Consume, Communicate, Comment, Convey, Create, Collaborate?

Web applications such as Facebook, Wikipedia, Digg, Twitter etc. clearly thrive on user generated content. Let's sidestep the issue of actually monetizing these for this post. And look instead at what drives the ecosystem. There appear to be 5 Cs in motion. Consume, Communicate, Comment, Convey, Create. And these are actions users take in these applications in increasing order of difficulty/time consumption. I believe there is one C missing (if you haven't gotten a hint from the title) and that is to Collaborate.

Most users obviously consume information. At least one web search a day of mine goes into Wikipedia. I read and exit the website. On Facebook, I consume my friends' pictures, status updates, whereabouts etc. This is the easiest at the same time the most valuable per time spent.

Quite a few users communicate on these sites. We write on friends walls, we send each other messages and we setup event pages. In Twitter, we communicate our state at the moment. This is one where the fruit of the action is not realized until/unless someone reads our communication and/or takes action. Communication is a basic need of a social being and thereby is a common action.

Commenting takes time, takes thought and takes courage. I'll get to why it takes courage in just a second. We comment on friend's status updates, posted items, photos. We comment on Flickr photos. We comment on blog posts. Commenting takes time and takes thought. To comment usually means to have consumed, understood and created opinion. And to state one's opinion publicly takes courage.

One way of defining Conveying in this context - To take information from one point and paraphrase (or not) into a different context. We post news article links/video links/opinion links on Facebook. We Digg links we like, thereby conveying information to a different audience. Conveying happens after consumption, but requires the almost extraordinary step of wanting to share. Now, there can be several reasons to share (excitement, breaking news, altruism, known external interest, attention wanting, spamming prone). But the prerequisite is to have consumed information outside the medium we are posting in. And this takes a lot of effort and time.

Creating is no doubt the most difficult, time consuming of these all. We create notes on Facebook. Developers creat applications for Facebook. Developers create Twitter apps. Wikipedia contributors create/edit articles for free. Wikipedia moderators keep the noise out. Creation is several levels more difficult than even conveying as it requires original thought (in most cases) and the creative ability to put it in a consumable form. Also, by creating a user displays extraordinary courage and conviction in their work and is open to criticism.

I believe there is a 6th C that is yet untapped in all of these. That is to collaborate. Wikipedia taps it to a certain extent as users can edit others posts. But think of the possibilities here! Think of Facebook users coming together to collaborate on a thesis/invention. Think of Twitter users coming together to collaborate on raising money for the poor. Imagine if in Digg, I could customize my news stories to only include Diggs from certain clans of users who form through an overlaid social network. Imagine Orkut users in a certain neighborhood coming together to setup a neighborhood watch. All of these are not impossible. But they need a collaboration engine to be created that has incentives for such activities to take place. An analogy - Wikipedia created an engine to let creation and moderation be a breeze. Facebook created an engine to let online application development and usage a breeze. Now, can we create an engine that makes instant, productive (1+1 > 2) and results driven collaboration possible?

Comments

[vivek garg]

Glad to see that you overcame your writer's block.

Right on. Wisdom of crowds can be tapped using collaboration if you have the right cause and easy enough way. Think mech turk. Think image labeler. Social networks provide audience. I think ning.com may be the closes general purpose engine.

[Chris Devaraj]

Thanks Vivek. Yeah, I managed to use some vacation downtime to work on this post!

Completely agree. Social networks definitely provide the audience, but not the incentive/moderation required. Also agree that Ning is a great idea where you can take your posse across multiple websites. SETI@home seems to use the "wisdom of spare computer cycles":) - http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/. Top Coder comes close - http://www.topcoder.com/. I'm thinking of a collaborative problem solving engine for everyday problems. Something that makes a difference. Like how micro donating can end up being a fairly big amount of money.Perhaps the right approach is to create vertical collaboration websites and one general purpose one for the common case... Anonymity is another interesting factor to consider while collaborating. It can help (users find it easier to express) and hurt (no accountability). Perhaps for another post!

[Chris Devaraj]

As I thought more about the wisdom of crowds here's what I see. Collaboration as of now on the web is just expecting that a small percentage of people will have the domain knowledge to solve a certain problem and then hope algorithmically this information will rise to the top (through averaging, reputation, credentials etc.). My opinion is we instead need more ways to seek out partners, exchange knowledge, create building blocks, sell building blocks etc.

[Chris Devaraj]

Getting there! - http://www.usaservice.org/content/home/