8tr ter­ra­minds search RSS through Pipes tinyurl.com/2a4wfu then Dap­per tinyurl.com/27nozj #
• 11:52 @trula thanks! vacation’s over and I’m now work­ing from Rio for the next week #
• 11:58 @kr8tr on Pipes, you can reverse chronol­ogy your tweets and join with the ter­ra­minds search results; Dap­per dresses it up and can add to FB #
• 12:37 Re-reading Fred Stutzman’s learned post on object-centric social net­works tinyurl.com/yvfonr #
• 12:47 @armano sez: “inti­mate brand rela­tion­ship is formed through a col­lec­tion of expe­ri­ences + rein­forced thru sto­ries” tinyurl.com/2r3vge #
• 12:52 Urban leg­ends (and lol­cats) are social objects, they’re socially con­structed fic­tions; lessons for mar­keters: tinyurl.com/2bsuhd #
• 15:20 @chip­grif­fin I saw ur Seesmic: what bet­ter solu­tions other than RSS exist for syn­di­ca­tion? It is a rea­son RSS goes hand in glove w/ soc­me­dia #
• 15:27 @eigen­macx voce ta no Rio? tou aqui mais uma sem­ana … que tal se encon­trar pra falar sobre social media no brasil? #
• 15:28 @fseixas te man­dei uma men­sagem direta ontem, vc rece­beu? #
• 15:33 Witness.org is look­ing for an exec­u­tive direc­tor tinyurl.com/yszztv #
• 15:39 @lin­dash­er­man i’m not dis­put­ing sin­gel­rin­gen is a social object: it cer­tainly breaks the ice; it may grow into more sig­nif­i­cant S.O. w/ time #
• 15:42 @lin­dash­er­man if sin­gel­rin­gen is a “real-life” (as opposed to online) sub­sti­tute for Match.com, it will remain only as an ice breaker #
• 15:44 @lin­dash­er­man if sin­gel­rin­gen wear­ers take pride in being sin­gle as a lifestyle, even tem­porar­ily, then that’s really dif­fer­ent and wor­thy #
• 15:45 @eigen­macx legal, quando vc quiser entre amanha e terca … meu cel: 21–9111-0030 … valeu! #
• 15:57 @van­der­wal I’m famil­iar with that paper, I’ll look for it when I get back in about 10 days — if you haven’t got­ten it by then #
• 15:59 @mari_posa i agree, looks great … maybe send this for­wards to your con­tacts? #
• 17:15 @jspep­per fly­ing to Brazil, per­chance? #
• 19:14 New blog post -> “Social objects as arte­facts for iden­tity man­age­ment” tinyurl.com/2x2r8m #
• 05:17 @david­michaels @rmedina thanks for the add, here’s a list of more South Florida Twit­ter­ers tinyurl.com/3b72su #

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First, a bit of history

Before talk­ing about social objects as acces­sories for online impres­sion man­age­ment, I wanted to sur­face a bit of his­tory about the term, “Social Object”.

There’s been a lot of talk lately about object-centered social­ity, which can be thought of as “the rea­son peo­ple con­nect and social­ize with each other”, to para­phrase Jyri Enge­strom. In addi­tion to Jyri, Hugh MacLeod of Gapingvoid’s been post­ing lots of ideas about “Social Object”, par­tic­u­larly here and here:

“The Social Object, in a nut­shell, is the rea­son two peo­ple are talk­ing to each other, as opposed to talk­ing to some­body else. Human beings are social ani­mals. We like to social­ize. But if think about it, there needs to be a rea­son for it to hap­pen in the first place. That rea­son, that “node” in the social net­work, is what we call the Social Object.” –Gapingvoid

Hugh asked me whether there’s a link point­ing to Jyri and I con­vers­ing about social objects, as we did in Reboot7 and LesWebs3 in 2005:

Alas, no, there is no link: Jyri Enge­strom first blogged about object-centered social­ity before the Reboot7 con­fer­ence in Copen­hagen in mid-2005 in a blog post that referred to the ground-breaking work of soci­ol­o­gist Karin Knorr-Cetina, and that changed my under­stand­ing of online social net­work­ing. I then con­tacted Jyri, Anne Gal­loway and a few oth­ers for guid­ance on where to learn more about object-centered social­ity; I spent the next cou­ple of months devour­ing every paper I could get my hands on. I relied on friends who are pro­fes­sors in procur­ing me hard to obtain research papers. That same year, I spoke with Jyri in per­son on two occa­sions, once at Reboot 7, where he gave a great pre­sen­ta­tion on the sub­ject, and later that year at Loic’s LesWebs3 con­fer­ence in Paris. On both occa­sions, we spoke about using the term “social object” to refer to object-centered social­ity. A Google search at the time pro­duced no results; but if I am not mis­taken, the term had already been used a cou­ple of time before by soci­ol­o­gists in research papers. How did Hugh link Jyri and I? He was at both con­fer­ences as well. By way of full dis­clo­sure, I reg­is­tered the socialobject.com domain in mid-2005.

Do I believe social object is the “Future of Mar­ket­ing”, as Hugh does? Yes, I def­i­nitely believe social object design and related con­cepts have the poten­tial to fos­ter greater cus­tomer engage­ment and word-of-mouth.

Do I think I should get credit for co-coining the term? No: the term has quite prob­a­bly been in exis­tence, even if obscurely. I am glad the con­cept is finally get­ting wider play.

Social objects as arte­facts for iden­tity management

I had a con­ver­sa­tion on Twit­ter yes­ter­day about Sin­gel­rin­gen as a social object; it’s a catchy blue ring worn by peo­ple who are, you guessed it, single:

From the site: “By wear­ing your Sin­gel­rin­gen, you declare that it is OK to be sin­gle. You may wish to find “the one”, or you are quite sat­is­fied with life as it is. Regard­less, you will show to every­one that you accept and stand for what you are, an attrac­tive single.”

• alexdc: so the sin­gel­rin­gen becomes the social object for con­nect­ing? sure, it’s a con­ver­sa­tion starter but something’s miss­ing, methinks
• alexdc: @leahjones ok; to grow as social object, should have tra­di­tions rit­u­als activites or other socially con­structed fic­tions for greater meaning
• alexdc: @kr8tr right, the mes­sage should not be “I am avail­able”; it should be let’s respect, cher­ish and cel­e­brate being single
• alexdc: @apenny i believe the ring is no more a social object than a wed­ding ring: the con­ver­sa­tions are around the tra­di­tions of mar­riage, not ring
• alexdc: when you meet a mar­ried per­son, you might ask how they met, where they got mar­ried, do they have chil­dren, etc … the ring is just a signal
• alexdc: with a sin­gel­rin­gen per­son, what are con­ver­sa­tion points? there are no social norms or sin­gle insti­tu­tions around which to converse
• alexdc: @apenny i believe social objects are enriched through socially con­structed fic­tions, sto­ries, his­tory, rit­ual, behav­ior: ring is a “signal”
• alexdc: @lindasherman i’m not dis­put­ing sin­gel­rin­gen is a social object: it cer­tainly breaks the ice; it may grow into more sig­nif­i­cant S.O. w/ time
• alexdc: @lindasherman if sin­gel­rin­gen is a “real-life” (as opposed to online) sub­sti­tute for Match.com, it will remain only as an ice breaker
• alexdc:  @lindasherman if sin­gel­rin­gen wear­ers take pride in being sin­gle as a lifestyle, even tem­porar­ily, then that’s really dif­fer­ent and worthy

So Sin­gel­rin­gen serves as an acces­sory for oth­ers to rec­og­nize, like a wed­ding ring. Mal­colm Glad­well wrote about rapid cog­ni­tion in his best-selling book Blink; peo­ple make imme­di­ate judge­ments about oth­ers, about their envi­ron­ment and about sit­u­a­tions through a process called thin-slicing:

When you meet some­one for the first time, or walk into a house you are think­ing of buy­ing, or read the first few sen­tences of a book, your mind takes about two sec­onds to jump to a series of conclusions.

