Exercise 6 - Hoot Suite Preview

Anonymity and Community

Anonymity can both help and hurt your forum. Providing easy access creates more traffic. It also lets user open up a little more. On the other hand, some users might abuse this privilege, filling your forums with obscenities and nonsense. Securing your forum can cause traffic to lower, but the information will be much more valuable to the users. basically quality instead of quantity.

In order to offer a secure forum, you have to offer the user something, otherwise they'll just keep moving. the internet is fast-paced, and if you don't give a reason for a user to sign up, they simply won't. On top of this, make the sign up effortless. The less time it takes to sign in, the less time it takes for a user to give up on the idea.

An article from alistapart.com gives some great examples of bettering your forum through membership. My personal favorite would be the reputation system. I use this quite frequently on e-bay. It lets me know who I can trust and who I cannot. e-bay also emails you about the user after purchase, basically forcing the issue to rate them.

Email confirmation, Rating system and Reputation systems, for me, are the best way to verify your forum's legitimacy.

Wisdom of Crowds

I think the strongest argument you can post about the wisdom of crowds is the fact that they are made up of individuals (The selfishness attribute Derek Powazek mentions in his article.)Each person formulates their own opinion, thus leveling out others. We now become reliant on a contingent of people rather than a couple of experts. This is one reason to consider WOC's.

When we think of experts, we think of people that know a great deal on the subject (obviously). What we don't know is how they personally feel on the subject. Moreover, something or someone can sway their reasoning. This is where the wisdom of crowds schema nullifies that attribute. It is possible to come out with a fair outcome.

Of course the masses are not without influence, but spread over thousands of votes rather than a couple yields a truer result. Each apex should counteract the other. Thus giving a result of what people are looking for.

Using Wikis for collaboration

Wikis can work in a business environment, just as long as everyone lets them work. I think Penny Edward's article "How does your wiki grow" hits the nail on the head, especially about role-players. Everyone can participate, but just like any other team collaboration, there must be roles.

Not everyone can sit around and invent. Not everyone can mediate, and certainly not everyone can lead. These roles should be doled out and clearly defined. They should also be done so voluntarily. Find the people that are willing to mediate and edit. Some people are drawn to this, just like some people are drawn to writing or creating ideas.

The article also makes a good point not to smother the experimentation phase. Managers should let the growth of wikis happen naturally. People need time to find their footing. Let them find there place in the wiki world.

Letting wikis thrive can give many benefits for a business. Such as:
1. People become more experienced in technology.
2. People can take work home with them. (In some cases, stay home!)
3. Information is shared across the board.

If everyone comes together to assemble a different part of the machine, it will run much smoother than parts being flung together

Traversing the Tagging Universal

I started my bookmark search on delicious with the phrase "social search". What was interesting to me was the amount of websites that it returned. There wasn't very many articles or blogs, but rather numerous links to other bookmarking sites. This was true for my next to searches; "tagging" and "bookmark". I chose three popular ones:

Stumbleupon
Clipmarks
Simpy

These all are essentially different ways of bookmarking pages. From the Simpy link, I decided to see what other people bookmarked with this. This is where I found Zootool, 15 best bookmarking sites, and Social booking Wikipedia. Most of everyone that had Zootool also had another link to social bookmarking in one way or another.

Next, I searched delicious by using the bell246 tag to see what other classmates have posted (much easier than clicking on each individual link and seeing if anyone updated. Sorting by most recent did that for you.) I noticed Basya Samuels also tagged two links that I had. (We must have had similar search techniques!) I also tagged an article of Erin's on collaboration tools because I don't know really what companies are supplying these tools. I love lists on the internet!

In my next venture through the delicious universe, I'm hoping to find a little more scholastic material on bookmarking. I'm sure they were there, but buried deep. Maybe delicious isn't cut out for finding the needle in the haystack, rather just finding the haystack. I personally felt like most tags were advertisements for more tagging sites. Sounds like a vicious cycle.

If I wanted to find applications and ideas, I think Delicious is great, but researching could pose a problem. It was hard to find links of any substance.

Tagging Problems

Social Bookmarks are useful for finding information on the web. They have the ability to traverse the web where machines cannot go. this is because they rely on the user rather than algorithms. Users can tag and look up tags of interest. Thus creating communities of like-minded tags and individuals. Although tagging can create some problems:

1. Tagging does not produce what is known as "synonym control". Basically, if someone looks for the tag "fruit", they'll miss tags like "apple" and "orange" (which are obviously also fruit).

2. Tagging has a problem with polysemous terms. Are you looking for orange the fruit, or orange the color?

3. Many search engines only search the tags, thus missing many relevant articles.

These problems naturally occur because people perceive things differently. These problems can be marginalized by doing the following:

1. Provide them with a list of popular and recommended terms. This will make users more likely to use them.

2. Clustering. Take tags that already exist to see if the tag is referring to the same thing.

3. Collaborative filtering. When a user tags an item, create an algorithm that can link people together with like-minded tags.

It would be hard to fix these problems, because people will always think differently. What we can do though, is cure the way it is organized and project it to the user.

Marketing Critique

Marketing, Outreach, and Branding

What Library are we profiling?

