With two high profile product launches being a bit bumpy (here, here) I can't help but wonder if the all of the love for their products (and the spread of love via social networks) is causing strain on the underlying infrastructure.

Course, from a community standpoint, this sounds like a good problem to have.

I don't know if Bill's actual last day will be like the video below, but I'm sure it will be memorable.  Thanks for all the insights, vision and humor all these years.  I look forward to seeing all of the wonderful things that he'll be doing at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for years to come. 

I recently ran across a fascinating paper in  MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning by S. Shayam Sundar titled, "The MAIN Model: A Heuristic Approach to Understanding Technolgy Effects on Credibility."  Given the work that we're doing on recognition, this paper on credibility seemed rather appropriate to dig into for more detail.

Early on, Sundar lays the foundation to say that credibility cannot be effectively determined by considering solely the source of the information.  Specifically, Sundar says, "Ultimately though, source, message, and the medium credibility serve as nominal cues -- a given source is perceived as credible or not, a given message element is perceived as credible or not, and likewise a given medium or media vehicle or channel is perceived as credible or not -- that provide mental shortcuts for effortlessly assessing the believability of information being received."

Instead, Sundar goes on to explain the value of using a cues and heuristic model to better understand how technology plays a role in helping people determine the relative credibility of a site, piece of content, person, etc.  The model Sundar proposes is based from ten years of research from The Media Effects Research Laboratory at Penn State University -- Modality, Agency, Interactivity, and Navigability (MAIN).

I won't go into the rest of the paper, but suffice to say Sundar explores the various aspects of MAIN in more detail.  While I found the framework quite interesting (especially as I think about how that may apply -- or not -- to MSDN, TechNet and Expression), what I get most from reading papers like this is a fresh perspective on issues I deal with day to day.  I also find myself making multiple connections to areas of study or examples in real life I would not have thought of before.  For example, when talking about heuristics ties to Interactivity, Sundar wrote "Users may be likely to evaluate the system's credibility positively, just as they would evaluate a person with whom they hit it off."  While I joke with my colleagues that all of our work with social media is no different than that of a dating site, the image that popped into my head when I read this was that of a chemistry.com commercial.  Thinking more on this, there is something to be said about the chemistry that occurs between people when they meet.  It would seem that based on how a site triggers (or does not trigger) heuristics tied to interactivity, there may or may not be any chemistry with those coming to the site.

Another example of making connections that otherwise would not have existed were it not for reading this research paper is on this notion of being a good conversationalist.  Over the course of a week I've had a series of conversations on the personal skills (or lack thereof) of others.  One situation was when someone commented that this other person only talks about themselves, never asking about others.  The other situation was when a father jokingly talked about how he taught and modeled social skills to his son through a book (it worked!).  Perhaps I'm reading too much into it, but when Sundar talks of "the real value of interactivity is that it gives the user the ability to serve as a source, and not just a receiver of communication"...I think of the need to be a good conversationalist.  As someone working on social experiences, how do the experiences we provide, and the sites we publish help or hinder the notion of being a good conversationalist?  How are we having a conversation with those who come to our experiences?  How do we facilitate the ability for others to be good conversationalists with one another?

Anyway, those were some of my take aways from Sundar's paper.  I'd be curious to hear if others had similar thoughts.  If you had different insights, I'd love to hear them as well.

I seem to be on a recognition kick lately.  In addition to running across the reputation patterns the other day, I just ran across a great presentation by Bryce Glass on getting started with reputation systems.

Again, I personally think the notion of reputation being discussed is being blurred a bit by things I would consider to be recognition aspects...but maybe it's a toe-may-toe toe-mah-toe debate.  Regardless, there's some great questions raised in the presentation.  I'm still digging through it, but hope to post a more thoughtful response in the future.  Thanks, Bryce!

Some people have visual memories.  Others say that smell is the strongest stimulation for memory.  For me, I can remember the context in which a particular event occurred.  More specifically, I can often remember what I was doing, where I was, and all of that when I came across a website that was of interest.  In the past, this would lead to an inordinate amount of time trying to re-create my steps rather than doing my job.

