One of the things that’s been exercising my mates Eva and Cameron, and myself (and passim) since last year is social media (or ‘Web 2.0’) and how it relates to scientists; scientists to it; and the rate with which Li-Kim can down martinis.
I’ve been invited to give the keynote at next week’s Research Information Network Consultative Group meeting (Life Sciences & Medicine) and this issue has been niggling me for a while. I’ll be talking on social media tools and how scientists might benefit — if they might benefit, in fact — and I hope to be able to spark a heated discussion and some worthwhile project ideas. Big ask, and I’ll be doing some serious thinking this weekend.
This afternoon, just after the dev team here at F1000 came up to me with something that I’ve been hassling to get for ages (mad props to them. I’ve always claimed that Friday afternoons are the best time to try new stuff, and these guys have really come up trumps) I read about something else entirely, and a ready-made aphorism popped into my head. I don’t have a scanner so I can’t show you how I wrote it down, but here’s
Grant’s First Law of Social Media
Social media tools must work off the bat and have a defined value before most scientists will use them.
Corollary
Any social media tool that is launched into the wild but requires user contribution development to make it work will fail.
Discuss.
I wonder if we called it ‘Web 2,0’ in the tags if it would render better? Would give a nice European flair to it.
Define ‘user contribution’. I assume you don’t mean just reading.
I think your first law is about Information Systems, not just about social media. We’ve seen the same phenomenon over and over in the last 20 years.
Since my mind is full of epidemics at present, I wonder if there are some models in infectious disease that are helpful? Different systems take root to different degrees in different hosts. Some people have stronger immunity than others. Epidemics of use rise up and fade away again.
Jenny – user-generated content, presumably? Forming online communities, posting, etc?
I have social media exhaustion. I can’t even properly think about it anymore. Except in vague sci-fi terms, about how “losing touch with people” doesn’t happen anymore, and the older people get, the more time they need to spend to still talk to everyone, and social circles blur, and it will all end up in some weird dystopia where people are secluding themselves in small groups and going completely offline and refusing to communicate with anyone. And then some global epidemic happens and they don’t know about and are totally unaffected and when they finally emerge for some reason they find that they’re the last people on earth or there’s some war going on. I feel that this is just a mix of five different movies I saw once. War Games meets Waterworld crossed with The Matrix and Eight Days Later and a documentary about lost tribes – or something.
How about the following (Dave’s laws):
1)(similar to your first law) An online science tool must have an obvious and immediate benefit to gain any traction.
2) The results given by said tool must be highly superior to methods already in use to overcome inertia and gain switchers.
3) The time and effort needed to benefit from the tool are inversely proportional to the amount of use it will see.
Once you have invested in one sort of social media, the barrier to starting a new one gets higher. For example, like many people here, I bought into the whole LinkedIn thing (which I am starting to realize was probably, overall, useless). I built a profile, I responded to all the requests. It wasn’t a lot of time, but when I got my second, and third, and fourth, and fifth request to join something similar, there was no way I would even consider building yet another presence on yet another platform. I am starting to think that FaceBook is the best thing to invest in because nearly everyone I know is there and they have made it amazingly easy to keep up to date with everyone else. It’s as frivolous or as serious as you want it to be. I wouldn’t join another one, I don’t think.
Nature Network doesn’t feel big enough yet to be a true social network for scientists. It’s just a small number of people, and I enjoy it a lot, but I don’t think it’s done much for me academically. That could be because I simply don’t have time to look at forums. There aren’t any tools that help my research, unless I’m missing something. The blogging is fun, and has been very rewarding, but that’s not something your average scientist is going to want to do, I guess. NN would have to offer a lot more added value to drag scientists away from their already overloaded lives, I suspect. But what more could it give that would entice? I confess I don’t have any great ideas.
This question was discussed in extenso, and also, possibly, the bar, at the Borafest in Chapel Hill in January. Devastatingly hip twittermeisters such as Cameron, Bjorn and Deepak and others showed that the road to Web 2.0 is littered with the corpses of failed Social Media Networking Tools.
