Our reading this week outlines what is necessary to create an effective social system online: a promise, an effective tool, and an agreed-upon bargain. The promise is the common goal uniting the group, and the way it’s phrased can easily draw people in or turn them away. Many examples in the book involve focusing on creating something together rather than using something already there. This goal has to be something that people want to do, or they won’t think it a valuable use of their time. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a lofty goal, like the many examples of protests, etc. organized via the internet, but it must be something that its users/members see as valuable. The tool itself has to work for the group as well; too many bells and whistles can drive people away. That said, improvements can be made on a basic idea, especially if it will increase functionality and allow additional progress towards the initial promise or goal. The bargain in the cases of these groups is the set of rules (spoken or unspoken) which apply to the members; in example, on some forums it’s important to maintain a civil and polite tone, while on others people don’t care so much. As more and more groups and tools emerge to communicate with new technology, the potential for communication within a group increases exponentially.

Given the current situation in Egypt (referencing Twitter-driven pro-democracy protests were striking and are an example of how this tool has grown), I keep dwelling on how much we now rely on social networking tools to communicate. Earlier today I was trying to look up an article I’d read over break, but I couldn’t open the page because it was based in Egypt (.eg). The idea of the internet being completely shut down blows my mind, but the fact that Twitter and Facebook were the first sites the government blocked (the day before killing the entire internet) speaks to these sites’ importance in organizing protesters’ efforts. The epilogue goes on and on about China’s Great Firewall, which blocks Twitter now as well, if I recall correctly, and I think this censorship reinforces the message from Here Comes Everybody about the power that these online communities have.

If the theme behind last week’s reading could be described as a focus on implementing narrative within business/industry situations, this week’s focuses on the importance of organization within those same situations, whether organizing in a real-world corporate hierarchical sense or organizing a social network or online community. Here Comes Everybody addresses the former, explaining the importance of management positions to streamline a group working toward a common goal. Shirky uses several internet-based examples as well to demonstrate the power a group of individuals can have if properly motivated and directed—although the first example with the phone required limited guidance on Evan’s part, large groups of people working toward a common goal usually require additional structure and guidance to stay on-task (also evidenced in that example by all the off-topic conversation within the site he set up). Online, content is frequently self-generated and shared; this requires a different concept of rules and direction but can lead to vast and accurate amounts of information, sometimes superior to what professionals (especially in cases of citizen journalism) can turn out.

Our reading from Design to Thrive focuses on online communities and social networks, clearly defining the differences between the two. Social networks are more individual-based: on sites like Facebook and Twitter, you create your own profile and generate your own content. Your friends all have their own individual pages, as do their friends; however, just because you and someone else share a friend on a social network, this does not imply that the two of you truly have much of anything in common. Online communities foster relationships as well, but that is secondary to some cause or idea which brings the community together in the first place. The community exists primarily to discuss x and issues relating to x, and a sense of camaraderie exists among its members due to their shared interest in x. To have a successful and long-lasting online community, the connecting idea must be something limited; the example Dr. Howard gives regarding the Impeach Mark Sanford group would not be a community but an adhocracy, a group pulled together toward some common goal which disbands after the goal is accomplished or the point is no longer relevant.

As a college student, I stereotypically have pretty extensive personal experience with social networking. I stay active on LiveJournal, Facebook, Twitter (the clearest experience of citizen journalism I've ever seen was the #iranelection hashtag two summers ago), and Reddit; I keep close watch on my last.fm profile (I love the amount of analysis I can do to my own listening habits); and I frequently consider making a LinkedIn profile but lament having so little work experience to populate it with. I also, however, have a lot of experience with online community. I got into internet fandom (and all that entails) back in middle school and have since strayed in and out of fan communities, mostly on LiveJournal. I’ve made some close friends through some pretty silly shared interests (my favorite community and the one where I’ve made the most friends is dedicated to mocking Twilight; we’ve also had the weird experience of being analyzed as a community, as an MIT Comparative Media Studies grad student wrote her thesis on us), and although the community itself is fading, we keep in touch using other social networks. I keep up with many of them via Twitter and Facebook, and I’ve met two of them in real life. I’ve also tried my hand at community moderation; we had a shared sense of a common enemy/common frustration at the time (internet-based drama, the silliest kind there is), and our community thrived for six months or so. We developed our own memes and still maintain a sense of camaraderie as a core group, but the space is mostly used now for occasional catching up or reminiscing. Through these communities, we’ve certainly accomplished some things we wouldn’t have been able to as individuals.

