The personal economics of online participation.
Every time that we participate in a network, whether in a destination community or a simple network service, that participation, every social interaction, carries a cost – a cost of participation. Similarly all of us only have so much time to invest in network participation – our supply of attention. Attention is how we tend to regulate our expenditure of time. Attention is network currency.
One way to think about this is that every person also has a supply curve that defines the time that we are willing to spend in online networking – the limit of our participation in network behaviors.
The currency of attention
The currency of attention is the province of recognized authority Bernardo Huberman.. Huberman’s thesis is that people gravitate to unique, novel experiences that build attention. How much time is each of us willing to spend online and in network behaviors – online interactions and social exchange? Is it 3 hours a week, more, less? And when we spend that time, do we want to spend it in one place – a destination, a social portal, such as a facebook?
Or do we want to develop a personal portfolio of network experiences – and spread our time amongst many networks – not all of them destination communities, or portals?
Unique cost and benefit structures.
Each person receives a different benefit from multiple forms of network participation. We all have our own personal supply and demand curves – we constantly evaluate the cost of participation, and measure that cost against our supply of time, allocated by attention. Here is my point. Different network activities have what are often much different cost structures. It “cost” much more to participate in some network activities, than others.
For instance, social portals, like Facebook, are relatively costly. One has to fill out and maintain lengthy profiles, The expectation is that each individual contributes photos, video, links, and interacts on an almost daily basis.They constantly interact with all of their friends. The cost of participation is high. Most facebook members however, are willing to allocate their attention because their familial and interpersonal relationships supported by facebook are very valuable – nurturing true friendships is rarely a low cost activity. And it can be argued that maintaining those relationships is much less costly than in real life alone. It is not unusual for members to feel a strong sense of responsibility to contribute online – as they would in a real world offline community.
But our life-styles are not simply about living in destinations, but in taking journeys. This is equally true online. Too often we tend to define networks as places to go – destinations. In fact, in real life, we move in and out of a series of relationships – some of them fleeting and lasting only hours or days, some that are episodic and that last for a defined term, and others that are truly enduring and that might last for a life time.
At points of intersection in episodic or transactional networks, we may provide interaction with network members, but often in limited ways – by a one time fleeting contribution, or perhaps by participation over a defined period of time. Online episodic network involvement/participation often has a very different set of user participation costs than destination networks, meaning that every net has a different value proposition.
This is why defining networks by the technologies that support them is very limiting and doesn’t give us a true understanding of possibilities. Similarly, prescribing destination communities for every business problem is a losing proposition. There are very few business problems that will be solved with full blown destination communities. Why? Because participants don’t have an adequate supply of attention in relationship to the cost of participation. The value proposition is flawed.
Thoughtful design and planning
This is why every organization has to be thoughtful in implementing network technologies. One size doesn’t fit every possible use of networks. Design of network services should be proportional the value promised to the user and the goal of the network. A destination community might be “right” for a professional or affinity community, or perhaps even a local or statewide citizen network. But it may not be right to conduct a policy discussion designed to find the best, new, ideas.
This is a much more complex subject than can be fully developed here. But the bottom line is that the personal economics of online network participation has much to do with how future business models are designed, and ultimately in how social networks are deployed and adopted throughout many types of enterprises.
Every network competes for social attention. How does your network measure up?