However, here’s a thought – one might call it Gee’s
CorrollaryCoronaryCormorantAddendum to Grant’s First Law – that if a new platform is sufficiently beautiful and easy to use, scientists will find things to do with it.I submit for your consideration, Ladies and Gentleman, the iPhone. Richard and I met for lunch last week and rather than arm-wrestle we compared our iPhones. We agreed that the most wonderful thing about this object is that it is so easy to use it *isn’t even supplied with an instruction book*. And wasn’t it Richard who in a recent post showed that scientists were already designing useful science-specific apps for the iPhone?
But phones are not social. Well, I mean, I guess you can call people on them, but in general you all just like goofing around with applications and saying “I’m on a train!” from (presumably) a train.
Some of the applications are social though. Like the ocarina thingy.
The GoodGuide iPhone app is socially responsible.
Though it will be a religious holiday in the Heretics’ Circle of Hell before I’ll eat VitaSpelt Flakes or Organic Kamut Puffs for breakfast.
Hi Richard, I responded to your post in another topic– where you mention that your First Law is partly inspired by Sci-Mate. I would only add that to accept your First Law is to say that scientist are profoundly different to other people. We’re not, we just have different needs. With this in mind, the Sci-Mate has been designed to help researchers: 1) bring together isolated pieces of knowledge into high impact publications; and 2) distribute highly specific technology into productive research and developmental collaborations.
“losing touch with people” doesn’t happen anymore, and the older people get, the more time they need to spend to still talk to everyone, and social circles blur, and it will all end up in some weird dystopia where people are secluding themselves in small groups and going completely offline and refusing to communicate with anyone.
I’m reminded of my advisors stories about the Aka of the Central African Republic. Everyone knows everyone and all of the huts (~20+) face each other around the local commons. Everyone’s business was known and there was never any privacy unless you left home and wandered into the woods. I’m seeing a parallel to facebook, twitter, myspace, etc. Except now we have a global commons of choice. The “wilderness” of isolation is still outside though. Turn off your iPhone, put up your screensaver and enjoy the silence of the woods.
bq. I wonder if we called it ‘Web 2,0’ in the tags if it would render better? Would give a nice European flair to it.
tried it: unfortunately it’s still broken. MT4 will fix this, no doubt.
Jenny, and everyone–especially Christopher:
I mean that the tools actually aren’t ready. I don’t mean the users need to participate — that’s almost the definition of Web 2.0 — but that users, even scientists, don’t want to have to build the bloody things in order to participate. Facebook is there, it works out of the box. As does Twitter, LinkedIn. SciLink, Sci-Mate; they don’t. They’re broken, and most scientists — the ones you have to convince because the early adoption model really doesn’t work in science — simply cannot be arsed.
I suddenly recognized, in my head, the fifth movie I was reminded of. Not a documentary, but “The Gods Must Be Crazy”
Blibble?
What?
Like!
the tools actually aren’t ready
I think you’re right. Even our beloved NN has big limitations. You have to be familiar with RSS in order to track things effectively. Jenny mentioned she doesn’t dip into forums much. I find it tricky to track blog discussions but harder to track forum discussions. But these aren’t priorities to for the development team because we should all use RSS.
Devastatingly hip twittermeisters
Henry, is there a course I can do to become one of these?
It’s OK Eva, I got confused by the comment thread. As you were.
Found this this morning.
Science 2.0 – introduction and perspectives for PolandView more presentations from Pawel Szczesny.
I’m glad you’re now clear on what Web 2.0 is, but you now seem to be moving the goal-posts. In your post on the other forum you rejected my offer that you write something on Sci-Mate because I should have already built the site. This would suggest that writing would be building the site. To which I’ve replied on the other forum.
