colaboratorie mutopo

The Social Production Field Guide V1.0

Shaun Abrahamson — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 16:22:01 +0000

Social Production Field Guide V1

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From Social Media to Social Production in 2012 Elections

Shaun Abrahamson — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 20:46:03 +0000

Picture: Gaming Revolution design by Sean Mort on Threadless (vote to bring it back).

In his 2008 election campaign, President Obama showed what can be achieved with Social Media. As if commanded by Joe Jaffe, he joined the conversation from initiating to responding, from simple status updates to slick videos. The influence on Social Media Marketing has been so profound that the Obama Campaign might be a leading cause of Wind Tunnel Marketing in Social Media Marketing – - strikingly similar tactics used across to boost conversation and “fan count”, the new metric to stand alongside the “website hits” of yesterweb.

Looking a little closer at 2008, there were signs this wasn’t only about Social Media, but Social Production. In particular, within the race for the Democratic nomination in Texas, Obama hinted at what happens when you get beyond conversation and build a new type of “Outside Organization”.

Yes, Obama was using Facebook, Twitter and e-mail to build awareness and recruit volunteers, but he was using tools like his MyBO website to co-ordinate volunteers and enable them to co-operate. As Technology Review described “In Texas, MyBO also gave the Obama team the instant capacity to wage fully networked campaign warfare.” As the head of the Clinton campaign conceded when they understood what was being organized on MyBO:

“I remember saying, ‘Game, match–it’s over.”

Social Production lessons for the 2012 Election
On June 1 2011, Techcrunch reported that the CTO of Threadless would be joining the 2012 Obama campaign. We believe this represents a shift to Social Production – building the tools and organization necessary to enable large groups of people to work with and on behalf of the Obama campaign, in the same way that Threadless has learned to work with their community to create, market and sell happiness-making t-shirts.

Threadless is no Social Media slouch with over 1.6 million Twitter followers or 300,000 Facebook fans. However much of the value creation is being done by a only a few thousand people (based on our estimates from the 6% of “addicts” according to Quantcast) using a custom platform, not Facebook or Twitter.

How do you build an organization that can depend on people that are not fulltime employees to generate a big chunk of the value that your organization creates? Threadless knows and they are joined by a small number of organizations who have figured this out.

From getting fans to creating value with fans
In a recent report, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) described the shifting focus from conversation to generating value across the organization – Re-envisioning customer value – Opening the floodgates of new potential. They highlight a number of successes across different functional business areas:

+ New Products: Today P&G get 50% of innovation from outside the organization

+ Product Development: Intuit works with 25,000 to get ongoing feedback

+ Service and Support: British mobile phone company, GiffGaff has its customers responding to 50% 99% of the support questions – more on that below.

At Mutopo we’ve been calling this the “lumpy donut” – the changing roles of people outside the organization through the product lifecycle. Paid employees remain at the core, but increasingly people outside the organization expend effort to create value and change the economics of value creation.

Building new organizations using Social Production
GiffGaff provides an important example of what happens as organizations shift focus from Social Media to Social Production. The Giffgaff tag line:

“the mobile network run by you”.

Building on the EIU report, the The Realtime Report says:

“The company’s customer support community has over 200,000 100,000 users and delivers three million 5.5 million page views per month as of June 2011. At least 50 99% of queries are answered by other customers and 95% are answered in less than one hour. The average response time on the companies Help boards is less than a minute and a half. “

Good luck getting that type of support from any company, let alone most mobile operators. But Giffgaff doesn’t stop there. Like P&G, Intuit and Threadless they are getting ideas from their “outside organization”. And they are revisiting the affiliate model enabling people to be paid when the resell Giffgaff services, so they are changing the economics of distribution and sales, too.

In short Giffgaff is changing how value is created and therefore the economics of mobile services.

How might Obama use Social Production in 2012?
Creating conversation is one thing – designing organizations is something else altogether, but as the EIU examples show, Obama has many options to change how campaigns are organized and operated. From collecting better intelligence to focusing volunteers on critical geographies, we expect to see his campaign build on the experience in Texas in 2008.

