The Social Learning Curve

Originally posted 10/21/2010

In my last blog entry I talked about a couple of things to consider when starting up a new social media community. It addressed the fact that vibrant social communities don’t come that way out of the box, but that they grow and evolve over time.  In this entry, I’d like to continue that discussion and talk about how to keep that momentum alive once it’s been kickstarted.

Years ago when I used to teach software development methods, one issue we always addressed at the conclusion of the training was the difference between expected productivity gains and actual productivity gains.  The “learning curve,” while somewhat counterintuitive, should also be considered if you are trying to kickstart a social community.

To begin with: why does anyone ever try to learn a new technology? The answer: to be more productive than they can with the technology they already know.  So people often have the perception that the minute they learn a new technology, their productivity will jump up from the level at which they’ve been producing to a new, higher level of productivity.  But guess what. It usually doesn’t. Most of the time (especially if that new technology is revolutionary rather than evolutionary) a person’s productivity goes down for a while after learning something new before rising to a new higher level.  Why?  Lots of reasons, but the main one is that people are better at doing things they know how to do than they are at things they don’t know how to do (yet). As they practice with the new tools, they get better with them and more accustomed to them and eventually can do more with them than they used to with the old tools.

What does this have to do with kickstarting social media communities? A lot, it turns out. When you are getting a community going you have to be committed to trying lots of different marketing efforts: lots of different “kicks,” if you will. Some of these will work and some of them won’t. But regardless, each time you introduce something new to your community (especially if it’s radically new) you have to realize that you might be impacting the learning curve of the community. No matter what you do, the productive output of the community might go down before it tracks up again to a new level.  The problem is, it’s often hard to know if a decrease in participation is simply due to the learning curve or the fact that you’ve introduced a barrier to participation.  Case in point: the new Digg interface that debuted back in August.  Traffic to Digg dropped off noticeably after the rollout of their new interface (26% in the US; 34% in the UK).  Is that just the learning curve in action before traffic returns and eventually exceeds the previous levels? Or is it Digg’s “New Coke” moment and a future case study for social media marketing? As of this writing, the jury is still out. 

If you own or operate a social media site, you have to be prepared to give it a kick now and then. You also have to realize that the learning curve might mean that your kick might not work right away. You also have to be aware of the fact that not all kicks send the snowball down the hill: some can smash it to bits.

Hurricanes, Snowballs and Social Media

Originally published 10/7/2010

Here at INgage headquarters in southwest Florida, this year’s hurricane season is starting to wind down, and will be officially over in a few weeks (I’m looking for some wood to knock on as I write this). And I just came back from a trip to our offices in Michigan, where cooler weather has descended (finally!) and snow season will be winding up in a few weeks. 

I find that analogies are often useful in discussing technology (especially new technology), and it occurred to me that both hurricanes and snowballs can be useful for describing conditions under which social media sites can thrive.

Consider: Hurricanes only exist in summer months, when prevailing upper level winds and warm ocean temperatures are conducive to their formation.  A “wave” of clouds, thunderstorms and lower atmospheric pressure rolls off the west coast of Africa and heads west every few days during the late summer months.  Some of these waves develop into hurricanes. Many do not. They remain a harmless cluster of thunderstorms and clouds until they dissipate or are absorbed into other storms.  They only form into hurricanes when conditions are just right: the spin in the clouds coupled with low wind shear allows more thunderstorms to build, more moisture to be pulled into the storm; which somehow causes the rotation of the storm to increase, building even more storms and pulling in even more moisture, and so on.  In other words, some of these storms create a kind of positive feedback loop with their environment, altering it in ways that make the storm spin faster and faster until a hurricane is born.

And snowballs?  Well, anyone that has lived in a hilly, snowy climate has at one point or another tried to make a large snowball and push it down a hill to see if they could get it to grow into a big snowball by the time it gets to the bottom.  It doesn’t always work.  Sometimes the snow is the wrong consistency; sometimes the snowball is too small and doesn’t roll; sometimes the snowball is too large and falls apart; sometimes the hill is too shallow for the snowball to roll very far.  But when it works: wow.  It works so well that I can use the phrase “snowball effect” and pretty much everyone will know what I mean.

Social media sites can behave a lot like hurricanes and snowballs.  They can generate enough positive feedback to snowball into huge, vibrant communities.  As they grow they attract new members, which contribute new content, which attract other new members, and so on. But like snowballs and hurricanes they can be awfully hard to kick start when they are new.  They need just the right social networking conditions and the right networking environment, and usually a helpful nudge or two before they can take off.  And without the right conditions—just like hurricanes and snowballs—they can easily fizzle or fall apart.