I don’t mind you trying to conceal this misunderstanding, but don’t start openly saying Sci-Mate is broken- it isn’t. Since beta-testing started in April, the site has been running like a top. And if something doesn’t work temporarily, report it, and it will be fixed as quickly as you can say “Microsoft software always works in the first release.”
Another term you might want to familiarise yourself with is “beta-testing,” and how it is used as almost a standard feature of Web 2.0 to bring features into line with user’s needs. While you’re there, have a look at the difference between a “law” and a “hypothesis”.
Your patronizing attitude is not helpful.
When someone goes to a site, and thinks to themselves “So what, actually, do I do?”, in general they’re going to go away and find something more constructive. It’s not sufficient, outside of a pretty small and inward-looking group of people, to say “you prepare an article within the Wiki-Mate, as article editor, on a topic of your choice” — because I still don’t see the point.
Addendum (it’s Saturday afternoon and I’m supposed to be being social):
Jenny said “Once you have invested in one sort of social media, the barrier to starting a new one gets higher.”
— and that’s crucial. You really have to have value, a USP if you like, to succeed. Which means saying ‘here’s a great tool, but you have to build it first’, is doomed to failure. I’m sorry, but there is nothing that marks Sci-Mate out as different; there’s no killer application. No matter what you think of Web 2,0 or how useful it might be.
A few days ago Friend Feed was “upgraded” (ie downgraded) to look like Twitter – it is awful. I loved it before but I am seriously considering stopping using it now.
Agree very much with Jenny on LinkedIn. I went to all that trouble a few years ago and all that happened is that I was constantly bugged by their (LinkedIn’s) emails. So I deleted my account (or tried to – they do not make it easy for you to do that). Then, a year or more later, I was persuaded by some of my 2.0 community friends to try it again, which I have – cue just the same rubbish.
Anyway, as mentioned a few times over at the web 2.o forum, these tools will be used if they are useful to people, and if they allow people to do something better than they could before. People who love Twitter and iPhones are using them to do the same things they liked doing before only better. People like me who don’t want to be bothered 24/7 are not going to use an iPhone any more than they use bogstandard mobiles (cells). [In fact I do use a mobile in case a child has a daytime emergency, but i don’t need an iphone for that. and when they’ve left home, I’m throwing it out.]
Like Jenny, I too would be interested to know how scientists would want to use a social newtworking/2.0 site, other than to blog on it.
“newtworking”! Call in Ken Livingstone…..
Richard, there is a discussion on Friend Feed about F1000 and online science that you might want to look at, if you haven’t already. Link is here.
Wow. Thanks for the heads-up, Maxine: I’ve not been FF-ing very much recently (partly because I’ve only just got networked at home…)
I breifly worked for a website (which I will not publicize here) that desperately wants to be the ‘Facebook for Scientists’, or the first resource that scientists go to when they want to get help and exchange information. I pointed out that there is no incentive for otherwise capable and productive scientists to waste huge amounts of timetroubleshooting PCR reactions for graduate students in India, so the site was ‘incentivized’ by giving away entries into a drawing for a new car for each post (or ad click!) on the site. Now the site looks very very busy, but it is still incredibly useless and, like NN, is rather clique-ish.
I am resisting massive amounts of peer pressure to join Facebook, but Jenny makes a good pitch for it. Like Frank, I am having a VERY hard time gaining a foothold on how to keep up with the conversations on NN and feel like I am missing alot. I would question the value of the time I am spending on it, expect that I have little else to do with my time at the moment since I no longer have any ‘real-in-the-flesh-friends’ with whom to spend my time in the productive pursuit of drinking beer.
Do we delude ourselves that ‘science based socialization’ is somehow more valuable than other forms of socialization or that it is relevant to our careers and therefor not simply a waste of time?
Sorry, I have completely ignored the topic at hand…I disagree with both of your so called laws, because I suddenly feel contrary.
Ignoring topics is de rigeur here, Audra. think of it as a virtual pub, where your ‘real-in-the-flesh-friends’ have gone to chew the fat and wait for you to get in a round of tequila.
