Best of Everyman Links #1

Your Brain on Facebook

Harvard Business Review article describes how the brain’s circuitry is stimulated when making online connections on Facebook. Applies to other social media sites, I suppose, but particularly with Facebook. There is a circuitry for “seeking” and a circuitry for “liking.” The liking response settles down the excitement of the seeking circuitry. Without the liking response, we’re like the rat pressing the level over and over to get a little dopamine hit, forgetting all about food and rest. The circuitry activated when you connect online is the seeking circuitry of dopamine. Yet when we connect with people online, we don’t tend to get the oxytocin or serotonin calming reward that happens when we bond with someone in real time, when our circuits resonate with real-time shared emotions and experiences.

#facebook, #socialmedia, #digitallife

Interruption Technology

Insightful Harvard Business Review article “You Are Not a Computer (Try As You May)” on how we serve technology rather than technology serving us. Where we put our focus shapes our agenda and defines our experience in every moment. More and more, we’re turning over this precious resource to our digital technology, allowing it to define the depth and span of our attention, and to seduce us into operating at such high speeds that we don’t notice the insidious toll that’s taking.

#digitallife

Second Screening

Another new term to describe how we’re using mobile technologies. Second screening. Love that. Not too long ago, consumers had one screen in front of them at a time, and it was either a PC, or a standard television set. Now, consumers are surrounded by a “swarm of devices” that are increasingly interacting and overlapping one another. Lately, tablets have been the device of choice serving as the second screen of choice, and the race is on to capture big pieces of this vast new real estate.

#digitallife, #mobile

To Blog or Not To Blog

It becomes more and more tempting to stop blogging considering we generate so much content on various social networks, but Mitch Joel of Six Pixels offers two lists on why you should blog and why you shouldn’t. (Why you should blog wins, IMO…)

#blogging, #socialmedia

Need. More. Friction.

This is precisely why I deleted my facebook account and refuse to recreate one. (Well, this and several other reasons.) This Atlantic article describes how people enter frictionless sharing unawares, where their reading habits are shared with the world. Here’s how the Social Reader’s recruitment process can work: You’re on washingtonpost.com, and you’re told that a particular Facebook friend has read a particular story. You decide you’d like to read the story, so you click on the headline. Then you’re confronted by a menu that offers only one obvious way to get to read the article–by clicking “Okay, Read Article”. And you have to scrutinize the surrounding text pretty carefully to realize that if you choose that option you’ve just agreed to make your Washington Post reading habits an open book.

#privacy, #facebook, #digitallife

The Optimized Online Community User Experience

Richard Millington with a list of considerations for improving the user experience in online communities. Include 1) Refine most used features 2) Look for things to remove, not add 3) Highlight the popular 4) Tweak Notifications 5) Small tweaks in the UI 6) Show unanswered posts 7) Social Media integration 8) Consider embracing a reputation system 9) FAQ for common member questions 10) Mobile offerings. Others…

#community, #userexperience, #design

Narrating the Project

A new term to describe the paradigm of social business interaction – narration. Or “Narrating the Project.” Nice. Here’s an analogy using reunions. In a real sense, reunions are our opportunity to give status reports on our lives to those people who cannot observe it themselves. These status reports become much less necessary when we are providing a regular narration of our lives to our social network. The same dynamic applies when our project teams narrate the work of a project. We need far fewer status reporting sessions, because everyone is being made aware of things as they happen.

#development, #communication

A Viral Enterprise Social Network

Tibbr post on how to make your Enterprise Social Network go viral at work. Three key takeaways: 1) Content seeding and integration with existing systems 2) Plan for a larger pilot group, or preferably, a staggered roll-out 3) Consider launching with an initial focus on internal discussion, or around a specific project.

#socialnetworks, #communities

Future Social

A We Are Social SlideShare on digital developments shaping the future of marketing in social media. Topics discussed include developments in Mobile Social, Baked-in Social, Curation and Funneling, Social “Nicheworks,” and Influencer Measurement.

#socialnetworks, #socialmedia, #mobile, #slideshare