In a likely close election campaign where votes in specific geographies really matter, changing the economics of these essential efforts will shift the game, enabling Obama to use resources more efficiently, with more agility than his opponents. While we cant predict the outcome of the election, we expect this to cause some WTFness among traditional campaign organizers.

Unfortunately we will have to wait a while to see how the Obama campaign will use Social Production. At a minimum the t-shirts will be awesome and in the meanwhile we can look forward to some masterful Social Media as Obama begins tweeting again from @barackobama.

How Crowdsourcing Can Change The World

Shaun Abrahamson — Tue, 24 May 2011 16:05:40 +0000

On May 23, 2011, we were fortunate to share the Mutopo perspective on Crowdsourcing and Social Production at ESPM, Brazil’s leading marketing and advertising school.

ESPM Social Production & Crowdsourcing Session

Long Term Agile: 5 Lessons from the Nissan GTR

Shaun Abrahamson — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 16:30:34 +0000

At the heart of innovation is a critical contradiction.

As MIT Medialab’s incoming director, Joichi Ito puts it: How can you balance the need for long term perspective with the need for short term agility?

My favorite models for innovation are start-ups. I have been fortunate to work with some great ones – the best ones begin with a hypothesis and embark on a frantic search for a new way to do something. Conversely, larger organizations usually become brittle – they optimize around a business model, processes etc and in the process, they lose their agility.

The tricky business of innovation requires the combination of the agile mode of a start-up, with the longer term perspective of more mature organizations. The key is tapping into the Outside Organization – the people outside your organization that can offer new questions, perspective, ideas and skills.

While I like to ponder ideas in a variety of settings, piloting a Nissan GTR for a few fast laps around the Las Vegas Speedway clarified the issues quite nicely.

Prospective Customers > Existing Customers (For Long Term Agile)

“Ha, you are driving the cheater car?”, Dave mocked.

Dave was my instructor for my race track adventure behind the wheel of a Ferrari Scuderia. The Ferrari is frighteningly fast (somehow even when it’s parked). Dave’s mocking laughter was directed at the Nissan GTR, the other car I planned to drive later in the day. The GTR looks less seriously fast race machine and more stylized homage to Japanese battle robots.

Dave is a pro. For him oads of sensors and software helping to bend the laws of physics to your will, is well cheating. On the other hand, I believe I may be Nissan’s perfect customer – I want all the help I can get to go fast – if it comes in the form of a robot car, so much the better.

Long Term Agile Lesson 1: spend some time ignoring your customers and talking to your prospective customers.

Try Some Harder Metrics

Below is the simple match-up. You have to hand it to the Scuderia on the traditional power/weight ratio and wind cheating form. However, “Physics Manipulation” is not entirely clear since it’s not well measured until “real world” track driving.

	GTR	Scuderia
Price	$85,000 (all options)	$286,000 (starting)
Weight	3,800 lbs	3,000 lbs
HP	523hp	508hp
Power/Weight	.14 hp/lb	.17 hp/lb
Physics Manipulation	Total*	Partial

*see below for qualitative explanation.

Long Term Agile Lesson 2: People usually measure what is easy or accumulated over some consensus over the years. This will deceive you. Measure some of the hard stuff, even if it requires real world testing.

Find Your Inspiration Outside
It seems pretty clear these cars should be in a different class, from the power/weight ratio alone. In a wind tunnel I cannot see how this might be much of a contest, either.

However, as was proved on Top Gear Power laps, their performance is almost inseparable (http://www.bbc.co.uk/topgear/show/powerlaps.shtml). Ferrari relies on a trusted strategy of power-to-weight ratio – keep innovating on materials to make things lighter and keep the machine balanced via mid-engined approach.

The GTR is not so much a car but rather robot minion – the “Playstation Car”, as it is known to the instructors, felt like it was helping me to go fast, because it was. The car is designed to use all four wheels to get your round corners despite some dodgy balance and power-to-weight numbers. Its a marvel of sensors, actuators and feedback loops.

