Tag: sociology

The Self-Authorization of Our Own Digital Cloning

Posted by Rich Harris – September 9, 2010

After the launch of Facebook Places, and seeing it show up as part of my most used social app, Facebook, I was reminded of something that is becoming increasingly important for us to realize and remember. We are witnessing the early stages of the ultimate convergence of sociology, human behavior, and billions of data packets sailing over millions of miles of network cables. Like it or not, Facebook is bigger in concept and theory than Mark “The Zuckster” Zuckerberg could ever understand, bigger than the ‘original internet’ ever had a shot at being, now that data is finally able to be humanized.

One almost humorous observation I’ve made is that the same people who complain or are fearful of this are the same ones that are also contributing to it, whether they realize it, like it, hate it, or not. Every time you update your status about what you had for dinner, your struggles as a parent, how much you like your job, when you last went to Disneyland and how fun it was, etc. –  algorithms collect, organize and attempt to construct a ‘virtual you’ over time period that can be stored in a multitude of ways, deconstructed by ad agencies and reconstructed as needed to serve you content that they hope will be as close to your heart strings as possible. Because you have provided the data about yourself from your own brain and fingertips, this content statistically has a higher and higher percent chance of resonating with you as time goes on after they measure your continued responses. As we continue to voluntarily provide more insight into our likes, dislikes and fears. We are constructing a virtual version or copy of humanity in the form of patterns that fill up a multitude of databases. Unless you are in high-tech, this happens without the majority of us even realizing it because we are distracted by our own emotions and the day to day stresses of life and onslaught of news feeds that now pour in from every direction. We also aren’t taught to think about the web that way.

I’m sure I sound like a whack job (and to some extent I am) but a simpler way to describe it is this (I’m sure most of you have seen this before): When you see a new animated movie come out like Avatar, their goal is to as accurately as possible, recreate realistic human physical motion and movement so that the characters look as authentic as possible and are believable. In a production studio, they do so by making the actors wear a body suit covered in sensors that connect up to a computer program. They then have the actor do certain movements for the movie to support various scenes, etc. While they are moving around, the sensors are recording these movements and it creates a 3D image of those movements on the screen, completing a virtual version of that person and their physical/movement characteristics. The social monopolization of the web is doing the exact same thing except it’s with human behavior on a global scale. By creating an account on a social network or site so that we can willingly populate it with content from our daily lives and true selves, we have officially authorized the creation of digital clones of us as a species by companies so that it can be utilized for business and science.

Fortunately, computers aren’t capable of creating emotion via chemicals and hormones by the nanosecond like we are so ‘rise of the machines’ ain’t happening anytime soon….but hey, it’s fascinating shit.

Onward.

Google Has The Holy Grail

Posted by Rich Harris – November 12, 2009

big-brother-posterRemember in Back to the Future II when Marty McFly got a hold of that Almanac from the future? I feel like Google,  just shy of the factual history that was in that almanac, has the next best thing, something very close: Conscious and sub-conscious behavioral data of the consumer.

Controlling the Present, Generating The Future

They have access to a level of human nature and core behavioral patterns that not many see or think to try and notice. They get to also see that aspect of human nature at a depth that researchers, behavioral scientists, and marketers would sell their first born on eBay for, or at the very least drool heavily over. I’ve always wondered if this search data is protected somewhere similar to Dr. Evil’s volcano lair, masking itself as a search company, all the while it’s collecting and subversively controlling business relationships, retail purchases and trends.

The brilliance in what Google is doing, whether it was intentional or not back when they started ramping up, is that no one at Google had to go out door to door, getting other human beings to volunteer for a “study” for their “marketing purposes.” The Google machine, because of the fact that people have made them a necessity in their lives for acquiring information, has human beings populating their databases voluntarily via billions upon billions of web requests every day. Amazing.

Google has the power to decide what is popular next. People that have access to that data could predict the next trends in B2B, B2C, and C2C (Consumer to Consumer: The current marketing territory where most companies feel like they’re herding cats).

Here are some related articles of interest on this topic:

Gizmodo: Google and the Deadly Power of Data

Channel.Hexus: Google battles Big Brother image

Google As Big Brother

Social Media: Meaning & Purpose Are In Our DNA.