Proffers a virtual 2-litre jug of margaritas to make up for said absences
just don’t let me have any when we are on the 18th-floor (I was so sure I could fly…)
Is that Mrs. Eccles?! Good Lord!
I posted on the other reprinted here:
@Christopher: being patronising doesn’t exactly help your cause. I’m fairly sure Richard knows what Web2.0 is. he’s just disagreeing with you.
@Jenny et al.: anyone got any ideas how to track discussions here? I’m down to following only 3 or 4 blogs because I don’ have time to trawl NN looking for updates. Others I now lurk on, playing catch up whenever time allows… not exactly an efficient model of communication.
Ian: Mrs Eccles? tee hee hee. Like that!
Interests: Enthusiastic control-freak ready to streamline your laboratory.
excellent! LMAO
Great comments here. Someone tried to pitch the idea of a wiki to me where scientists could collaborate to share their protocols that would help solve a problem they are all having (and that the core groups have solved, but the people new to it are still having issues with)
But they didn’t quite appreciate it when I pointed out that people need incentives to contribute, and that we are not as altruistic as we’d like to think we are. Also, these particular scientists were already publishing (and including minimal detail in the M&M) so why would they need an additional outlet?
having developed a wiki myself that is used by 50 people, and contributed to it by exactly two people, I understand the limitations of Soc Med in science. I saw a brilliant quote on Twitter the other day: “Having a wiki is like having a microwave at work, everyone wants to use it but no-one wants to keep it clean”
Oh. so. true.
Hah, brilliant quote Kyrsten!
Eva: going completely offline and refusing to communicate with anyone = me for the last two-three weeks.
Krysten: bravo to whomever tweeted that. It’s going up on my wall. Same goes for “online lab notebook” and “taking typed notes in lab meeting” for that matter. Après moi, le déluge…
Ian: “I’m down to following only 3 or 4 blogs because I don’t have time to trawl NN looking for updates. Others I now lurk on, playing catch up whenever time allows… not exactly an efficient model of communication.” Even following the NN consolidated feed, without updates on the comment threads (which is probably possible, but I haven’t configured that), is beyond my energy level for making time.
Richard: All these social sites do require user contribution to make them work, by definition. So I am less in agreement with your corollary than your First Law in and of itself.
However, a similar observation to the point I think you were making is that a successful site must provide a tangible service to the user that does not solely rely on the networking aspect, but is a selfish, personal benefit. For example, I am increasingly pleased with what Mendeley offers; however, it’s not the networking part that appeals to me, but the PDF management aspect. If I continue using the site, and convince my colleagues of its potential use, and it becomes convenient to us to chat on there rather than by other means, then it or any similar site may be successful in the networking sense, also.
So, is success for a nascent website measured by the “social” or by the “media” aspect?
Also see the comment I left on the companion discussion that was launched simultaneously in the forum section as far as a recent poll of scientists on this very issue.
Maxine: 100% agreed on your conclusions re: FF and LinkedIn, which recognizing their use to different needs that others may have (bioinformaticians or people in startups, in particular).
I essentially stay in LinkedIn for three reasons:
– in case I can refer my friends to anyone whom they might consider useful in my network,
– it’s a professional alternative to Facebook for work-related contacts
– most everyone I know, like for Facebook, was or has come on there at some point, and LI made it easy to find them at the time I signed up. Divesting is too much effort, now.
Anyone else notice that Facebook has now done a better job of enabling you to click through to the NN platform? Is that good or bad for NN?
All these social sites do require user contribution to make them work, by definition. So I am less in agreement with your corollary than your First Law in and of itself.
It is probably badly worded. Web2.0 in action: I’ll try to revise it.
Hm… so I have some questions:
1. Is Wikipedia a “Social Media” tool by your (lack of) definition?
2. Does user-contributed content (as distinct from user-contributed bug fixes and so forth) fit your (lack of) definition of “user contribution”?
