The rage in social networks right now is Pinterest, partly because it’s probably the first social network that has a much higher adoption rate by females than males, and partly because it’s an interesting concept: somewhere between visual social bookmarking and scrapbooking. What also might not be immediately obvious is that it’s just “easier” to interact there. In that way, Pinterest has something in common with Instagram, which is community around photos.

What I’m interested in, though, is Gentlemint, which I keep calling “Pinterest for dudes.” (Again, because Pinterest has a very high level of female users, the content that flows by my screen there, most often, is female-focused.) I’m not at all interested in the technology. Frankly, Pinterest works much better. I’m not interested in the longevity. Pinterest has millions and millions of users. Gentlemint is still cozy. Here’s why I think it’s interesting: because it’s very targeted content curation where the network effect isn’t the goal.

The Next Social Networks

Who cares that Facebook has 850 million users? Investors might care. Advertisers might care. But do you, really and honestly, want to sift through 850 million people? Of course not. Seth Godin said Small is the New Big eons ago. He said Tribes was the way to be. Are you feeling it yet? You will.

Pinterest points to something interesting: absolutely bite-sized curation is a trend to consider. Gentlemint points to the next trend: targeted use of curation technology to build interesting content in a group setting is hot.

Squint just a little. What if you set up a “Pinterest for Guitarists?” Not, “Hey, you can use Pinterest and build guitar boards,” but “Here’s a very targeted site of like-minded people all sharing interesting stuff.

Now, blur your eyes a little. See how it’s much more interesting to build an environment where people with similar passions can curate and share together? Look at Gentlemint again, and realize that this is kind of like Esquire magazine without the meaty articles. By the way, you could just as easily have the articles. It just requires people to write them and tack them to ‘Mint.

Growing a Channel Might Be a Team Sport

In the work I do for Human Business Works, advising mid- to larger-sized companies on customer acquisition strategies around the digital channel, I’m most certainly going to look at niche-curation content platforms as a powerful way to encourage a meaningful interaction with prospects and buyers. If I were working for Hendricks Gin right now, I’d help them build an even narrower-band Gentlemint. And in cases where I want the broader band, I’d work on showing how to integrate marketing into these curation channels in a non-jerky way.

There’s a lot to consider in this trend. Right now, you might just see yourself or your significant other pinning the heck out of recipes and great vacation destinations. Tomorrow, you’ll see a lot of permutations on the mix of tight niche curation plays.

What would you design, if you were building your own “Pinterest for _____?” Who would you target? What would that “magazine” look like? And who would be the likely sponsors of such a play?

What is powerful about the web is our ability to find things and then indicate our feelings about them by linking to them. As David Weinberger says every link is an act of generosity. This may be a direct link from or blog or it may be a "like" in Facebook or a "plus" in Google+ - does it matter?

It matters when people start telling us what we can and can't link to and that is the risk of proprietary systems. Much of the web is now "owned" by corporate interests and these, while they may provide most people with most of their experience of the web, will ultimately be eroded and replaced by the evolution of the web itself. I am reminded - yet again - of Bob Khan's point that the hacker mentality will always stay ahead of those attracted to corporate or institutional thinking. Whatever the mass may do most of the time there will always be edglings and to claim that Facebook or Google have killed off the open web is naive.

1. Design the change so that the ‘default’ choice is the desired one – 80% of people will take that route. (Make the right choice more difficult and 80% will continue to behave as they did before, or revert to that unproductive behaviour over time.)
2. Make the change simple, personal and easy to understand and build in cues to remind people to take the non-habitual action until it becomes habitual.
3. Don’t use fear to motivate people. Fear is only a productive, sustainable motivator when people feel personally vunerable and think they are in a position to control the threat. Mostly, fear triggers a ‘fight or flight’ response – the defensive, inward-facing ‘survival’ stance which leads to denial and hiding from the threat and suppresses the creativity and innovative thinking needed to solve complex problems.
4. Positive reframing of the threat to emphasis the opportunities and benefits can motivate people to act, provided the positive outweighs the negative by a ratio of 3:1 (Lasaro) and that the benefits are immediate and not set in some distant future.
5. But loss aversion is an even more powerful motivator than gain, so the reframing can include opportunities to avoid penalties and personal loss (embarrassment, loss of status etc as well as financial).

So there they are… practical strategies which seem to work. Let me know if you have any more.

10 ways social media can support change management

As social media platforms increasingly dominate communications in private lives, businesses are adopting them for the workplace. Although it is difficult to quantify how many companies use internal social media platforms, a number of corporate software companies have sensed the opportunity and offer various systems. But are these social media applications and technologies ready for [...]

Now and again I find time to read books about work-related stuff. Here are three I have been tucking into recently.

John Naughton is a hero of mine. His weekly column in The Observer is required reading, and A Brief History of the Future is a wonderful primer on the origins of the internet. His latest book is a treasure trove of information which works just as well for the net newbie as it does the veteran of the interwebs.

Another book, another hero. Now at innovation software firm Spigit, James Gardner was once of the DWP where he implemented the ‘Idea Street’ innovation prediction market. His Little Innovation Book is a marvellously concise introduction to innovating in big organisations, and in Sidestep and Twist he outline how the big, game-changing breakthroughs tend to be adaptations of existing ideas rather than anything genuinely new.

