I thought you lot would be interested in this :-) not written by me so it will make sense
Web 2.0 is all about the feel-good factor
- 02 January 2007
- From New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues
- Celeste Biever
User participation is crucial to the survival of popular websites like YouTube and Flickr. But how do these sites ensure that new videos, photos and comments keep flooding in?
It all comes down to persuasion strategies, says B. J. Fogg at Stanford University in California, who is analysing the techniques employed by websites that rely on their users for content, known collectively as Web 2.0. The secret is to tie the acquisition of friends, compliments and status - spoils that humans will work hard for - to activities that enhance the site, such as inviting new users and contributing photos, he says. "You offer someone a context for gaining status, and they are going to work for that status."
Fogg and his colleagues analysed hundreds of such sites and identified three stages to their success, which they called discovery, superficial involvement and true commitment.
They found that the first two stages are easily achieved, for example by making it simple for existing users to email their friends with something they have posted online. In this way other people discover the site and become superficially involved through activities such as rating a posted video or photo. What separates successful from unsuccessful websites is the ability to get these people to create content of their own, involve yet more friends, and remain active and loyal.
By studying over 150 videos of people using successful sites, Fogg identified key strategies that persuade users to get involved. One incentive is to give people the opportunity to increase their status. For example, the photo-sharing website Flickr assigns images an "interestingness" score depending on how many people view them and whether they comment. This encourages users to email their friends with links to their photos. This is good for the site as it improves the quality of Flickr's search engine by ensuring the most interesting photos are ranked most highly.
Sites also keep people involved by giving them the chance to earn rewards. For bloggers these could come in the form of comments from other users, while on the business networking site Linked-In they might be endorsements that potential contacts can read. Again, these benefit the websites by engaging other users.
The effects of both status and rewards are increased because they are doled out unpredictably - new people joining your friendship group on MySpace say, or a new comment on your blog. This ensures users frequently return to the site to check for changes.
Fogg hopes that by studying how well these strategies work, he will be able to quantify them and discover new ways in which people are open to persuasion. "The web is a huge lab for studying human psychology," he says. "I think what we are seeing with Web 2.0 is which persuasion technologies work and which do not."
From issue 2583 of New Scientist magazine, 02 January 2007, page 30
Interesting indeed.
Last night I became further sucked into web 2.0 and am currently very much in the “discovery” phase with Myspace (http://www.myspace.com/). Why? Well part curiosity, part the fact that I probably should know more about the workings of such sites so I can qualify my opinions when called upon (backing them up with hard stats and research of course) and partly because I needed to.
Accessible technology means that I am building up video files from my camera that I want to share with my family. Perhaps as my “superficial involvement” grows I may open these files for public consumption (although why anyone I don't know personally would want to see Tilly running around in the snow I have no idea - and maybe if they do then I don't want them to), but right now I don't really think I have the time or inclination to become a truly "committed" user - but from little acorns and all that.
But back to any relevance to digital recruiting - the point is that whilst I’m in the space and now a trackable user, you couldn’t reach me with a message through it. Add the many users like me to the generation that has grown into web 2.0 expecting everything to be provided for free (as pioneers have looked for community build from which to sell the business on and let someone else work out what the business model for monetising this community can be), a community that has an active hatred of corporate intrusion of “their” environment, and it’s clear to see why it will take many months if not years to work out the best way to approach people within these communities, and then a little longer for it to be cost effective for everyday recruiters - whilst indeed we’ll all be trying to work out what the value is of the community there in.
Web 2.0 is surely, for us, all about improving and streamlining the quest for the passive candidate. All the job boards are spending their budgets doing the same - so for small to medium recruiters your first port of call has to still be a considered job board presence. Let them splash the cash on your behalf and bring the candidates to you - they are, after all, the virtual replacement of the broad brush recruitment consultants (but of course considerably more effective and significantly less pricey).
Peering into the market can already be done with quite attractive introductory deals through the various web 2.0 site job boards (http://www.friendsreunitedjobs.co.uk/ etc) that are springing up to try and monetise their traffic – but of course if you have the tracking facilities in place to prove ROI and a requirement that needs a little out of box thinking then of course dabble away. If you feel your ideal candidate is someone who spends 6 hours a day living through their Avatar(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar_%28icon%29) then crack on? But in the spirit of Web 2.0 do come back and share your experience – good or bad. User generated content and information dissemination is of course what’s it’s all about.
:-)
Posted by: Alex | 21/02/2007 at 09:54 AM