If so, then Wikipedia (and countless things like it) violate your corollary. Say what you like about Wikipedia as a useful source of information (and I’m very much on the “don’t trust Wikipedia” bandwagon myself, although also an infrequent editor/contributor), you can’t deny it’s been successful (at least in some senses of the term).
Damn. I think I just said exactly what Heather did. Teach me to stop reading NN for a microsecond or two.
I think rpg means user contribution to get it to work in the first place, in the context of asking users to a join a site where nothing works yet, but just try it out and let us know what you think.
Yes. Eva can answer all questions for me in future.
Ah. In that case I agree with both Law and Corollary. At least from my own curmudgeonly POV.
Did I mention that I suspended my Facebook account?
Wikipedia – cue zithers….big brown eyes, etc.
giggle that’s something I’m going to mention tomorrow, oh yes.
Maurice Jarre was still alive? I had no idea.
Ironically no one can get a wifi or cellular signal in the dining room, so
the revolutionmy talk will not betelevisedtwittered.Phew.
Well, maybe it is me, but I’m not so sure about:
Any social media tool that is launched into the wild but requires
user contribution to make it work will fail.
There’s this thing called the World Wide Web (I even blog about it from time to time) – there was nothing to it until users built a bunch. Been doing pretty well of late, although recently Berners-Lee has said it will be a falure if we can’t get more people to use it (The current user base is only 21% of humanity and I think reaching the other 79% is what keeps him up at night…)
I’d also point out wikipedia, the blogosphere, social networks… hey, in fact, I cannot think of any social media that doesn’t require user contribution to get it going — in fact, isn’t that the definition of social media?
hmm, Maybe I am sure about it – I disagree.
Poor choice of words. s/contribution/development/
You should have taken notice of Eva, above.
I’ve found that soc med starts to take off when members of a self-ascribed community start to use it. In fact, the very reason I got on Twitter was not because I was trying to “keep in touch with scientists” or indeed, do anything work-related, it was two-fold: a bunch of ladies I knit with were already on there, and I had met a bunch of non-scientists (read: businesspeople) that had great things to say and were avid readers like myself. The other scientists seemed to find me, though I did seek a few out that I knew were on there from NN (no, I’m not a stalker)
From there, I’ve converted a few friends to Twitter, they’ve converted a few friends, etc. If no one else I knew personally was on there, would I stay? Doubtful. But once a community starts to create an on-line community, it can snowball.
So I guess my answer to James, is that if you get the “right” people, ie what Malcolm Gladwell in The Tipping Point calls the “Connectors” and the “Mavens”, you will get your new soc med to take off. Maybe all your soc med is an Oprah like Twitter? 🙂
The problem is always getting to those Connectors and Mavens. Get the Mavens excited, they’ll talk to the Connectors, and if all goes well, you’ll get widespread adoption. Of course, this is all in a world that doesn’t realy taken into account “human behaviour”…
I think (and apologies for digging this up — I was out of town over the weekend and missed Kyrsten’s comment) that we need to realize that there’s being social, like going down the pub on a Friday after work or catching up with friends on Facebook or whatever, and then there’s working. So I suspect most scientists are put off by ‘social media’ because they think it’s a waste of time when they should be in the lab — or that peer pressure makes them feel that others suspect them of wasting their time.
Which ain’t necessarily a bad thing. Get back to work.
But it would be a tragedy if real benefits of SM tools were not given a chance to increase productivity because of these perceptions. I keep banging on about perceived value, and I think most SM sites and developers haven’t got a clear idea of what value they could bring. They certainly haven’t convinced me that what they’re offering (ResearchGate, Sci-Mate, whatever) has a professional benefit, that will repay me putting my time into them.
I did have coffee with David yesterday, who is working on a SM application/platform that certainly has potential value, and that should slot nicely in to the way people already do things (if he’s smart about it) with the social aspects coming along for the ride.