Fortunately, with Social Bookmarks, I can now find the key words or phrases associated with a given url saved.  All I have to do is click on a tag, or series of tags and my list of items gets narrowed down to the key pieces of information I need -- ultimately saving time, and letting me tackle the work I need to do at a given moment. 

How does this relate to time travel?  Simple.  I recall that I ran across a website that had interesting information about a particular topic -- say "search."  I am then able to see other search related items and can see where in a timeline I saved them.  Being able to recall when, where, and that whole context in which I encountered the resource...I'm essentially walking back through time :-)

Loosely related, going back through one's bookmarks also helps me prevent the "Shiny Object Syndrome" that many of us face.  It's also a refreshing way to counter what may be a re-wiring of our brains thanks to the afore mentioned Shiny Object Syndrome

Thanks to Bob for the inspiration of this post.

It is great to see Randy Farmer's work on reputation published in Yahoo's Design Pattern Library.  I like the level of detail, and the visualizations help to capture the mutitude of ways of representing this.  As exicted as I am to see this, I'm not sure I would call these "reputation."  Instead, these patterns strike me as different ways in which a system recognizes individuals and the actions they do.  Put another way, these patterns appear to provide feedback for the person doing the action (possibly as a means of facilitating flow.)

If and when reputation comes into play, isn't that what happens when I begin to evaluate the actions of another person based on the information provided?  The difference may seem subtle, but at the end of the day I do not control what you think about me and my actions.  Instead, I control the actions I do, and (ideally) the visibility of those actions; Systems can recognize my actions, but my reputation will vary based on the person evaluating me.  I'd be curious to hear more about why these patterns are or are not reputation.  Is this all a semantic discussion or are there intrinsic differences for what we're all talking about here?

I mentioned in an earlier post that I was not going to discuss recognition.  Well, that was for the context of that post.  As part of my role as a community planner, I am on point for things dealing with recognition on the various Social experiences throughout Expression, TechNet and MSDN.  While this is not fully baked, for the sake of transparency (and I hope, feedback) I thought I'd share some of the current thinking based on feedback from site visits, research and the like.  

So what exactly do I mean by recognition?  Simply put, it's how we recognize the actions of people as they experience our sites.

What does this look like today?  Well, until a few weeks ago recognition was seen in the separate experiences of Forums and annotations to the Library.  Following a recent release, we now have contributions to Library and Forums, in addition to Social Bookmarks all rolled up into one given view.  The profile (or as I like to call it, "the online representation of oneself") is where we display all of the explicit actions taken by people.  Here's an example of the new profile...

I should note, there are aspects of today's system (especially in Forums) that is not really recognition specific, but rather they are reputation specific (such as helpfulness).  Reputation, from my perspective, is what happens when other people see things that I'm recognized for and then they evaluate that piece of information in a way that makes sense to them.  Put another way, it's what happens when you see I've bookmarked and commented on searchandgive.com.  What are the judgments that you make?  How relevant is it to you and your experience? What do you think of my bookmark, and my thoughts of it?  That's reputation.  And your perspective, that's going to be different than someone on my particular team, for example.  We're not going to be talking about reputation just yet ;-)

Getting back to recognition...The display of ones explicit actions is just one way in which we look to recognize people as they experience our sites.  While not fully scoped, we are looking at expanding the notion of points across all Social experiences on MSDN, TechNet and Expression, in addition to adding a net new way of recognizing specific milestones for people -- such as when they do something for the first time, or when they do something during a given time frame.  This latter notion (still to be named) can in some ways be seen as an "achievement" a la Xbox Live, or a badge on MSN Games (full disclosure -- I used to work with MSN Games).

In summary, this is how I'm looking at recognition:

• display of actions
• points for specific actions
• some sort of visual flair

I ran across a great visualization about the social web from Ryan Turner.  While I don't believe it quite captures what he writes, the image does capture a great deal of the complexity around social media and communities in my opinion.

First, what I love...

I'm at the center
Actually, it's not me, it's you and everyone else.  He clearly puts the individual at the center of it all.  Sounds pretty basic, but you'd be amazed at how much of a change this is in priorities of experience design.  With some recent steps towards a more social experience on Expression, TechNet and MSDN we are beginning to get there.

