I’ve thought about this previously and believe that Facebook has one more step towards coming this. With the use of Facebook Connect and the movement towards Facebook commerce the personal Facebook profile is becoming a central internet experience. What could be next for the website

Centralizing your web experience:

Instead remembering the logins and credentials for every forum, portal or service you use online these are instead connected directly to your persona. Instead attempting to remember or search through your personal bookmarks you can click directly into the sites you use. Your bank accounts, bills owing and other personal information can be accessed from a single location (think your own personal life dashboard). This persona of you online would be an amalgamation of your personal information and everything you do online.

But aren’t we supposed to be anonymous online?

There are definitely some downsides to having all of your online presence in one location. One big push towards this sort of thing happening is the fear that we will become essentially naked online putting ourselves completely out there. Your internet activity can be traced to one source potentially revealing that you like to play Dungeons and Dragons or perhaps have interests that are bit more out of the mainstream . There is also the regulatory fears surrounding such a online system. Can you trust Facebook or really any other company with essentially all of your online information? Will they use or abuse this information? What if there’s a screw up? I won’t even touch the government and regulatory concerns about that as that would be opening a whole other can of worms.

This may never happen! Why waste your time theorizing?

The thought of data and lots of it! Smart companies are bringing together data online for useful and profitable applications. Also I don’t think we realize how much of ourselves is actually online in so many different corridors of the web. How  much of ourselves we have access to, give out and have tracked about ourselves. We create our own ‘internet footprint’or some would say even a trail of ourselves online and there are firms who work to track and amalgamate it.

So there is my random thought for the time being. If anyone wants to add to the pool feel free to do so!

Want to reach me outside of this ‘data stream’ I can be contacted at kevin@kevrichard.com or on twitter with @kevrichard.

An Intro To Networks…

Something to keep in mind about networks (social networks, interpersonal networks and the like) is that there are two key components , nodes and edges. A node is an individual entity in a network ( ie: a person) and an edge is the different connections between the nodes. Now obviously, certain nodes have more edges, this connects them to many more nodes. Depending on the connections of the nodes, some have similar connections or some that are not similar at all. Why is knowing this useful? Information shared by a node with many edges spreads messaging more effectively than one with just a few. Also, two unrelated but highly connected nodes can share messaging with  a larger reach and less overlap compared to two that are similarly matched. This means a higher rate of separate connections= more reach= more effective messaging spread. (To learn a bit more about network graphs have a look here)

Here is a look at my Facebook social network displayed through a program called Gephi. The circles in this picture are my individual friends (or nodes) and the lines between them displays how they are connected ( the edges)

Making Something the Next Big Conversation Topic

I could go into a bit more depth with this topic but I want to keep this post pretty short. At the end of the day, the idea of nodes and edges in a social or interpersonal network  sense can be related back to how quickly and effectively a message is spread. Imagine if we could know which people in a network are needed to best get a message across. Instead of spraying a group with your message you could get it to the right people and have it evenly distributed throughout.Knowing what efforts are needed to make your content reach your target group rather than become  some little known code on the web can ensure increased success and better use of resources.

This was the old network ( I personally liked the layout)

As a an active member there was no discussion of this site within my chapter or when meeting members from other chapters, I only came across it when searching through  Sigma Chi’s central site. Because no one was active on it and because there was no real life connection or use for it this network was empty and barren. Instead members have reverted to using  larger networks such as Facebook to connect. The downfall with this is that disparate groups are made instead of gathering the organization  together as a whole.

Can this be fixed?

Well the headquarters staff is trying its best to . At a recent Fraternity meeting  this past weekend  they  launched  a new network with toned down features and a simpler interface hoping that it will appeal to both younger and older generations. While this may address some issues in the end I feel  it won’t fix the larger issue of participation.

The new network. Simplified and waiting to be used.

So how can this relaunch become successful so it doesn’t become yet another empty community?  While I’m not claiming to be an expert here are some of my ideas in developing interest and use of this website by the general fraternity:

Community leaders: By getting volunteers ( either chapter presidents or designated  geographic community managers) to actively use , connect, and discuss this site  becoming evangelists for this initiative the hope will be to get people talking about it once again and  encourage its use.By building its use in day to day tasks  for active/alumni chapter operations or as a space for organizing events and initiatives among members, users will have a reason to return on a more regular basis and will come to associate the website as the space for Fraternity information/news .

Creating a Hub: Another important piece to this new site is making sure  that it offers something that other social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter don’t . A big part of this in my opinion is having  a central interaction point. While Sigma Chi has a central website, by creating a page where news and events from the fraternity as a whole are posted members will come to this page to keep up to date with whats happening within the fraternity . This can be as simple as a weekly blog posting or advanced as a news feed where members can recieve news and updates from the entire site or just the networks they are involved in.

Connecting Content : Bringing in and organizing the  content  located on other sites will be a good community building tool as well. There are many facebook groups, flickr feeds, Youtube videos and blog entries related to Sigma Chi scattered across the net. Allowing members to either link or post this content up will encourage interaction and discussion. While this may be a bigger undertaking I also feel posting up materials such as  pledge manuals, historic pictures  and other memrobelia on this site will also build  increased value with network users.

These are just a few points that I feel will help to ensure that this new site doesn’t go to waste. There will be a lot of work needed to build interest and to ensure the usability of this network. I’m curious to hear  more about people’s experiences in building community and thoughts of how one can be started/restarted. Feel free to post your thoughts/ideas in the comments section below.

Have any questions/comments ? Contact me at kevin.richard@ryerson.ca or send me a twitter message .