LibraryTechtonics

This morning’s Social Media Breakfast Boston (SMB10) focused on the topic of measuring ROI. As someone who is predominantly a consumer in this context, it was an interesting peek at what seemed like advertising/PR inside baseball. There was a live stream of the talks, and the recording will be posted on Hubspot’s blog, the very gracious sponsors of this morning’s breakfast. You can also check out everyone’s tweets from this morning.

I won’t rehash the event too much, since the video will give you most of the information you need, and the presentations are brief and worth the time. Suffice it to say that at least 2 of the presenters, Hubspot CEO Brian Halligan and Visible Measures VP of Marketing and Analytics Matt Cutler, focused on the numbers. Not that this is bad, it’s actually really interesting to get a glimpse of how the numbers come to be, and how they are used.

Overall, the gist was that old advertising doesn’t work anymore, and people find what they need through searches and social networks as opposed to clicking on blunt force ads. So, by using resources (money, people, time) to create a presence in social communities instead of buying Google AdWords and pursuing traditional advertising methods, you increase your visibitlity, and therefore your ability to reap monitary rewards. However, the trick is knowing where on the Roulette board to put your chips, and how many, based on who lives and plays in each space, and what types of content they find valuable, and without ROI assessment, it’s a tough bet to make.

Both Hubspot and Visible Measures seem to be getting the numbers right. They’ve found ways to generate followers in various social networks online, they see the eyeball potential of all those followers, and they’ve even been able to turn some of those eyeballs into actual customers. These are PR/analytics firms, whose customers are other businesses… more on that in a minute.

Brian Halligan mentioned during the Q&A that, while many of the people in the room might not want to hear this, the future of good “advertising” is really in hiring content creators instead of PR people, to create content to drive traffic to businesses and brands. Cool commercials, online only content, music videos, free articles, games, toys, all sorts of stuff, because users finding your content is the new way to attract attention, not by in-your-face methods like ads. Be findable, and be cool.

So back to the people in the room being mostly PR people… I had an interesting conversation with Chuck Tanowitz before the presentations began about how he believed that the future of PR is possibly for companies to bring in journalists as an impartial third party to create content about the companies, just to get the word out about what they’re doing and why people should care in the content realms that people live in. After the presentations, this fed into part two of our interestin conversation on how some marketing people (especially on higher levels) don’t understand how the new web is really about user-generated content on the user’s level (not necessarily shiny, polished, or high-quality), and how that supports the craving for real transparency (because people aren’t stupid, and they can tell that something too shiny, polished, and high-quality is really just choreographed and not entirely transparent advertising).

Given that much of marketing/PR/analytics see potential in the numbers of followers they garner in any given social tech outlet, and that, on a business-to-business level, they are seeing some measurable ROI by how many new customers they bring in, but can only have faith in the rest of the subjective and human element of social networking ROI that can’t be measured — being a fan may not lead to them making money right now — I have questions from a consumer perspective for you. Those who are in the business, take off your business hats if you can before your read and respond.

• Do you follow companys on Twitter, join groups/become fans of companies on Facebook, subscribe to RSS feeds, sign up for email newsletters, join groups on LinkedIn, etc., based on the brand of the company alone, or does it have something to do with the people and personalities who represent these companies? Are you drawn to the people, who lead you to the companies, or does it matter?
• Following companies on Twitter: do you do it? Why, or why not? What kinds of content draws you to them, or pushes you away from them? Is an all link feed just spam to you, or is it better than RSS? Do you prefer people from companies who interact as humans first, employees second?
• Are you loyal to personalities, or to companies? Say you love yarn, and you buy yarn from a company because you like dealing with a specific person… then that person goes to work for another yarn company. Are you loyal to the yarn company because it’s great, or to the person because they’re great?

I do agree that good content is the best way to attract attention. I’m just trying to suss out whether the numbers would work out the same way for business-to-consumer interaction. Let me know what you think of my braindump on this… I look forward to your answers to the questions.

