You have a conversation problem.
And social networks have exacerbated it.
People think they are conversing. Instead, they are commenting -- big difference.
Here's why conversation and comments are not the same thing.
By definition
(Merriam Webster online)
A comment is: a note explaining, illustrating, or criticizing the meaning of a writing; an observation or remark expressing an opinion or attitude; a judgment expressed indirectly.
Conversation is: oral exchange of sentiments, observations, opinions, or ideas; an informal discussion of an issue by representatives of governments, institutions, or groups; or simply an exchange.
Yet the two terms are used interchangeably.
Here's why it matters.
Media, networks, and marketing
These are the three components businesses have used to traffic messages, find channel and partnership opportunities as well as extend their reach to their buyers' families and friends, and create commerce.
To attract people to messages, organizations used information and content packaged as news on one side, and offers, discounts, promotions on the other. In the two-dimensional world of print, the only 3D add-on where the people in the room.
What you shared was a physical thing -- a paper -- and then an audio-visual implementation of the same concept. Information and news coming to you through airwaves and images. People in front of the radio or the TV.
Everyone listening to or watching a few channels, then processing the information by way of discussion.
Sharing among people was a very different concept.
Put "social" in front of those words
Technology enabled and evolved what was already happening. It also did something else. It put the screen in the middle (or in our hands), instead of in front of people.
Now people can be both consumers and creators of media, networks, and marketing.
Online, concepts like identity and privacy are tied to a different system. One that is made of clicks, links, search, lists, circles, and visual cues; that is based on every more dynamic content -- the umbrella term that includes writing, visuals, sounds, and video -- consumed together, individually.
Feedback loops are an essential part of this new system.
Which is why content needs to be front and center for people to have something to react to, for marketers to indentify and enroll or build and engage connections with buyers, and for participants to have an indication of how they are doing.
Cut loose from any one specific platform, and reimagined for each one, content is the new media for trafficking messages, where story, combined with interaction, drives to engagement.
True engagement is built on permission, and attention.
Access is the new attention cue
This past week, Google launched its new social network. If you were able to get in and take a first look at Google+, you are already trying to figure out how useful that may be for your business and work, and what they did to address useful network features.
One week out, and the network has enjoyed a lot of attention. It's Google. They need to get this right after Buzz and Wave, the company's two previous social products that didn't take off. And it's Google. The company that ranks your business Website in search.
The network had your attention also if you were unable to get in. Maybe your friends didn't send an invitation fast enough before Google closed them down to stabilize the platform.
The reason why you'd most want to get in is probably also to figure out for yourself how it stacks against Facebook for reach and discovery.
The New York Times just made a good move in that direction. It communicated to subscribers that they can now share their access with a designated family member.
Access is the new attention cue.
Feedback loops and identity
From this excellent Wired article, a feedback loop involves four stages:
- the data, a behavior or evidence
- relaying the information to the person in a context that makes it emotionally resonant or relevance
- the paths ahead the information illuminates, or consequence
- and the moment when the individual can recalibrate a behavior, and take action
Then the action is measured, and the feedback loop can run once again. As AJ Kohn points out, Google+ feedback loop is the red button, which has been integrated in all Google products (except Analytics) for members of G+.
The true power of feedback loops is not to control people but to give them control. They are great for solving problems, even better for creating opportunities.
Google is using the button in a Pavlovian kind of way, to keep us glued to the interaction, to teach us to keep coming back to the network. Why does it work? Because our posts and actions in there are tied to our identity -- the Google Profile.
Comments are not the same as conversation
Many of the forms of media, networks, and marketing that have "social" in front of them today, have embedded feedback loop mechanisms in them to get people to learn desired behaviors. They are using access to attract attention so they get content.
Content drives comments, which should add value until the network has taught enough people how to have real time conversations, which are those that drive engagement.
Before FriendFeed, a social network that enjoyed high adoption by a comparatively small group of people and that I still use, all networks and communities were asynchronous. You write a post, publish, and someone else reads it and comments at their leisure.
Just like email. You think it's a conversation, like a phone call. It's not. Facebook implemented real-time commenting and streams after it bought FriendFeed. And now Google+ is using the same concept and similar technology to support its stream.
Are real time updates and threaded comments conversation?
Conversation needs to be invited and facilitated. It needs negotiating, and interpreting, and teasing out.
Conversation is the white space, the place where people turn together to deliberate, and weigh out, to suspend judgment (listening without resistance), explore the underlying causes, rules, and assumptions to get to deeper questions and framing of problems, and to generative dialogue that invents unprecedented possibilities and new insights, producing collective flow.*
Conversation as dialogue is shared inquiry
Its purpose is not to move toward discussion, which reflects the tendency to think alone. In a discussion, people see themselves as separate from each other.
Conversation with the right intent, or influence, is about turning together, connecting. Conversation is the opportunity. You don't get that from commenting alone.
We got the science part down. Time to learn again about the art... of thinking together.
[* channeling the work of William Isaacs in Dialogue, the Art of Thinking Together]
If you enjoyed this post from Conversation Agent, subscribe, share and like it. Sign up for my Premium Newsletter.