While Ferrari looks to the pureness of F1 for inspiration, Nissan went outside to gamers and robots to draw its inspiration.

Long Term Agile Lesson 3: Get thee farther away for inspiration. Even if you are smart, inspired and creative, you need to make sure your ideas have sex with different ideas if you are hoping for a very different outcome.

There is Always More Deep Skill Outside
Ferrari adheres to a core set of design ideals and skills from within. It gets the job done, beautifully and will win awards, even when performance is not perfect (for design, for example). But it’s horribly inefficient – from the original price tag to the ongoing maintenance to ensure the best performance (for some this will be a successful outcome in the form of “exclusivity”).

But when it is matched by something less than one third the cost, well it seems silly and misguided.

The GTR is a triumph of a different philosophy. Yes supercars should be mid engined and expensive. And yes, they need to shed pounds to compete. Or do they? Maybe some clever sensors, actuators and algorithms can cheat physics? This seems to work in well in other areas ranging from aerospace to house cleaning robots. Why not work with these people – they help us build the industrial robots that build cars anyway.

Long Term Agile Lesson 4: selective ingnorance can help to shed assumptions but you will still need to find deep expertise from other fields if you are to bring a new approach to market.

Deliberately Fund and Support Long Term Agility
Nissan did not put it’s business at risk to learn and find new approaches, but they did allocate budget to a program that made them smarter and ultimately yielded an awesome outcome – the GTR.

Searching for incremental weight advantage is a costly, competitive business involving F-1 and aerospace research, but turning their attention to less well researched areas to like all wheel drive vehicle dynamics and different assembly approaches let Nissan develop new leadership capabilities.

Long Term Agile Lesson 5: someone has to approve a research budget – not enough to bet the company, but enough to put together unique teams to make something and see what it can do.

In the GTR, Nissan found an approach to reconcile Agile with the Long Term. They invested in a search for new approaches, within the constraints of a long term company viability. I think they demonstrate that large organizations need not ossify, but need to ensure that they allocate some resources to finding and working with their Outside Organizations.

Oh yeah, if you were wondering what it’s like to drive a Nissan GTR in ways that would be illegal on public roads, this was my experience – literally left me unable to speak.

Collaboration with the Competition

Justin — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 16:01:33 +0000

It’s tempting to think of the world as a zero-sum game. The typical RFP process doesn’t lead you to believe otherwise: battle your competition over a client until there’s one man standing. Any projects your opponents get is one less piece of the pie for you.

This is total fiction.

In Enchantment, Guy Kawasaki talks about eaters and bakers. Eaters see a pie and want to get as big a piece as possible, but bakers help make more, bigger, increasingly delicious pies. And the best way to start thinking like a baker is to re-examine your relationships with your competitors.

Making the Lists

Think about what kind of projects you really don’t want to do. Projects that are too big, or too small, or have too many lawyers. Clients that have good concepts and secure funding but are in an industry you don’t like to work in. Figure out what kind of work you’re passionate about and want to be doing.

Come up with this list and stick to it. Having a clear idea of your core competencies and niche is a much more compelling story than being mercenaries who work on any project with a big enough budget.

Doing unto others

So what happens to leftover projects? Say a great lead comes across your desk, but it’s in an industry you don’t really like and you’re super busy with four other clients right now. Think of this as a re-gifting opportunity. Call up one of your competitors and give them the referral.

This may sound crazy. It is a little crazy. People will question your motivations. Maybe your sanity. But there are two good reasons to pass work along to your competition.

1. Clients talk.

If a client has a good experience with, say, a collaboration consulting company, they’ll talk about it. They may talk about the specific partner they used, but a good experience with anyone in the industry is good for everyone else in the industry. And the reverse is true, of course: one project gone sour will taint that client’s view of the industry as a whole. As clients share more and more positive anecdotes, more projects will start to crop up.

And by passing along leads for projects you couldn’t (or didn’t want to) do the project in the first place to someone better geared to take the work on, you’re creating better experiences for the client and giving them more positive stories to tell. The company logos may be different, but you and your competition are really working towards the same goal: delivering client value.

