“Revolutions happen when society adopts new behaviors.” – Clay Shirky

“Us Now” is a British video and website about how people come to each other on the Internet from a place a trust.  Ostensibly, people online are more willing to collaborate, become self-organizing, develop communities easily, volunteer more information and time, are more productive and startlingly innovative. The film’s main premise is that, if given the option, online life brings out the best in people. It’s relatively revolutionary premise is that by coming to this world from a position of trust, individuals can “game the system.”

The film uses several real-life examples:

• The Ebbfleet United football team is owned by 35,000 fans who belong to My Football Club. Fans get to, among other things, select the starting lineup.
  

  Ebbsfleet United football team is owned by the fans.

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So what if you held a party for 700 people and only one person came?

That’s what happened to the author of the “Lives” column of the Oct. 24, 2008 edition of New York Times Magazine (the back page).  A self-described loner who worked from home, he had not spent much time with friends or co-workers and had recently fallen out with a close friend. Feeling a little disconnected, he decided to have a party and invite all his Facebook “friends”, totalling more than 700, to a pub near his house.

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A little context …

Our reading this week is Groundswell, Chapter 4 “Listening to the Groundswell.” The first section is a case study of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network’s private community for cancer patients using Communispace.

Full disclosure: I work at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, one of 21 comprehensive cancer centers. The Hutchinson Center declined to become a part of this program, because we no longer offer treatment. All treatment is held at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance (SCCA), a organization formed by the partnership of the Hutchinson Center, the University of Washington, and Seattle Children’s.

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Virginia Hefferman, who writes for The New York Times Magazine column “The Medium”, makes an interesting point in her Oct. 13, 2008 article about New York City’s online grocer FreshDirect. She notes that it’s now not enough for an online business to sell their products; they need to also sell their online presence. “E-commerce sites — once little more than billboards, brochures or order forms — are now goods and services themselves.”  All of that enriched content — blogs, videos, podcasts, social networks, relevant articles – that a company works so hard to create to promote the product can instead become the main attraction.  The company ends up selling a lifestyle. In some cases, companies may give away what they are supposed to sell and end up selling the promotional item. (She also makes the point that the Grateful Dead did this years ago by letting anyone bootleg their music, but selling their own branded merchandise.)

Read the article in full here:  http://tinyurl.com/4dxxnd

Is it worth it?

A nifty little online calculator for estimating the return on investment for social network campaigns. It was built for non-profits, but can be leveraged for for-profits as well. It works a lot like a online mortgage or budget calculators. Plug in your assumptions and voila! 

It’s helpful to have a tool to compare social networking ROI with other more established methods. Also, it shows the cost of social networking and hey, guess what? it’s not free.

 http://tinyurl.com/4v4tk9

Kenya’s elephants send text messages to rangers

Well, no, the elephants themselves aren’t texting  —  as that would require opposable thumbs, or at least fingers, or a really really big keyboard — but some of them have radio collars with SIM cards.  And when one of them decides head over to raid a farmer’s crops, the mobile phone card sends rangers a text message. The rangers mobilize and scare the elephant away, averting disaster for the farmer.  And possibly for the elephant.

An interesting and creative way of using technology pro-actively for conservation.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081011/ap_on_re_af/af_kenya_texting_elephants;_ylt=Ak60sfq7KJCzhLchl_AMdyKs0NUE

The latest New Yorker cover was created by Bob Staake using Mac OS 07 (released in 1991) and Photoshop 3.0 (1995).  You can watch him create the cover (and check out his unusual drawing style) here:

Which begs the question — who needs CS4? And when does technology become truly obsolete?

What would happen if Nabisco asked Twitter to build a social media project for Oreo? Chris Brogan of Community and Media blog asked this very question and in 20 minutes got a variety of not-bad answers.  An interesting exercise on how anyone can have a good idea and creativity can come quickly with the power of social media.

Wonder what would happen if someone really asked.

Check out the answers: http://www.chrisbrogan.com/let-twitter-build-your-social-media-project/