March 26th, 2008 Daniel
Bilddagboken is one of the fastest growing Swedish online communities. About a week ago they suddenly changed their design and many members reacted with frustration and anger. In one of the discussion boards on Bilddagboken it was stated that the administrators apparently received 18 000 complaints during the first five days after the redesign! The discontent were not only because of the new functionality or the new appearance, it was also coming from feeling powerless. Members felt disappointed about not being involved in the process and were surprised by the sudden change.
The same scenario has been displayed in many other online communities and social network sites. Every time LunarStorm changes its appearance you will find members reacting with frustration and every time Facebook changes some of its features there will be complaints. Online venues like Bilddagboken must continue to develop to keep up with what’s happening around them and it seems reasonable that they will have to change the design sometimes. But wouldn’t it be nice to involve the members in the design process? After all they invest a lot of their time and energy in the community and they want to feel that they have some kind of influence. When the software environment suddenly changes it is somewhat similar to redecorating their living room without asking them. No wonder they get mad.
If you spend a lot of time in online social spaces you need to remember that these environment are privately owned and that you most often do not know anything about their further development or how the conditions for spending time there might suddenly change. If you are managing such a place, remember that the members want to have some kind of influence. They are not merely “users” but co-producers creating an attractive environment. If you want to have a thriving community you need to let go of some of the power and invite the members to participate in the process of developing the site.
[Also posted in Swedish on my Umeå Live blog]
Posted in Community, Design, SNS | No Comments »
March 18th, 2008 Daniel
As a doctoral student I now spend 80% of my time on working with my thesis. The rest of the time I usually teach, but this semester I also participate in a project called Umeå Live (the formal project title is Innovation Cultures). Umeå Live is one out of five Living labs in Sweden receiving funding from VINNOVA (Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems). The purpose of all Living Labs is to promote user centered services and products in a collaborative process that involves both end users, companies and partners from academia.
Yesterday the site www.umealive.se was launched and on that site we will try to present everything that happens within the project. I will also have a new blog there (in Swedish) and I will probably update it more often than I update this one.
Posted in Blogs, Research | No Comments »
March 11th, 2008 Daniel
I have just recently started using Twitter. I have been thinking about it for a while but it seems as if it has not taken off in Sweden yet so I don’t have that many friends who use it. Without other friends to “follow” (and friends to join as “followers”) it’s no point. But I guess it’s always nice to be one of those “early adopters”, besides I do have friends from outside of Sweden that are using Twitter.
It is too early for me to say anything conclusive about my experience of Twitter, but I think that I will like it. I’ve been on Facebook for a while now and have always felt that my friends’ status updates have been one of the most interesting features of Facebook. Twitter appears to be a refined version of the Facebook status updates. You can write a little bit more, but still only short messages. It seems to be somewhat easier to manage and people tend to update it more often.
I’ve been thinking a lot on why I find it so interesting to watch short and simple status updates from friends. I think that it has something to do with creating a narrative and making me a part of it. When I read about the things my friends do it becomes a description, almost like a story, about their everyday life and I get the feeling that I am a part of it. I can comment on it and react to it or just watch it evolve like a real life drama. Also, even though people of course can write fake messages about what they are doing at the moment, it feels more like the real thing than many other kinds of online interactions. Twitter messages are typically short and snappy and have a spontaneous and unstructured flavor to them.
Anyway, I hope to see more of my Swedish friends on Twitter soon so that I can really get a feeling for its pros and cons. For all of you not yet familiar with how Twitter works, there is an excellent video on Common Craft that explains it all.
Posted in Blogs, SNS | 2 Comments »
February 28th, 2008 Daniel
During the last couple of days several Swedish bloggers have expressed their thoughts on how an online community should behave in order to keep its members over time. Mindpark points out that both Facebook and MySpace seem to be loosing some of their crowds, and suggests that we could look at these and other similar online venues as similar to nightclubs offline. A nightclub needs to be cool and hyped to have success, but after a while the hype calms down and people move to another place.
I’m not sure about the parallel to nightclubs, but I do agree with Mindpark that the size of Facebook has become a major threat for its further existence. When a community grows too big people start longing for something smaller and more exclusive.
