Question of the Week: Responsibilities of web services & their community
March 22, 2009 by Deborah Crooks
Once again, our Editorial Board convened to discuss one of the more compelling questions the Social Media community is facing as it contends with archiving, owning, distributing and maintaining its ever-growing archive of content. To whit, the hugely popular Facebook has suspended accounts if it ‘thinks’ users have misused the services based on what an algorithm finds and changes friend feeds at will. With millions of users, Twitter is noticeably absent in the customer service department, is in dire need of a functionality upgrade and its archiving protocol is subject to debate. Is this ‘fair’ to the community it serves? And how, in turn, should the user community really behave? What do you think? Please let us know your thoughts, experiences and examples of the social media community and social media service working both in tandem and NOT.
Social Media Club Question of the Week:
What are the responsibilities of Web 2.0 services to engage with and respond to the community it serves and what are the responsibilities of the community to the service? (Twitter, Facebook, etc)?
Do you have examples to illustrate this?
Listen in to the very short podcast discussion and contribute your perspective.
We welcome your comments, tweets and blog posts. Please tag your responses with the following tags:
#SMCQ2, #Responsibilites
The responsibility of web 2.0 companies in terms of engaging and responding to their community is simple: be human. They key difference (or at least one of the key differences) between the old way that we interacted online and how the new tools and technologies now allow us to connect is the human component. Gone (or going away) are the one-way, broadcast, ‘talk at’ types of systems. Replacing them are discussions, and connections, communities, and collaboration. Companies who try to find efficient ways of monitoring the human interactions taking place on their platforms by automating the effort are missing the point. An algorithm can’t tell you the motivation behind a comment or the value of a conversation. Community is not something that will necessarily be efficient, the metric for success should be quality and impact. Social media companies need to understand how to add value through their systems, not how to extract income. And if they can add value, the numbers will follow.
Interesting question! How can web 2.0 services better engage their communities? I think exactly how Brian said above: be human. These services may have a human component that gets “pinged” everytime an algorithm that’s run thinks something wrong with the massive amount of followers/friends or whatnot, but they should still take a look on a case-by-case basis and re-evaluate them. But also at the same time, the responsibilities by web 2.0 services include uptime and modernized features. Be open to hearing feedback & also to communicate constantly with community so they know what’s going on with the service (eg not like how Facebook handled the Terms of Service fiasco).
Roles of the community to the service? Not be abusive. No spamming or sucking up of bandwidth unnecessarily. Be considerate of others in the community and offer constructive criticism on how they can evolve and be better rather than simply “dogging” them and saying they suck and leaving it at that. While they are customers, they are unofficially a “focus group” that will help to enhance the experiences for all present & future customers.
First, let’s agree that neither Facebook nor Twitter are communities, but rather they are networks that facilitate some of the actions that communities engage in. Some of their services resemble those of a community, but then again you might say that a hyena or coyote resembles a dog, but they might not inter-breed so very well.
A community must serve the purpose(s) of its’ charter and those reasonably predicated expectations of its’ membership. There are two distinct tiers in the privileges and responsibilities of a community in owning its’ space with its’ members.
TOP: Archiving, maintaining, making accessible/findable, and distributing appropriate/relevant content contributed by the membership comes first.
MEZZANINE: When the top is done effectively, usably, and equitably, the community can exercise its’ collective intelligence to agree upon issues such as fair use, ownership, authority, licensing, re-use, partnering, and serving as a marketplace.
Tricky one this: on the one hand users have no right to complain for something they’re not paying for, on the other they need to be kept happy so they don’t go elsewhere. Somewhat of a balancing act for the services.
Some of the complaints are justified (Twitter needs to sort their customer service out, imo), some less so (Facebook redsign, for example).
Just blogged about it here.
[...] thoughts on this over at the Social Media Club. It’s their question of the week. What do you stand on this? Are folks being reasonable in complaining, or does the fact [...]
Great article. Different thoughts on many things that I’ve considered. How do we get a balance between customer service / free services?
Rich Reader makes a good point. The terminology we use (social media) is misleading and oddly seductive. We use these channels with a greater sense of ‘ownership’ than email and IM tools yet that is all they are – tools. And we have no ownership.
Facebook operates an ‘ivory tower’ moderation of THEIR community space, descending deus ex machina-like to pull the plug on individuals it disapproves. Nice.
Twitter is noticeably absent when we moan about service levels but pleasantly un-obtrusive in the main. But consider – is this stuff really social when we (professionals on the digital cusp for the most part) probably feed from these pipes to get our jobs done, columns filed and clients stroked? I guess this comes down to personal preference – would I use a website to find a partner I could trust – or would I go 3D-RealWorld and actually meet someone? Face-to-face beats Facebook/Twitter/ et al hands down.
[...] of web services & their community 2009 March 26 by Mich LISTEN IN on a podcast discussion on the responsibilities of Web 2.0 services to the communities they [...]
Some recent Twitter threads RE: Vimeo TOS:
http://search.twitter.com/search?q=vimeo+tos
http://seanlockedigitalimagery.wordpress.com/2009/03/23/vimeocom-rights-grab/
[...] way we’re working to do that is by encouraging discussion of a Question of the Week. Here’s how it works: Sundays: I participate in a podcast with Chris Heuer and the rest of the [...]