Streamline Training & Documentation: Cybersociology

Thursday, May 31, 2007

Cybersociology

As an outgrowth both of training I've worked on for a large advertising agency, and of discussions with a friend who is interviewing with various marketing-oriented high-tech businesses, I've been following for some time the growing use of sociologists' techniques by businesses bent on strengthening their ability to appeal to customers' tastes and to optimize technology.

Among the specialists in business use of sociology is Marc Smith, senior research sociologist at Microsoft Research. In a March 2007 interview with Kate Greene of Technology Review, he offered insights into how analysis of data relating to the social phenomenon of online communities can help in making such communities more valuable for participants and for businesses.

Smith starts with the question, "What makes some collective actions more successful than others?" Or, specifically with respect to online communities, what are the important behavior patterns and structural aspects of such communities that determine how healthy they are?

Smith uses Netscan data¹ to develop answers to these questions. For instance, a project called Community Buzz

uses the data to help us see the network structure of the community and [the] main ideas that are generated from the community. The idea is that Community Buzz takes data from Netscan and indexes it according to the behavior of people in the community, [based on] the patterns of message creation.

Participants are segmented according to the roles they play in the community. This is done using social networking concepts, i.e., by looking at whom they talk to and how often.

The role that is most important for building the community is that played by "answer people," a typically small cadre of knowledgeable individuals who care enough about the subject or product under discussion to go to the trouble of answering questions raised by other members. Other segments Community Buzz tracks are newbies and spammers.

To analyze the actual content of messages and how the content changes over time, the Community Buzz analysts use data visualization techniques, such as tag clouds and trend lines.

Trainers and documentation specialists need to be familiar with research into the behavior and conversations of online communities. Such communities are increasingly important for performance support and for facilitating collaboration. Therefore, knowing how to assist them will pay off in terms of keeping employees' knowledge and skills up-to-date and in terms of expediting conception and completion of work projects.

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¹ "The Netscan System provides detailed reports on the activity of Usenet newsgroups, the authors who participate in them, and the conversation threads that emerge from their activity. Using the Netscan tool users can get reports about any newsgroup for any day, week, month, quarter, or year, since September 1999."

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Labels: Business acumen, Innovation, Networking, Usability

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