Euan Semple is one of the best bloggers on social software, and following from his work with the BBC a few years ago, he understands the frustrations of trying to implement new ways of working within corporate structures. Organisations Don’t Tweet… is a great introductory work, in which nonetheless I found loads of nuggets of inspiration and learning – as well as a few reminders of things I ought to know but had forgotten. Buy this book for your boss!

Possibly related posts:

• What you really need to know about the internet
• “Kids today need a licence to tinker”
• Electric wok syndrome
• Innovating doesn’t mean doing something new
• 10 rules to start innovating

Episode #3: Erika and Gabe reminisce about SOPA and PIPA and review key considerations in running shoe selection.

Listen to the show here. And send any questions or comments to running@muledesign.com.

Some BU’s suggested to me that since their online Community of Practice (online group) is taking off, perhaps they will just have a link on their intranet page to their Community of Practice (CoP)…basically the their intranet page just serving as an entry point (basically a re-direct link)

NOTE: Our CoPs are not just about communication; you can design the homepage however you like using HTML widgets, so they can look very informative like an Intranet page.

Now the problem with this scenario is that a BU online CoP/group is not really something a person not in that BU wants to see as an informative profile page for that BU

ie. online CoPs/groups aren’t usually about informing a general audience, they are about a group of members sharing and learning on a topic…or even doing actual work (yes I know ours are called CoPs, but they are just online group spaces really)

At first I thought BU pages on intranets need to be more like wikis, but then what about a news channel (to inform people) and a feedback channel (for others to ask questions)

How can we have some of the tools we see in our online CoPs/groups, but for a general audience like a BU intranet page serves?

Then it hit me, “Pages”!!!!

A BU will do work/share in online group spaces eg. Facebook groups

A BU will broadcast/inform, and gather feedback from the organisation at large by using a “page” eg Facebook Pages

A Facebook page is similar to a group but designed for a different purpose…a group has “members”, whereas a “page” is “liked”

Only it wouldn’t be Facebook, it would be IBM Connections or Jive or Socialcast or Yammer (yikes Yammer already called their docs/wiki, “pages”)

NOTE: It doesn’t have to be just BU’s, it can be any group who need an online group to enable members to do their thing, but also an online page to inform everyone else

Example

The Mechanical Engineers “online group space” is where members do work and share

The Mechanical Engineers “online page space” is where they broadcast communications to the rest of the organisation on recent happenings, and where people can post questions or share stuff (in Facebook this is called the “wall”)…and it also acts as an “about” page, just like the “Info” section on a Facebook page.

Another example

Our Document Management team have an online group space to do work…

…when they have new releases, they need to communicate to the power users of the document management system, these are the project assistants (PA) and document controllers (DC).

At the moment their online group space doubles up as a “page” in that it has an extra blog to communicate to these audiences (PA, DC) and an extra forum for these audiences to ask questions…when PA’s and DC’s visit the Document Management online group space, it’s really not catered to them at all, other than that extra blog and forum which don’t really get much real estate at all on the group space.

It’s true with our current technology, they could just create a new online group space to do this, and cater the whole space to PA’s and DC’s, but it just ‘aint the same purpose-design as a “page”.

So here’s my thinking…

Rather than a team having two online group spaces (one for them, and one for them to communicate to the org which also doubles up as their information profile/about page, like you see on Intranets)…

How about they have one online group space, and one online page!

So basically “pages” are the new type of Intranet/About page for teams…

…whereas groups are where those teams work, which generally speaking most others in the organisation are not going to be that interested in (remember with scale, ambient awareness can become noise)

Just like online groups are not just for teams (you can have a group about anything), same goes with “pages”; not only can teams use a “page” as their general audience page…but any type of event, topic, etc… could use a page

Eg. If I was running an event, I may use a group space to coordinate it with my team, and a “page” space as the actual event webpage that a general audience can read and interact…both spaces have different purpose, therefore are slightly designed differently.

Perhaps if you create a group space, there is always a link in the admin area for you to create a “page” for this group, and vice versa…this way group/page owners are aware of what’s possible.

Anyway this is typical of this space, where the consumer web is years ahead…and yes, often the functional/features do cross over.

NOTE: I came across this just before publishing Facebook Groups Vs Pages: The Definitive Guide

According to Facebook, groups are “for members of groups to connect, share and even collaborate on a given topic or idea”…Facebook Pages “allow entities such as public figures and organizations to broadcast information to their fans.”

GROUP - share/collaborate (member-based)
PAGE - broadcast/feedback (fan-based)

In other words the “page” is like the quarterly newsletter that is emailed out to the whole organisation telling them what’s being going on in their silo, only now it’s real-time, interactive and more of a social silo…yes the newsletter could still possibly be sent out as a curation of “page” content.

ADDED: I just remembered something, perhaps the concept of “pages” is what Socialcast is aiming for with it’s “Categories” feature, and for Tibbr with its “Subjects” feature.

Top 50+ management resources you need to know

Fast-moving technologies, rapid global expansion, shifting business models, mergers and acquisitions all hold out dazzling possibilities. But leadership remains a huge challenge, even for companies relatively unscathed by the economic by economic turmoil. Today, employees continue to seek guidance from their leaders, who must find time to reassure their people while trying to establish a [...]