2. You get what you give.

I’m not advocating helping others solely to get help in return: that’s disingenuous, and ultimately transparent. Think of it more as a by-product, whether or not you use Guy Kawasaki’s ‘I’m sure you’d do the same for me’ line. When you send work you can’t do well to others, you’ll start to find yourself pulled into their projects as well.

So get out there and make some pies.

Nobody vs. Somebody

elise — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 15:06:37 +0000

In his new book Enchantment, Guy Kawasaki makes the assertion that Nobody is the new Somebody. Not too long ago the internet was a playground ruled by somebodies, some argue that it still is. The internet’s power structure has shifted against the Sombodies of the web – influence peddlers like the New York Times, Forbes, CNN. In its place, the collective Nobody has risen to assume a greater voice online. These paramount content providers allow less contingency for nobodies to spread information and promote outside interests. The somebodies deem information ‘news worthy’ then utilize their social status to spread the information quickly.

The nobodies have created a community of user generated content. People who want to tweet about where the KimChi food truck is, post memes about cats, blog about street art and things of that manner.

What we’re really talking about here is influence. These nobodies are gaining klout. Influence is sometimes misunderstood by marketers as a person or brand who has a high number of followers on Twitter, RSS feed subscribers and Facebook page likes, but influence comes from brand experience and trust. Having one hundred strangers re-tweet a brand name or an article they’ll never read doesn’t create the same kind of influence or produce tangible outcomes.

The nobodies have community leaders who have a greater chance of creating an impact on individuals because the content is relevant. Take the example of a new mom, she might be more likely to trust content on a ‘mommy blog’ rather than the Pampers website because she knows she can trust information created by someone who is like her. Marketers can gain a lot more than influence by courting the small groups where trust is implicit.

Essentially the nobodies are acting like the old somebodies but on a smaller scale. If mainstream media finds a way to compete with user-generated content that creates tangibility could they could transform the power of the nobodies?

We know that the nobodies can create buzz, communities and promote, but we also know that nobodies are unpredictable.

Grit is good, anonymity is better

khabarta — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 16:51:09 +0000

There are certain online sites which tend to evoke in people a feeling of the true nature – or the DNA – of the internet. Chatroulette was one of these and 4chan is another. Usually what people mean by ‘the DNA of the internet’ is unbridled raw expression which is often tainted by porn or other social vulgarity. Using this criteria the public bathroom wall has functioned in much the same way as the internet.

One of the big keynotes at sxsw was from 4chan founder – Christopher ‘m00t’ Poole - who went for Facebook’s jugular by deriding their identity-driven model as contributing to the web’s “loss of innocence.” Almost in the same breath m00t used the event to push 4chan’s newest product called Canvas.

Two ingredients which have kept 4chan’s message boards legendary are anonymity and images. These are the same levers which have fostered liberated communication for thousands of years – whether it’s WikiLeaks whistleblowers or the increasing slope of visual culture provided for anyone with a cameraphone or the tendency to deface ads when people get within striking distance. Canv.as reaches the lowest common denominator of conversation – - and what’s novel about it, they provide the rudimentary tools to keep things creative (think MS Paint).

Want to play a fun game? Ask a child to draw an object. After he or she is done, it’s your turn. Add a line – curved, straight, spiraling, jagged. Then it’s their turn, so on and so forth. It gets wild quick – the whole process is a great way to let go of preconceptions. Canvas is the same (except the group is larger and not innocent kids). For all that’s contrived about today’s packaged and over-produced culture, having your preconceptions challenged is a noble pursuit – even if it’s done from a bathroom stall.

The Marketing Sandbox

Shaun Abrahamson — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 20:03:17 +0000

Games used to be about consoles and phones and farm-related status updates on Facebook. But games have already moved into other areas that impact our purchases of everything from airline tickets to 1950s era office chairs on eBay.

The idea of a game layer for the world, seems very plausible. In fact if the game layer involves using mechanisms to cause new behavior, the game layer is most definitely already here – its just that most marketers aren’t thinking of themselves as game designers, yet.