It was a festive day, running about online and in real life, “covering” the history-making election of 2008. Can you believe how many people actually got out to vote this year? Go Team USA!

I spent a good amount of the morning trying to feverishly tweet about Twitter Vote Report, a project quickly-yet-skillfully implemented in just three weeks by Allison Fine from the Personal Democracy Forum and Nancy Scola, Associate Editor of techPresident (Fast Company story). This project is proof that a huge tech project can be produced in a truly grassroots fashion, wrangled via a fantastic wiki, contributed to by volunteers, and get the attention of outlets like CNN (can’t find a link, but I know people saw it), Mashable, and rocketboom. Three weeks, kids. Amazing. I wish I had done more to help get the word out (I’ve tweeted off and on about it in the past few days), but still, I think the turnout was impressive.

Twitter Vote Report was designed to take in data from hashtags in tweets and reprocess them into mashups like Google maps to track wait times, machine problems, registration problems, fraud, and overall good/bad feelings about the voting experience. Most people new the basic #votereport hashtag, but not many of the other tags were used, or used properly, enough to help the other apps pick up the data necessary. On the enormous upside, it’s impressive that Twitter Vote Report offered a “don’t Twitter, never will” set of options, to broaden the scope of participation, including posting transcriptions and sound files of phone messages. I think that, with enough time to seriously market the tags, or perhaps even some sort of structured form-based input system for people may need it, it could be a serious way to track the next set of elections.

It took me approximately 53 minutes to vote. It was worth it. I tweeted my vote, and even took listeners into the voting booth with me via a recording on Utterli:

Ken George , WBUR Twitterer in Chief and Social Media guy over at WBUR, graciously invited me to participate in the #wburvote event, where a handful of us tweeted the election on behalf of the WBUR station. It was quite the hoot, filled with different approaches to using different types of social tools online, including Twitter, to report on the election. I arrived at the station around 2pm or so, spent most of the afternoon talking with Ken, and David Boeri, host of Radio Boston and awesome journalist/speaker, helping them brainstorm possible stories, uses of the technology, and methods for getting people to interact with the station. I also met a slew of interesting people, and discussed social networking, Twitter, and human interaction with new WBUR people I met.

The rest of the WBUR Twitter Central crew arrived in the early evening (in order of appearanc): Jeff Cutler, Gradon Tripp, Scott Frazer, Deb Agliano, and Adam Zand (there were more Twitter peeps posting off-site, check out the search for everything hashtagged #wburvote). The entire event was peppered with exceedingly exciting and scintillating conversation, excellent snacks, and lots of fun watching the numbers roll in. We were interviewed on video, talked to WBUR staffers about what exactly we were doing and many aspects of the social web, pictures taken. The staffers were really happy to see us there, and very curious about what we were doing, which made for a very positive and open environment. Everyone had different approaches to the “reporting” idea: Jeff corresponded with Twitter followers and friends about their experiences and tweet bits, Adam posted many utters, I messaged followers with questions and comments while I trolled different Twitter searches, and everyone tweeted their hearts out. The WBUR Twitter effort even got a shout out on the air, which is awesome progress.

When I started this post, I was drinking a Hitachino Nest Red Rice Ale, watching Obama deliver his FTW (abbrev. internet slang, “for the win”) speech, still tweeting, at home, in my pajamas, just after watching Jon Stewart announce Obama’s win on Indecision 2008 and helping a friend find a live video stream of the speech for his sister in China. It’s been a day of meeting new people, coining new phrases (Scott gets a super gold star for “premature calculation,” a danger of overly-excited polls, but nothing to be ashamed of ), and feeling really connected in person *and* by way of technology with the rest of the nation on this momentus occasion. It was definitely a treat to use the social web’s powers for good today, and I’m excited for what the future of interaction holds for us.