I decided to critique a library that I use the most, the San Diego State Library (SDSU), also known as the Infodome. The SDSU site boasts five Social Network Links on their main page; Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Blogger, and Flickr. In this essay, I will discuss how they market, outreach, and brand themselves through these sites. We will also look at some other ways that SDSU markets to the “cyber-patron”.

What are we critiquing?

In each of these sites, I will be looking how the SDSU Library markets, outreaches to their patrons, and brands themselves. The key areas of interest are:

· Marketing – When we speak of marketing, we are looking for the way a library plans and executes their goods and services to their community. Is there a clear schema in place?

· Outreach – What does the library do to connect to their patrons? Are they actively trying to aid and find patrons? What tools do they use to achieve this task?

· Branding – When we refer to branding, we speak of how a company makes their presence known on the internet. What does a library do to get recognized? Are they successful?

The Social Networks

Facebook

SDSU’s Facebook page is a prototypical fan page setup. Tabs are clearly marked at the top page. Most Libraries I found keep the side bar menu to the left. Considering the user reads in an “F” (That is horizontally long first, horizontally short second, then vertically), it’s wiser to keep your focal points in plain view. The menu contains a wall, information, photos, notes, events, and boxes. The only tab that is irrelevant is the boxes tab. It combines notes and events, giving it no real purpose.

SDSU has all but abandoned the Facebook page except for the wall. The last event posted was March of 2010. The last note was December of 2009. SDSU’s marketing plan is funneled into the “wall”. All the current information they post can be found here. This includes links to their blogs and other resources. They clearly decided it was easier for users to connect with one page rather than sifting through tabs.

MySpace

The MySpace page gives information on how to contact the library and what collections they have. Unfortunately SDSU’s Myspace appears dead. The last blog of any information was May 2010. The last comment was in 2008. There is nothing here that tells me that MySpace is part of any marketing plan in SDSU. The effort for outreaching in MySpace slowly dwindled out.

Twitter

SDSU’s twitter account appears to be running alive and well. The tweets appear daily, to once every three days. Some tweets include #SDSU, exhibit links, and their own blog links. It appears that the bulk of their outreach and branding exists in twitter. Where the information sits on a board in Facebook, this information is streamed.

Blogger

SDSU’s blogs are also alive. They have four blog spots; main library blog, a techs and services blog, a news and notables blog, and a SDSU tech blog. Techs and services blog only seems to update when a new technology comes out. Main Library and News and Notables are the most frequent bloggers of the site. News and notables updates users on exhibits and circulation. The main library blog is more random. It has updates on lectures, readings, and it even has recipes. Whether they update, frequently or seldom, it appears that SDSU likes to market their services through Blogging.

Flickr

Much like the blog accounts, Flickr has more than one account; main photostream, and digital projects. The Flickr project appears to have stopped at the end of October, 2010, and began in November of 2009. In this time, the Library posted many albums and pictures, but abruptly stopped. It’s hard to tell if the account is dead, as pictures are usually posted in bunches, and then the account lies stagnant for a couple months. The digital project Flickr was done in September of 2010. The gallery has a vast amount of Chicano Chicana Artwork. I assume this was an exhibit they featured in September.

Other Marketing and Outreach tools

Google

The Library has an application that connects through your iGoogle page. This gives users the opportunity to browse the selections from their search engine site. This can be a very handy outreach tool considering many companies are pushing towards a “search optimization”. This refers to getting your pages to highly rank on search results. This application bypasses the need to use Google directly, but allows you to use it indirectly, thus giving the user less links and sites to access information.

Mobile Applications

SDSU has an application that lets you access their archives via smart-phone.

How SDSU Library markets

Judging from what I gathered from the sites I visited, I deduced the following from SDSU:

1. That their blogs where used to post information about exhibits and resources.

2. Facebook Wall and Twitter were used to reach patrons and point to their blogs and resources.

3. SDSU Library brands their identity through using steps one and two, and offering applications for use on other sites and devices.

4. Other sites were used, but where poorly maintained, hence rendered useless. This can hurt Social Branding efforts because it could give the appearance of not caring.

What would I change?

First I would consolidate my networks. Social dashboards such as Hootsuite work well for this problem. This way you send the same message to all networks, thus connecting them together.

Second, I would keep photostreams in one place and provide links to albums. There are different areas other than Flickr that you find pictures and albums. This can cause confusion on where to post what. If we keep it in Flickr, we can organize the process better.

Third, I would move the Social Network Icons, on the front of the Library Page, from the bottom left to the top left. This gives the icons more prominence. Where they are now seem hidden.

Summary

Example of a Social network project following my ideas:

1. Take pictures of the exhibit and upload them to Flickr.

2. Blog about the exhibit and what it details. In addition add a link and pictures from the Flickr account

3. Through Hootsuite, send a message that connects through MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter that has points to the blog.

In summary, I think SDSU is not aggressive about their Social marketing, but they maintain a presence. Offering applications for phones and Google are great techniques to get your name out there, but you have to market it. Put an effort forth to let people know about these services. Updating users on exhibits and readings isn’t the only thing you can blog about. Also try invoking conversations with patrons. Try blogging about issues relevant to the city or your school. This can lead to dialogue and grabbing the interests of patrons.