One online community that shows how digital media is shaping our lives in both practical as well as social and cultural terms is Craigslist. The service that bears the first name of its founder, Craig Newmark, may not have come so far in terms of its visual look from its humble beginnings as an email distribution list in 1995. But in terms of its influence and reach, Craigslist has grown to a remarkable size, serving over twenty billion page views each month.

With over eighty million new classified ads going up every month, Craigslist has become the host of both good and bad: from apartments, goods and services to finding a date or someone to stalk, to allegations of enabling child prostitution and – ironically, given Craigslist’s own past as a small, local community – crushing smaller, local businesses.

Such a great variety of things can be found on Craigslist that Jason Paul, a young journalist, finding himself unemployed after graduating from college, has decided to live his life off Craigslist for nine months. What does that mean? Here are the basic rules Jason has written for himself:

• “I will start with $2,500 that I’ve saved during college
• I will have a car, a phone, a computer and cameras to document the trip
• I am not allowed to live out of my car
• I am not allowed to live with someone I know for longer than a week at the beginning of each city
• I am allowed one large bag containing clothes and a few staple foods
• I am not allowed to initiate contact with someone unless it is through an online interaction”

So, simply put, Jason aims to find all his jobs, housing, friends, food and other necessities entirely via Craigslist. It’s an idea that reminds me a bit of Morgan Spurlock’s “30 Days“, but times nine, and pulling in the digital aspect. Jason is documenting his experiences on his website, LivingCraigslist.com, and of course, you can follow him on Twitter or become his fan on Facebook.

Would you try the same thing (or have you already)? What sort of things have you looked for, and found, on Craigslist? How do you think this is changing us as people – or is it really?

(this post is also up on ThreeMinds)

Karri Ojanen

Sounds rather obvious, doesn’t it? But Engeström claims that the world’s biggest cell phone maker Nokia may have lost the crucial connection between what happens in the field and what happens in the managers’ world. Where at Google, says Engeström, even the most top level managers are still contributing to the code themselves and monitoring the development of their products first hand, at Nokia the bosses are lost in their own chambers. At Google, the founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have even given up their personal assistants because they didn’t want to get estranged from their workers and the people who use their products.

A recent post in the Harvard Business Blog talks about the change we’re witnessing in organizations around us due to the development of networking tools such as Twitter. The writer, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, recalls how America in the 20th century was called a “society of organizations”. Formal hierarchies with clear reporting relationships gave people their position and their power.

In the 21st century, however, the world is rapidly becoming a society of networks, even within companies and other organizations. People with power and influence derive that power from their centrality within self-organizing networks that might or might not correspond to any plan on the part of designated leaders. Fewer people act as power-holders monopolizing information or decision-making, and more people serve as integrators using relationships and persuasion to get things done. There’s a study that shows some of the fastest growing companies realize that, at least on the level of how they use social media in their marketing mix.

But in terms of the organizational structure, I bet that Nokia isn’t alone with its problem. In fact, I think that most companies around the world that were born in the industrial era are struggling to change to become more like Google, a company mostly developed in the networking era of the 21st century, where a less hierarchical model of connecting and sharing ideas comes more natural.

In the advertising world, there is a debate about traditional vs. digital, and how to combine the things we have learned from both thus far to drive the future. The world we work in, in (digital) advertising, is going through constant change at a seemingly increasing speed with every new tool, piece of code, site and platform that becomes somehow meaningful. Maintaining a good connection to what happens on the ground is a challenge, but it’s easier for those who actively network and participate in the discussion, and who are willing to let go of the old hierarchical model of management. It doesn’t mean that everybody needs to be a coder, a director, a designer and a hyperactive, visionary Twitter user all at the same time, but it helps to have done a bit of it all to have experienced it first hand, and maintain that connection to the ground through all the cycles of change.