I had a really interesting conversation with Jim Storer over at Mzinga the other day. We were talking about Chris Brogan’s postulation of social networks for hotels, which bases the social network on the sheer geography of the hotel space. The post is the simple outline of possible bells/whistles/features/requirements for such a network, and spawns a very interesting conversation in the comments about the general potential of this and other “temporary social networks,” based on actual geographic space instead of by site, organization, type of media, conference/vacation/event, etc., bringing it all together for the duration of your stay. It’s good stuff, definitely take a look.

Jim asked, “Why aren’t libraries building social networks?” The major commonality for library patrons, he argued, is geography, and with the library moving to a more community center-living room space profile, it would make sense to link everyone together by their common geography to help them meet each other, using the library as a conduit.

Off the top of my head, my answers were:

• Libraries and librarians seem to be focusing entirely too much on specific, very library-oriented features, tasks, and applications. Instead of trying to find or develop a real go-to location or application online that patron would really want to use or naturally gravitate towards, libraries are doing things like trying to trick out the catalog, a piece of library machinery that so many patrons don’t really get or like to use in the first place.
  
  photo credit: Hans on Experience
• Librarians are still getting their heads around social networking, and haven’t quite reached a peace with the idea that because social networking and social media is about diverse community generated content, rules, and culture, the most successful way to execute social communities is to *let go of control*. (This assessment is based on my experience speaking to groups of librarians about social media, conversing with librarians in my travels, and talking to librarians who *really* get this).
• Even outside of grok gap between the buttons and levers of social sites and community culture, there is a deeper technology barrier, not only with using the software as a service sites that exist, but the ability, skills, and vision to build something fun and innovative from the ground up.

When I think of a library building a social network of its very own, I don’t see a library with a Facebook page, a MySpace page, a LibraryThing account, a Flickr account, a Twitter stream, and a designated Meebo chat room, all linked from the home page of the library site. I see single sign-on to a library web site that offers, all in one interface:

• standard access to the patron’s account (what’s checked out, online renewal and fine payment, requests)
• the ability to make lists, share lists (awesome for book groups), and keep lists private
• some sort of Netflixian queuing/scheduling of requests, and a way to move things from lists to the Libraryflix request queue
• the ability to see who else is signed on right now (if the user allows it), and even perhaps some PM (private messaging) feature
• a way to “friend” other people, and limit sharing to those friends only
• a general sidebar newsish feed that lets you see what people are searching for/requesting/checking out most (anonymized, naturally)
• a calendar feature that allows the patron to add library calendar events as well as other local events, and a way to share those events with other patrons and the outside world, and perhaps even the addition of public, locally-oriented Google Calendars
• a mini Meetup feature that allows people to arrange everything from meeting at the library via an official meeting room booking to something as simple as “studying for the trig test this week? I’ll be there, too.”
• some sort of connection to community events and organizations
• a way for patrons to add inward feeds to as many aggregations as they want to share, such as social bookmarking sites, photos, reviews of books/local establishments/events
• ADDED 8/1: A way for patrons to connect with each other to help answer questions, research issues, or explore interests in depth, sort of a mindshare between librarians and patrons helping to answer questions.  Kinda like Ask MetaFilter, but local.

But that’s just my short rough feature list.

The common theme here is local community. It’s not a site that exists elsewhere built, hosted, and maintained by some other entity trying to meet the blanket needs of thousands of users, it’s customized and built for The Community, and allows the patrons in the community to connect with each other with the library as their conduit. Those connections can then inform the library on what’s important, what’s interesting, and what types of events, items, and services they should highlight or think about offering. Think Facebook for Library Patrons or Facebook Local, not Facebook for Libraries & Librarians. It’s not reinventing what’s out there, necessarily, it’s making it specific and relevant to the community, using the single sign-on of the library card account, as well as an enhancement to the library experience. At least, that’s what I see as the goal.

Is your library building anything like this? Thinking about it? How are you going about it? How would you do it, in your dream world?

Do you think this could work? Why or why not? What do you see as the barriers and quandaries? What would you do differently or better?

If you are a regular library patron, would you want this? Would you use it? What’s missing? What would you want instead? Would you be more likely to use the library if the library site were more like this? Why or why not?