Posted by Rich Harris – October 14, 2009

Photo Credit: User "Scoobay" on FlickrControlled Capitalism is Changing

The problem with one-way communication and some of the old way of doing marketing is that for years, in an effort to solidify and meet our revenue forecasts, we have trained human beings to be the type of consumer that doesn’t think for themselves. They’ve been rolling with the consumer herd so that large corporations with nebulous names can spoon feed them what they need to like, and pay for, next week, next month, next year.

In this awesome age of information that we are swimming in, people are now learning from a young age to think for themselves when it comes to consumables and how they have the power to choose the next trend and influence others, even people they don’t know (customer reviews for example). This power has also made them hungrier and less patient when it comes to the ROI attached to something they read, eat, drink, smell, etc….people expect a return now when you engage them and frankly, I don’t blame them.

Think about how much time and money is wasted marketing something in a way that creates no return or meaning for the customer. Think about the thousands of banner ads that were designed by pricey agencies that were ignored and never clicked, the print ads were never read or that never drove one direct sale or word of mouth reference. It’s mind blowing to think about all the money spent on that with nothing to show for it.

Legos Are Deep, Man

A nice write up entitled, “Finding Purpose in Labor (and Labor Economics)” was posted by Daniel R. Hawes where he posts some thoughts and opinions regarding a study that was done and documented called “Man’s search for meaning: The case of Legos”

Here’s a quote from Daniel’s write up about the experiment talking about it’s premise:

“Meaning, or purpose, in the task was manipulated by what the MIT and University of Chicago experimenters did with Lego toys after a participant had put them together. For one group of participants – the group with the meaningful task – the constructed Lego toys were piled up on a table for the participant to see, and new Lego pieces were provided to build further toys. For the meaning-deprived group, each constructed toy was immediately disassembled (for the participant to see), and the parts given back to be reused for subsequent building efforts.
Maybe not surprisingly to you, but possibly surprising for economic theorists, the average amount of toys each person was willing to build significantly differed between the two groups.”

……and here is a quote from the researchers doing the study:

“Despite the fact that the physical task requirements and the wage schedule were identical in the two conditions, the subjects in the Meaningful condition built significantly more [Lego toys] than those in the Sisyphus condition. In the Meaningful condition, subjects built an average of 10.6 [Lego toys]  and received an average of $14.40, while those in the Sisyphus condition built an average of 7.2 [Lego toys] and earned an average of $11.52.”

After reading I was reminded of one of the most simple rules to good marketing, and more importantly in this day and age, surefire tactics for upping the statistical odds of you getting a return for your social media campaign initiatives: Meaning & Purpose.

As a Social Media Marketer, It’s Already In Your Bag of Tricks

Something as simple as Legos remind us of one of the low-hanging fruits of social media. The study above reminds us of something very simple and fundamental.To me, the above data states something that should be obvious to any social marketer.

When you run a campaign, is there a meaning or purpose for the user when they arrive at your campaign landing page, click on your shortened URL, follow you on Twitter, etc.? Do they feel that when you engage them does your promotional delivery wreak more of the ‘take’ than the more important scent of ‘give’?

If you build your social media efforts on a foundation of meaning for your audience, the revenue and brand awareness will come naturally. Even something as simple as Legos prove it.

Onward.

[lego photo credit: Scoobay on Flickr]

Stats from The Solis

Posted by Rich Harris – October 13, 2009

Brian’s recent blog post: “The Great Social Divide: Twitter, Facebook Traffic Surges, Myspace Fades“, was chock full of some really great social media nuggets. The behemoth that is Facebook, the rise of Twitter, the process of the fall of MySpace. I highly recommend checking this post out. It’s always nice for us social media guys when someone else goes out there and pulls and the information we really care about into one location instead of the 8 different ones we have to go. The best quote by far from the post at the bottom that is in sync with the rest of the better known social media/marketers was this:

“This is why, in social media, digital anthropology, sociology, ethnography, and psychology prevail…”

Amen to that.

Facebook: Excavating Our Identity Crisis

Posted by Rich Harris – August 10, 2009

Where Did All Mah Peeps Go? Am I Being Abandoned? Did I Leave The Iron On?