Both Mindpark and Bisonblog argue that one strategy that should be adopted by community owners is to allow for sub-communities inside the large community. These sub-communities can be smaller and topic-specific, attracting dedicated members. This is very true and probably one of the key factors to why for instance LunarStorm has been such a lively environment for so long. (However, LunarStorm also seem to be loosing steam nowadays.)
I think that you could put this in another way by saying that if you want members to stay you’ll have to offer them an environment that does not only give entertainment but actually allows for a real community to develop. I get the feeling that many so called “community sites” don’t really have that much “community” going on. No wonder people eventually get bored and move on.
Posted in Community, SNS | No Comments »
February 22nd, 2008 Daniel
A while ago someone asked me to mention my top three books that had really influenced my work. Well, here is a list of five books that have had a great impact on my work and helped me frame the things I want to focus on in my research.
 |
Sherry Turkle, (1995), Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995. |
 |
Marc Smith and Peter Kollock (editors), (1999), Communities in Cyberspace, London: Routledge, 1999. |
 |
Michael Heim (1993), The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality, New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. |
 |
Ray Oldenburg (1991), The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community, New York: Paragon House, 1991. |
 |
Christine Hine, (2000), Virtual Ethnography, London: SAGE. |
The books above are displayed in the actual order of my readings. When I read the books by Turkle (1995) and Smith & Kollock (1999) I had just finished my undergraduate education and I was not familiar with Internet research at all. These books opened my eyes to the complex social dimensions of Internet and I found it fascinating. I still do btw.
Heim (1993) was also fascinating, but in a different way. I remember sometimes feeling completely dizzy when reading about Heim’s philosophical thoughts on the essence of cyberspace. I didn’t understand all of it - but I still loved it because it kind of made sense, somehow. I haven’t really used Heim that much in my work but when I look back I think the writings by Heim boosted my curiosity about technology and its “true” character.
My interest in online communities gradually evolved in the years that followed and when reading The Great Good Place by Oldenburg (1991) I felt that I was on to something, both professionally and personally. Until this day, the image of a thriving third place has been almost like an inner vision to me and helped me to value the everyday places where I live my life. Life should perhaps not be so much about chasing extreme experiences but about finding the beauty in the mundane and enjoying everyday life. In my studies of online communities, the notion of third places online has also been a great help when trying to understand how people find their stay online meaningful and worthwhile.
Finally, Hine (2000) has been really important for my PhD project and helped me to develop a methodological approach that makes sense to me. For a while I felt kind of lost and didn’t know how to capture the things I wanted to study using conventional qualitative methods. Then I read about virtual ethnography and was presented a methodological approach that I could build my work on.
Of course there are other books that also have been important to my work. But these five are among the most important and they probably still influence me more than I am aware of.
Posted in Books, Community, Miscellaneous, Research | No Comments »
February 18th, 2008 Daniel
The online football manager game Hattrick has been around since 1997 and is still one of the most popular with almost 1 million active users. I joined Hattrick seven years ago and became a devoted manager. My team “Lokomotiv D” started in division 6 but advanced to division 4 during the first couple of years. Then it went downhill again. My team now resides in division 5 but the future does not look bright.
I remember being very passionate about Hattrick a couple of years ago. Logging on to Hattrick was a part of my daily routine and when my team was playing I quite often sat in front of the computer to watch the live updates. But I guess everything must come to an end and lately I have been a sloppy manager. I am now seriously considering to let go of Hattrick. When I signed up, a couple of my friends also had teams and it was fun to compete against each other. Now, almost everyone has left and I have never been an active community member at Hattrick.org - I just liked the game part of it. This is probably the main reason to why I don’t bother anymore. Hattrick has become quite complex which means that you can not cheat if you want to have success. You have to be committed and spend lots of time - I have decided that I can’t do that anymore.
But it is hard to let go because I’ve been there for so long. Even though I almost never log on anymore I will miss the opportunity of being able to. Goodbye Hattrick - I will remember the good times we had.
Posted in Games, Miscellaneous | 1 Comment »