"How do you translate a business strategy into an emotion?"

The key theme of all the readings for this week involved using storytelling to effectively convey an idea. Squirrel Inc. focused on the important elements and structure a narrative must have to be truly effective using an allegorical story of a rising-star executive squirrel, Diana, and her struggles to implement a change within the Squirrel Inc. corporation. Each chapter details a different component: the first focuses on the qualities a story must have, the second focuses on how to effectively tell the story. Chapter three gets into part two of the book, which describes seven different types of organizational narratives (listed in slightly more detail on pg. 47):

- Those which ignite action
- Those which share knowledge
- Those which get people working together
- Those which lead people into the future
- Those which neutralize bad news
- Those which communicate who you (the storyteller) are
- Those which transmit values

The next few chapters provide examples of a few of these; the rest of the book seems to continue in a similar fashion.


Chapters 10 and 11 of Neuro Web Design take these storytelling-as-communication principles and apply them to a web design situation, including some details from a cognitive science perspective. Storytelling is the default mode of communication for humans, and this is evidenced in successful web sites and design. Weinschenk encourages designers to include storytelling in web sites with a variety of media (images, video, etc.) because the human brain easily “chunks” information when it is delivered in a story format by subconsciously condensing it into images. The next chapter explores the social network and its various incarnations of online success.


Made to Stick seems to also be focusing on the idea of planting an idea in someone’s head via narrative. The Heath brothers bring up several urban legend examples which circulate frequently throughout society as happening to “a friend of a friend” and examine the qualities which make those ideas “sticky.” The later chapter provided specific examples of everyday storytelling which resulted in some sort of positive effect: both the story of the nurse saving the baby despite incorrect normal readings from monitoring machines and the story of the Xerox repairmen talking shop serve to teach a lesson while providing inspiration and empathy, respectively. The Jared from Subway story identifies an advertising campaign successful because it provided both of these qualities.


While I was reading, a passage in Squirrel Inc. jumped out at me:

“So the listeners create their own story?”
“Right. The listeners start crafting a new story in their own minds. They start to invent the change idea afresh. It becomes their own idea adapted to their own differing situations. And of course we all love our own ideas.”
“How do you make this happen?”
“You strip the story of details that are unrelated to the change idea. You tell the story in a simplified way so that there’s nothing to distract the listeners.”

My train of thought immediately took me back to last summer’s hit film Inception. I scoured YouTube for a clip of the particular scenes I thought of, to no avail; however, I did find a pdf of the film’s script online, with relevant lines (descriptions of inception, mostly from Eames) on pages 42, 57-61. The film’s description of inception—planting an idea in its simplest form in another’s mind via a complex created dream world, making the individual believe he himself has come up with the idea—resonated here with me, echoing again a few pages later in Squirrel Inc. when the bartender stresses the importance of a happy, positive ending to the story. The film itself was in a way about storytelling, with the characters dealing with the target’s resistance in a more physical manner (manifestations of subconscious which populate the dream world).


Another much more somber example which came to mind as I was reading Made to Stick is the Wikileaks leak from last semester regarding the Iraq war. The discussion of how to get across ideas using images instead of numbers hit home with me; I had read some of the new data re: the deaths in Iraq, but the one thing which truly impacted me was the data mapped via Google maps, which really speaks for itself.


My chief critiques of the readings stem a little bit from this film parallel, which I identified early and therefore remained in the back of my mind throughout the rest of the reading. While I will readily attest to the effectiveness of storytelling (I feel somewhat biased based on my academic interests and experiences), I don’t see how it could work in every situation, especially in a more corporate setting.