Karri Ojanen

I tweeted and took pictures and notes and drew sketches during the conference, and I’m working on putting together a deck of all those by the end of next week. It looks like several other people have already beat me to it though – peeps like Luke Wroblewski, Whitney Hess and Matthew Milan have already got their notes and/or presentation slides online. So I’ve collected a list of all those here, hoping that you find this helpful and asking that you send me more links to others’ notes, pictures and slides if you see anything missing from this list:

• Luke Wroblewski’s notes from the conference (covering Mari Luangrath’s, Tim Queenan’s, Mary Newsom’s, Stephen Anderson’s, Leisa Reichelt’s, Jeff Dachis’, Maya Kalman’s, Thomas Malaby’s and Christina Wodtke’s presentations): http://bit.ly/X26Mo, http://bit.ly/1740Bg and http://bit.ly/3orkZq
• A video clip of Matthew Milan’s Innovation Parkour presentation on YouTube: http://bit.ly/VXpqV
• Christian Crumlish’ and Erin Malone’s presentation “Designing Social Interfaces: 5 steps, 5 principles, 5 anti-patterns” on SlideShare: http://is.gd/3oBBT
• Christina Wodtke’s presentation on SlideShare: http://is.gd/3k4Zz
• Matthew Milan’s presentation on SlideShare: http://bit.ly/Dv0uY
• Whitney Hess’ notes: day 1 – http://bit.ly/1az3rP and day 2 – http://bit.ly/29nj6B
• My own, meandering Twitter notes incl. photos: http://bit.ly/1bfI1R

Karri Ojanen

First I think the term ‘social interaction design’ is misleading. Of course, in our context, in this industry, it means designing social software that allows users to interact and share data with others. The interactions between users, however, are not designed by designers and engineers – only the software, that facilitates the interactions, is. A discussion between two people is social interaction – any event in which people attach meaning to a situation, interpret what others are meaning, and respond accordingly, is social interaction. Software can be designed to enable, motivate and encourage social interaction, but what users then end up doing (or not doing) with it is up to the users themselves. The further development of the software then needs to follow the users and their interests. Like Adrian pointed out in his article, twitter, for example, is not used just for SMS-Web messaging as its designers originally intended, but for several different things that the users have started to use it for because it enables them to do it.

The need to interact with others is very basic, common to all of us. That explains why social interaction software has quickly become the most popular form of using the Web. I think of my own father, a 70-year old with a PC and a cell phone, who would easily say no to buying flight tickets online. Not because he doesn’t think it’s safe, but because he’s not willing to learn how to do it. He says he’ll rather go to a real travel agent – he actually think it’s easier than going online, and he likes the human interaction he gets at a travel agency. But when I have showed him photos that I share online, used Skype to call him or sent him free SMS from a website, he’s always wanted me to immediately show him how to do it himself. Communication services that the Web has enabled – VoIP calls, email, instant messaging, and now social networking and microblogging – are the digital services that have managed to quickly gain popularity among not just the young and savvy, but also older folk.

When designing software that facilitates social interaction, the basic rules of how to design a usable service still apply. If a program or service is not usable, it doesn’t motivate users to use it, even if it, at first, interests users because it promises to let them do something they desire. After enough people start using software they find usable, they need further motivation and satisfaction that they can get from recognition (status), reciprocity (I share, you share), sense of efficacy, and/or sense of community (Kollock’s framework). In social software, they can get many of those things from other users, but the software system itself also needs to provide them.

Social software design could really benefit from anthropological study that put together what we know now about online and offline social behavior. The behavioral patterns that we see in social software now seem like very basic human behavior, but without the backing of actual studies that interpret the world we live in now, many social software designers are left to come up with the necessary conclusions over time, through trial and error.

I haven’t had time to properly go through the OMAoG site yet, but it looks quite similar to powerWISE in its community building efforts. The layout looks slightly cluttered, but the user base seems to have started building up very quickly and I like the messaging on the site. CBC’s role in promoting the movement, according to an article in this month’s Strategy Magazine, is to feature teaser ads and 30-second spots with “celebrities and green experts” (of course – but is Mike Myers one of them? “One million dollars… I mean acts”). If only we could now get the newly elected Conservative government of Canada to do more to build more modern, cleaner infrastructure to help Canadians curb their emissions…