Relationships of people
Friends, people reading my blog, my friends' blogs, communities of practice...all of these are called out as different pieces of the visualization.  What are communities and social networks if not a collection of people and the nature of the relationships?  It's not *just* about me, but (potentially) everyone else.

It's visually exciting
While it may not be evident on my blog, I am a visual person.  There's nothing like a good visualization to present a strong case to folks.

Now for some constructive critiques

Relationship of tech experiences not captured
Blogs, for example are listed separate and distinct from Communities of Practice (CoP).  While not all CoP are blog centric, there is no reason why group of blogs cannot serve as a CoP.

Reputation seems isolated from everything but products
I'm not going to get into the whole reputation and recognition discussion (yet) but reputation is made up of more than what happens in a marketplace.  While it is indeed an important factor to consider in transactions that occur, one's reputation comes into play at multiple points of the Social web

Image does not seem to reflect the text
I think Ryan is spot on when he says communities are about groups:

Communities are different than social networks in that they are built primarily around groups of people, rather than individuals. Another way of saying it is that the group is the point in communities, whereas the individual is the point in social networks.

However, this is not evident in the image.  Indeed, the visualization seems to imply that while tied, communities and social networks are separate and distinct.  If anything, I would suggest that these are intricately connected and layered.  (this may be a limitation of a 2-d representation of something that is more complex)

At any rate, I think this is a great step at visualizing the complexity of the Social web we're weaving -- thanks, Ryan.

What do you think of the current look of Social Bookmarks on MSDN, TechNet, Expression and Microsoft?  Did you want to see an alternate perspective of Social Bookmarks? 

In addition to the recent Preview of Social Bookmarks, we have a "Ticker" of activity Social Bookmarks activity on MSDN and TechNet (note you need the Silverlight 2 Beta) to see it in all its glory.

*links updated to point to the new home of the Ticker

While browser favorites, or bookmarks, can help people find the web sites they need, many websites are not easily categorized into the folder model common with browser bookmarks.  If this situation sounds familiar to you, then Social Bookmarks can help.

Social Bookmarks present a new way for you to store and organize urls of pages you find interesting.  Rather than selecting one folder in which a url shall appear in, you can now associate multiple words (or tags) with that url.  Each tag essentially serves as a folder for that url, and there is no limit to the number of folders in which the website appears.

You can also add a brief description about that url for future reference.  Just think how much easier it will be to find the resources you find interesting in that extended brain of ours we call the Internet.

An added bonus with the description -- if you don't want to type your own description, you can highlight the text on the page you wish to save, and it will be automatically added to the description of that bookmark.

For more information on how to save a bookmark, and organize your list of bookmarks check out the following video.

I'm pleased to announce that we are now in the official Preview of Social Bookmarks on MSDN, TechNet and Expression.  For the last few months, I've been working with a great team of folks on point for creating the Social Bookmarks experience.

http://social.microsoft.com/bookmarks
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/bookmarks
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/bookmarks
http://social.expression.microsoft.com/bookmarks

What exactly are Social Bookmarks?  Simply put, Social Bookmarks enable you to:

• Store urls of interest to you
• Share them with others
• Explore what others share

I'll dive into these in more detail, but in the mean time, if you haven't already done so, I encourage you to check it out.  Our "Getting Started" page has a lot more information along with some video walk-throughs.

Caveat -- this is still in preview mode, so there's still more work to be done.  Should you have any feedback, please let us know!

You may also be interested in these related posts on Social Bookmarks from others on the team

• Husain
• Taylor
• Jeff

For astute followers of happenings on MSDN, TechNet and Expression, you may have seen hints at a social bookmarking experience.  I don't have an announcement *just* yet, but another team member, John Martin just posted some screens in a preview of a preview. 

Related posts:

John Martin
Jeff Day
Taylor Parsons

Being a community guy of sorts, I am always quite interested when folks like Ray Ozzie talk about community.  Check out Ray Ozzie's memo on our software + services strategy (via the ReadWriteWeb), in addition to announcements regarding Live Mesh.  I still need to take a close look at Live Mesh, but it looks quite promising.  More links below.

•    Windows Live Developer Blog: Amit Mital Introduces Live Mesh
•    Channel 9 Interview with Ray Ozzie
•    Screenshots: Live Mesh
•    Live Mesh Web site