Let’s begin this post by something else. A couple of days ago I attended a seminar where Coca Cola’s marketing manager in Northern Europe gave a presentation about building the brand around Coca Cola Zero. He told that the main theme is “making the impossible possible”. The slogans they’ve used are for example “Why not girlfriends with zero drama?” and “Why not bras with zero fumbling?”. The audience was told that the brand creates a fantasy world where all this exists. The article “The Wisdom of Consumer Crowds” by Kozinets, Hemesberger and Schau touches on a similar topic: Why not to combine “work and play, passion and profit, adult-like rules and the childlike wonder to play”. These things don’t occur in a fantasy world. These happen in consumer crowds. I’ve been looking for the ultimate reason why do people participate in online communities and create content out there. The fantasy-like combination described above must be close to the profound answer to that. No need to say, I kind of got excited about this article and the topic dealt with.
Somehow I don’t feel like going through the article in general, summarizing it and stuff. At once I have my own thoughts on the subject so I’ll concentrate on those. As I will be doing research around the topic “Collaboration in Social Networks”, processing the thoughts in depth and writing the down is extremely useful.
When picking the topic for the research I tried to define what it includes. There would be enough of work to do already when defining the words “social network” and “collaboration”. Social network is tried to be defined all over again. In my opinion it is not even all that interesting to define it in detail. More interesting is “collaboration”. What is collaboration? What makes social networks collaborative? If thought in a wide perspective, all social networks are collaborative, in my opinion. Simply put, the network is not social without collaboration. Social networks are based on the interaction between users. Each comment written, each click clicked and each article tagged is creating content in a way. As Kozinets et al. suggest there is an extremely thin line between consuming and producing media content. Collaboration in social networks could be defined somewhat “creating media content by utilizing knowledge pools”, but in the end of the day it is not meaningful to stamp a narrow definition on it. I’m sure that the ways people collaborate in social networks are endless and unstable. Thus, one should be open minded towards the term and take nothing as given. Too narrow of a definition easily only takes the “heavy” content creators in consideration. It is told that only a fraction of the users do create actual media content around which the others’ participation happens. Those “others” are a significant part when building a dynamic social network. Their participation, that could be called collaboration, must also be counted in.
Probably the most significant part of the article is matrix of online creative consumer communities. The communities are placed on the axis of collective innovation orientation and collective innovation concentration. The two axes form four fields: crowds, hives, mobs and swarms.
In the previous idea report I came up with a couple of thoughts on reasons why people tend to create content online. The article gives a support to those reasons by suggesting similar propositions: the social need for belonging, differentiation and identification, and mix in an ongoing quest for relevant and interesting content. It is also mentioned that the communities have ability to keep one another motivated. It would be an interesting research question whether these drivers could be placed on the same matrix as the communities themselves. This would suggest whether there are different dominant drivers to participate in each type of innovation-oriented online consumer community. I will take this question in consider when making further research.
The most interesting aspect in the reasons to participate is what the bobos are driven by. Kozinets et al write that bohemian bourgeoisies use their educational abilities that they are not able to use in real life online. They have ambitious projects in which they test their skills, build abilities and, as an important factor, socialize. The implication of the social aspect in hives (“centers of skills and excellence”) is significant. Not only the users want to get acknowledged as I previously suggested, but they are there to build a reputation. A good example of this is Stack Overflow which is a Q&A-site for programmers. The answers and questions are rated by the other users. These ratings form a ranking system that gives credit for the users. Stack Overflow has become such a massive phenomenon that it is widely recognized. The user ranks are even used in real life CV. The reasons stated above, including the attendance to the fantasy-like world described in the opening paragraphs, are building the grounds for the need to collaborate. A service that would provide compensate these needs would turn out successful. To me it appears that the factor that really could increase stickiness exponentially is the real life benefits. These kinds of things would be for example monetary rewards and reputation. A successful media service must provide a platform for gaining benefits that could be taken back to real life.
The article in hand will provide me a whole lot of useful information and I will get back to it in the future. Reading the article gave me many new insights to the consumer crowds. By applying the information in the article will make it easier to understand the consumer communities. There is always a reason why people do what they do. I have a feeling that Homer Simpson was wrong when saying that people do everything just because they are stupid.
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