I know I’ve done a lot of write-ups that appear to be “about” Facebook but honestly they’re more about behavioral psychology and what Facebook has tapped into when it comes to the human condition. I’ve been noticing a couple other things that have come up with Facebook and all of our behavior with it.

Being the socially whorish and obnoxious guy that I am, I have several friends and acquaintances that run the gamut of ethnicity, lifestyle, religion, sexual preference, socio-political opinions, apathy, workaholic, passive, aggressive, passive-aggressive, naivete, over-education to the point of pretentiousness, sensitive, tactless, creative, logical, lawless, and clueless…..the list goes on.

I’ve also noticed over the last few months that certain friends who I had connected with on Facebook from high school, places of employment from the past, etc…have un-friended me even though there was no negative incident or interaction with them that would be grounds for: “well screw you we aren’t friends anymore.”

They just…..simply……quietly……….with ninja stealthiness…….”unfriended” me. Where’s my WAH-mbulance?

Actually it doesn’t bother me at all….I’m about to tell you why….

In The Words Of The Great Philosopher Jackie Chan – “WHO AM I?”

(with hands in the air, insert cheesy echo from top of mountain here)

identity_crisis-291x300I realized after taking a look at the people that did “unfriend” me that they were probably offended by certain parts of Rich Harris (or just hated the fact that I filled up their Facebook feed, I’m cool with that). For example, I have some very right-wing fundamentalist Christian friends on here that I know would not be down with certain things I’ve posted, my sarcasm and openness to Buddhism, assessing it as probably borderline blasphemous. I know that I have some hessian metalhead friends that think I’m too emo. I have emo friends that think I’m sometimes too harsh and too much of a metalhead. I have blue collar friends that think I’m too geeky and dorky and geeky friends that think I’m too blue collar, gritty and rough around the edges for their liking.

Then, it dawned on me….I realized that I had established these relationships with these people on their terms, or what was comfortable for them. I had built that bridge from them to a facet of who I am but not who I am as a whole. One of my strengths is diplomacy, and dealing with small talk, total strangers, etc. So when I meet and relate with people it’s on topics that are comfortable or appropriate for that specific person. While I’m not dishonestly interacting with them socially or necessarily “hiding”, I am not revealing all of myself. Is this lying by omission about who I am or is it me being appropriate socially, showing tact, filters and self-control….and who the hell decides that definition?

What it comes down to honestly is at first I had an anxiety attack wondering how many people I offended and should I reach out and contact all those people making sure we were “all good”. But I realized that that is bullshit. The social mechanism, Facebook in this case, forces you to just be one person in front of all your various flavors of friends, family and acquaintances. I can’t be spiritual sometimes, and other times not be. I can’t only be a musician and other times only be sarcastic and other times only like Jameson and other times only be an internet geek and other times only be creative and other times only be white collar and other times only be blue collar……I am all those things at the same time and I shouldn’t have to hide that. Everyone else on Facebook has all their own little simultaneous facets. That’s what makes life and the world interesting. The universe would suck if we were identical robots, created in some factory somewhere.

We all have a choice when it comes to how much of ourselves we want to share with the world and it can be daunting to some people because they know that the internet is forever so they have to decide how far they’ll put themselves out there. Everyone’s comfort level is different. Everyone’s level of desire to share who they really are publicly is different. There’s no right or wrong here. We all have blood-spitting demons and cute white fuzzy bunny rabbits all inhabiting the same closet that is ourselves. Being the socially shape shifting guy that I can be, Facebook has forced me to be comfortable publicly in front of everyone of every ilk, to be ok with that..to be ok with the fact that some people from long ago may not be into who I am now….and to start shedding any insecurities I have about that.

At the end of the day the people that will stick with you are the ones that appreciate all aspects of you, even if it makes them uncomfortable. The rest of the people will ‘go away.’ – not cause they hate you or because you did anything wrong, but just because it’s trying to put a putting a social square peg through a round hole. Sometimes it’s just not a good fit. It’s ok and normal and ethical to be socially incompatible with people without hard feelings. We already know this…but I said it anyway.

Onward….