In my mis-spent youth I studied some Game Theory and System Dynamics, with which I have had an unhealthy fascination ever since. A number of recent bloggings have made me think increasingly about the Game Theory and System Dynamics of Social Media.
In no particular order, these are:
- The incredible claims now being made for what Social Media can achieve, chiefly by people that I believe are less and less familiar with what it is or does.
- Some very interesting discussions about the behaviours of Companies and Brands in a Social Media, for example
here and not forgetting on Second Life
here
- Jackie Danicki's brave decision to post a photo and story on her
blog of a person who assaulted her on a Tube in London, and the resulting gerfuffle - see
here
Taking Jackie's action first (disclosure - I met Jackie a few weeks ago at a Social Media event) - in essence this is the Social Media as a Village - In Villages, as opposed to Cities, everyone is known and trusted (or more accurately are known quantities). If something like this happens in a small community, everyone pretty much knows who it is and often the perpetrator is "sorted out" by the villagers.
There is a famous piece of Game Theory called the Prisoners Dilemma, in essence where 2 people can either defect (cheat) or collaborate in a transaction. If one person cheats that person gains a major benefit, Collaboration gains both a smaller benefit, but both people cheating gains no benefit. In a one-off transaction, or a series of these where they are undiscovered, cheating can gain major paybacks.
However, if you cheat over multiple transactions, and it is visible so everyone knows you cheat, you will lose as everyone is then on their guard - no easy wins - and eventually no one will deal with you. Thus, people in small Villages take care of their reputations, and in virtual worlds things like eBay's star rating put some social controls on cheats.
In Cities, however, people are anonymous, many more transactions are invisible one-offs with strangers, and people are thus able to get away with "cheat" behaviour which would get them tarred and feathered or worse in a smaller community. I heard Richard Dawkins (he of the Selfish Gene and Memetics fame) hypothesizing that the antisocial behaviours we increasingly see in cities are just efficient adaptations to the new social environments. Game theory would suggest he is right.
But Social Media changes this system dynamic....it makes previously hidden behaviour open.
By blogging, Jackie has alerted her social network - her "virtual village" - and there is a much more likely chance that this person can be identified and brought to book.
As an aside, this has raised some fascinating questions about "trial by blog", risks of false accusations on blogsites, and apparently the libel laws are a minefield here as well - see
here.
Whatever the legalities however, from a Game Theory perspective Social Media has shifted the environment back towards a Village, where "cheat" transactions are more transparent and more people (and not just those who control the CCTV Big Brothers) will know what you are doing.
(Question - if a Tree falls on CCTV and no one sees it, has it fallen at all?)
And the genie is out the bottle, as evinced in this site that
names and shames paedophiles who go AWOL.
I think this whole area is about to get very interesting......
On to Pillage - some marketeers are trying to sell Web 2.0 and Social Media as a traditional hard sell opportunity to
flog goods to the punters, and many Companies / Brands are piling into the New Social Media to better get their message across...and in many cases are putting foot squarely in mouth before falling over. I think this comes back to Game Theory again - Social Media is (i) based on many transactions and (ii) is visible - I can see what X does to Y.
This means that a Brand or Company is now acting in a world where its interactions are made visible by the social medium, with two key results:
- firstly, any transaction that is a "cheat" of any sort will be picked up very fast and transmitted - in the Old Days it was by word of mouth, now its by click of mouse so is far faster and reaches far more people. And recall that in the Old Days a poor message has c 7x the traction of a good one, that
must be higher in a social medium.
- secondly, interactions are increasingly likely to be ongoing, so eventually any "disguised cheat" behaviour will be surfaced (this is what happened to Wal Mart's attempt to use "bloggers" who were actually
PR guys.
The Second Life experience is interesting in that it has mainly been about "First Life" companies using 2nd Life to get a buzz in the real world, so that the impact of upsetting all the inhabitants of Second Life was not apparent at first, although it eventually surfaced (a PR person told me last night that many people are re-thinking appearing in Second Life now).
I think this has bigger ramifications than a few apoplectic avatars though...try to be "Green" in Europe but put up smoke belching factories in the developing world, and that disparity in message will be picked up far more quickly now.
In short, the Game has moved hugely from single, private to continuous, visible transactions.
What this means is that Brands and Companies wanting to use Social Media to get their message across will have to be far more genuine, and spoofing it via smart PR and Ads is less likely to work. Now, given that a Limited Company is apparently legally obligated to be
Psychotic, this promises to be an interesting journey for many a corporate hack facing the social media hackers.
Truly, the Medium is now the message to a far greater extent.
Lastly, the exaggerated claims about what Social Media will do.
Clearly it is powerful, as its explosive growth and the applications emerging above show – and it has not even started to penetrate the Government arena – services, policy, scrutiny are all going to be impacted (is this the Fifth Estate?)
However, it is not a Panacea for all – it has its
limits. When all is said and done, it is the same old Human Social Dynamic on a new medium, with all its warts. The “Wisdom of Crowds” is counterpointed by the “Mob Rule”, the Will of the Masses is often hijacked by the Agendas of the Activists, and Cheats will still attempt to prosper.
There will also be challenges to overcome - Amazon is apparently full of puffs and rants by people who have never seen the book/product/whatever, on eBay people are scared to diss a lousy retailer because they get a black mark in return, and social news sites like Digg have been gamed ad nauseam buy a few good men with a large number of votes.
Nonetheless, I think with online Social Media, citizens globally have just been handed a new tool to promote freedom by bringing things more into the open rather than allowing them to slowly moulder under covers. Thus I suspect there will be quite strong pressure by various vested interests to remove it and return to making Silage to keep us in mushroom mode (mushrooms are kept in the dark and fed sh*t all day).