In this sense, Sin­gel­rin­gen is an imme­di­ately notice­able, inter­est­ing and unusual ice breaker, like Armstrong’s yel­low Live­strong bracelet. Start­ing to talk with some­one about the ring can lead to pro­longed con­ver­sa­tions about what it means to be sin­gle. And as peo­ple talk to each other about the Sin­gel­rin­gen, they con­struct their par­tic­u­lar fic­tion or story about it, which is what social objects gen­er­ally lead peo­ple to do. When you see some­one with such a ring, you will prob­a­bly thin-slice and already start to make some judgements.

Sim­i­larly, today’s New York Times has an arti­cle, “Putting Your Best Cyber­face For­wards”, about online impres­sion man­age­ment:

Keith N. Hamp­ton, an assis­tant pro­fes­sor at the Annen­berg School for Com­mu­ni­ca­tion at the Uni­ver­sity of Penn­syl­va­nia, said the notion of impress­ing “every­one out there” is the fun­da­men­tal prob­lem of net­work­ing sites. They are designed so that mil­lions see the same image of a member.

For online impres­sion man­age­ment to be effec­tive, Mr. Hamp­ton said, the sites should be redesigned to allow peo­ple to reveal dif­fer­ent aspects of their iden­tity to dif­fer­ent users. You should be able to present one face to your boss, and another to your poker bud­dies. “We have very real rea­sons for want­ing to seg­ment our social net­work,” he said.

This makes a lot of sense. You prob­a­bly dress and behave dif­fer­ently at work than you would with your bud­dies or your fam­ily. The way oth­ers thin-slice you is depen­dent on the cloth­ing and acces­sories (arte­facts) you’re wear­ing and on your behav­ior. Just as you present dif­fer­ent sides of your­self in dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tions in real life, so should you be able to man­age your online per­sonas. Most social net­works don’t allow you to seg­ment your con­tacts so they see dif­fer­ent aspects of you. How­ever, you con­trol the infor­ma­tion you pub­lish and by doing so man­age your iden­tity to make an impres­sion on oth­ers. The fol­low­ing blog post illus­trates this; Red Coat, Black Coat on PSFK:

Unlike para­noid Steve [who wears a black coat to pro­tect his pri­vacy], Jill is con­sid­ered as the socially evolved. It’s not only her red coat that presents an image to the world of how she wants to be seen – Jill under­stands and manip­u­lates how the world sees her, how com­pa­nies see her, how her friends see her. Using tech­nol­ogy that was devel­oped maybe twenty years ago, Jill knows nearly every­thing every­body else knows about her. And in the same way she uses his bright red coat to make a state­ment about her­self, she man­ages the data about her­self to present the image she wants.

Infor­ma­tion is like fash­ion – to be used, shown off and even bartered with.

By using online arte­facts and acces­sories, Jill is manip­u­lat­ing social objects and sig­nal­ing to oth­ers how to con­nect with her. When you wear a Sin­gel­rin­gen or a Rolex watch in real life, you are send­ing sig­nals for oth­ers to pick up. Online, you use infor­ma­tion about your­self and per­haps pic­tures, videos, slideshows, Face­book appli­ca­tions or other object-artefacts to send sig­nals on how oth­ers should social­ize with you.

—

If you’d like to know more about social object in con­cept and prac­tice, I posted a num­ber of links on Twit­ter yes­ter­day that may be helpful:

• alexdc: Urban leg­ends (and lol­cats) are social objects, they’re socially con­structed fic­tions; lessons for mar­keters: http://tinyurl.com/2bsuhd
• alexdc: @armano sez: “inti­mate brand rela­tion­ship is formed through a col­lec­tion of expe­ri­ences + rein­forced thru sto­ries” http://tinyurl.com/2r3vge
• alexdc: Jyri Engestrom’s clas­sic video on grow­ing social net­works around social objects http://tinyurl.com/397uln
• alexdc: Exam­ple of Social Object design for mar­ket­ing at Jeep: http://www.jeep.com/en/experience/community/index.html
• alexdc: Deli­cious tag for social object: http://del.icio.us/tag/socialobject
• alexdc: Karin Knorr-Cetina, Aus­trian Soci­ol­o­gist, wrote lengthily about object-centered social­ity http://www.cjsonline.ca/articles/knorr.html
• alexdc: @gapingvoid rock on! http://tinyurl.com/23wjdo I should’ve dou­ble checked spelling … also not sure why my com­ment got posted twice: sorry!
• alexdc: “Object is cen­tral to solid social soft­ware inter­ac­tion, think of Flickr w/ con­ver­sa­tion around pho­tos”: Van­der­wal http://tinyurl.com/2poadr
• alexdc: Here’s pre­cisely how Social Object works on Twit­ter http://twitter.com/digitalmaverick/statuses/555349512 (from @digitalmaverick

• 09:14 Refresh­Mi­ami tonight @ 7:30p @ Books & Books Coral Gables w/ Mike Gowen (Scrap­blog, Alien­ware, Tick), Bar­Camp­Mi­ami, com­mu­nity announce­ments #
• 11:33 Doubleclick’s bea­con pro­vides anony­mous data to adver­tis­ers; FB’s Bea­con serves up your PURCHASE his­tory in YOUR name to YOUR friends #
• 11:54 Why does the Mer­cury News want my phys­i­cal address for me to read an arti­cle on their web­site? grrrr.… #
• 13:51 Books & Books is awe­some, they’re lend­ing us audio-visual equip­ment, everything’s all set for Refresh­Mi­ami tonight! #
• 14:57 @strut­ting thanks for the bug­menot tip www.bugmenot.com/ #
• 16:42 @kaysha sounds like you’re hav­ing an awe­some time in Brasil, enjoy! #
• 16:43 @dav­e­fleet how to get a hold of the UMass report? #
• 18:57 @jasonl­bap­tiste both @seesmic and twit­ter would be bet­ter if you could thread replies to see the con­ver­sa­tion #
• 19:10 Head­ing over to Refresh­Mi­ami and Books & Books Coral Gables #
• 19:55 Books & Books under­stands com­mu­nity: w/ short notice, they set us up roy­ally in a book read­ing room, the one you see in CSPAN book club #
• 20:14 “‘Cre­ative free­dom’ is an oxy­moron” — Mike Gowen; you will always rely on pre­vi­ous work and tools … Con­straints are what lib­er­ate you #
• 20:25 Think­ing that com­mu­nity require­ments must be deter­mined way before the design phase; by the time you list page func­tion­al­ity, it’s too late! #
• 20:30 There could be a few user expe­ri­ence iter­a­tions / tests built in to the design process to mea­sure desired actions #
• 20:41 Think­ing ‘Social Object’ fits w/in ini­tial vision-strategy phase; func­tion­al­ity flows from social object oppty Ident­fc­tion + prob­lem solv­ing #
• 20:49 Great pre­sen­taion by @mikegee, learned lots about how to approach design prob­lems #
• 21:00 @fseixas there may be some here del.icio.us/adecarvalho/tags/fonts #
• 21:15 @jowyang I’d set FB’s NPV at $150 per mem­ber. At 50M peo­ple, it’s $7.5B; at 150M, it’s $22.5B #
• 21:27 @dan­rubin gave away a book he co-authored, “Web Stan­dards Cre­ativ­ity”, to @montgomery, who was clearly pay­ing atten­tion tonight #
• 22:20 Talk­ing about the demise of email over din­ner with Refresh­Mi­ami … It’s a heated debate, peo­ple are attached to their inboxes … #
• 23:08 IM, wikis, Twit­ter, blogs, Seesmic, FB and RSS in gen­eral *are* the evo­lu­tion of e-mail, they are the fix. They’re opt-in and they help GTD #
• 23:24 Finally, e-mail’s per­fect for archiv­ing + for CYA, but not for com­mu­ni­cat­ing + work­ing effi­ciently. OK, I’ll step off the soap­box now, thx. #

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