Boston Media Makers is sponsoring its second Tech Tonic (101 sessions on media tech) on Seesmic. It’s FREE, and anyone can go, but you do need to register because space is limited. Sadly, I can’t go (I work Wednesday nights), but if you do go, I’d love to hear what you think of the session.

Deets–

Topic: This session will cover social networking with video and the uses of seesmic for communication and art.

Philippe Lejeune has been experimenting with novel uses of seesmic and will discusses how he’s been using this fascinating service.

Location: MassArt, Alumni Conference Room, Tower Building, 11th Floor [directions]

Date/Time: Wednesday, June 18, 2008, 6:30pm – 9:30pm

Access: Free and open to the public, however, seating is limited

Notes: Bring a laptop w/ 802.11 wireless and/or Ethernet port if you want to follow along with parts of the seminar.

For more info contact David Tamés at Kino-Eye [contact form].

See also:

• Blog post about the session
• Register at Upcoming

Also note:
Next Boston Media Makers Meeting
Sunday July 6th at 10:00 AM
Doyle’s Cafe, Jamaica Plain, MA

Reflecting on my ALA Midwinter 2008 experiences, I find that I’m running up against the same issues I’ve seen before, but haven’t quite been able to articulate, about new technologies and libraries. I had a really good time talking out these issues with the likes of John Klima and Heidi Dolamore at conference, as well as with my helpful husband, and I think I’ve narrowed it down to a specific seed problem: context.

I find that, when I talk about technology and social software with new media peeps (because, you know, general technology and social software can be the same, but can also be separate topics), there is a deep level of reasonably assumed and understood cultural context, especially since many of these people are helping to build and grow the social software and technology of today and tomorrow.

However, when I discuss the same topics with librarians, there are only a handful who really have the proper knowledge context to discuss the issues without having to backtrack and explain. I find that even librarians who get the idea of social networking sites, social media creation, mashups, sharing, gadgetry, don’t quite have the cultural understanding behind the technologies in discussion. However, it’s very difficult to add the context to a blog post of ideally front-loaded content without making it super long and cumbersome. Thus, my writer’s block on the subject.

This is why, whenever I speak on the topic of social software, I emphasize culture. How and why a specific audience uses something is more important than how you want to apply it, essentially. Case in point is the session I blogged from Saturday morning for PLA on social networking and reference. In their efforts to perform “outreach,” librarians thought it was a good idea to try to figure out how to get around Facebook’s built-in messaging system… which was trying to prevent them from essentially spamming Facebook users. People who understand Facebook’s user culture know that this is *bad* and it shouldn’t be done, but these librarians thought they were doing a good, clever thing by trying to circumvent the system.

Beth Evans also presented in the same program, and mentioned that she was encouraging all users to “friend” the library. I know that there are other librarians who are encouraging users to “friend” them as individuals, and who “friend” everyone back. I don’t think that all librarians have considered the social networking and relationship ramifications of doing this (I’ve touched on this topic before): is their account just for work, or are they using it for work and personal sharing? Are they sharing the same information with all of their “friends”? Do they only log in from work? When they log in from home, do they really want to be at “work” on their profile as well? Are librarians contributing to the decline in value of the real-world meaning of friend by encouraging everyone to just add them indiscriminantly, or adding people back just to be nice? What does nice mean for the future of social networking?

I was in the middle of drafting this post when I saw Kate Sheehan’s post float up as a tweet on Twitter. I commented that her paraphrase of me is spot on, as this post reflects, and further eggs me on to say that librarians need to study the fine art of anthropology when it comes to social networking. That’s the true key to user-centered design in the library world: it doesn’t start with us and our wants and needs, it starts with them. As I paraphrased David Lankes from the Saturday presentation:

As librarians, you shouldn’t “define your mission by cool features, do it by core principles,” thinking carefully about how and why people use these online spaces. We need to stop chasing all of the innovators and making second-hand copies of everything, and really create something innovative to meet our patrons needs.