Loyalty versus Deals deathmatch

Groupon has fast become the king of deals. It uses a simple combination of game mechanics to create irresistible offers:

+ the qualified “free lunch”: get 50% off! (but only if 100 people agree to the deal)

+ communal gameplay: only 53/100 have agreed so far, get your friends!

+ countdown: hurry, only 2 days and 1 hour left!

It’s JUST these game mechanics and an e-mail list (and a massive sales team) that keep Groupon running. SCVNGR believes they have a counter-measure to discounts to induce loyalty using a different set of mechanics around leveling up, fittingly called, “Level Up”.

Marketers are game designers

Groupon and SCVNGR are just the latest to take advantage of game mechanics. At the core, game mechanics are nothing new: they’re about understanding individual and group behavior and creating systems to get specific outcomes as a result of these insights.

Marketers should feel right at home, right?

Actually, marketers already design much more complex games. They get to draw on libraries of game mechanics from how people might respond to a story, to A/B tested copywriting in e-mail. Loyalty systems keep me from switching to a cheaper ticker because now I get special treatment in security lines. Social media added a host of new mechanics to cause behavior in people that causes other behavior in other people, so complexity has gone up again.

No wonder marketers get the feeling they may be missing opportunities – how could one possibly choose the right mix of approaches to changing behavior to get an optimal result?

How do I know it will work?

At the end of Seth’s session, 3,000 people frantically gestured to one another and began trading pieces of colored paper. It looked a little like the trading floor behind a TV announcer explaining a sharp equities sell-off.

The objective – work together to win a game, by organizing ourselves to create patterns using different colored cardboard sheets. There were a few rules, a clock, and a clear objective.

At the outset, if you had polled the room, my guess is most people would have voted against a successful outcome. Yes, after 60 seconds, were were done. #epicwin

More experiments, fewer attempts to plan

Too often I encounter the following.

“We want to do something innovative”

[insert untested idea that might cause desired behavior here]

“How well will this work?”

“I’m not sure, but we have a way to test it”

“Oh, what else do you have?”

Seth could have tried to model and analyze what might have happened when 3,000 played a new game. But it was cheaper and more conclusive to simply run the game on a small scale as an experiment. Real-world evidence trumps survey data every time.

Developers have been using this strategy for years, working and playing in sandboxes: places designed to test ideas and understand what works.

Maybe its time for a marketing sandbox?

[If you want to learn more about the SCVNGR panel at SXSW, we liked the thoughts from The Guardian and Made by Many.

Top Image: SCVNGR founder Seth Priebatsch doing behavior hacks on 3,000 of us at his SXSW keynote. ]

Epic Winning at SXSW

Shaun Abrahamson — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 11:22:39 +0000

I love it. But will it work?

Heading into SXSW, many people are asking themselves this question of their new products, panels or parties.

So, using my very special mix of trend analysis, chatter analysis and witchdoctory, some prognostications for Epic Winning at SXSW.

1. Holler Gram

Remember backchannel? Now there is something new for presenters to contend with and a new way for session attendees to join in. Actually its likely also something that barkeeps, Austin TSA officials and a host of other people will come to know in short order.

The smart folks at Made by Many have created a physical messaging platform.

This is just genius because it is going to enable a bunch of new experiences in a simple elegant way. It’s an instant classic example of what we call scaffolding – the stuff organizations can make to enable others make.

2. Groupme

Ah the joy of social networking reduced to the core. Thank you Groupme. I can finally fill in the massive continuum between public and private without trying to understand Facebook privacy settings. Plus there are some fun power-ranger-esque features like a single button that instantly summons everyone in the group.

While I suspect many people don’t want to bother setting up a new Social Network, Groupme makes it so easy, it will be hard to not to.

3. GroupGram

In the spirit of good ideas having sex (combine the top 2 with MIT’s Flyfire), a new concept (possibly ready by the end of SXSW?). The idea is simple – enable screens to be networked together to create much bigger screens by defining groups.

Any takers?

Misunderestimating Communities

Shaun Abrahamson — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 06:50:33 +0000