So much of what drives social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook basically comes down to social gestures by people who want to connect with others, or add value to something bigger than themselves. From product reviews to wiki edits, millions of people are benefitting from this mass of small social gestures online.

It’s interesting for businesses to note that massively complex systems and information empires can be driven by something other than money. Very few social media sites pay people to participate. People use online platforms to build relationships and contribute to communities. Essentially this is a new form of economic production beyond the two classic pillars of economics, the firm and the market. Yochai Benkler calls it “Peer Production”.

I’ve noticed that my social gestures over the years – blogging, chatting, uploading, editing – have accumulated into a kind of Social Equity. The result is more exposure, higher trust, more business, and ultimately financial reward.
Thus each social gesture becomes an investment.

Many businesses are already benefitting from the social equity of their employees. I think it’s important for businesses to recognize these people within their ranks and enable them to continue rather than shutting them down.

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Kelele, an annual African bloggers’ conference, was announced yesterday at BarCamp Africa at the GooglePlex in San Francisco. This exciting event will be held in a different African city each year and run by an organising committee in that city. Kelele will be held for the first time in August 2009 in Nairobi, Kenya.

Daudi Were is producing the event, along with an organizing committee of bloggers from all over Africa. This includes Ndesanjo Macha, Erik Hersman, Nii Simmonds, Mshairi, Sami Ben Gharbia, and me.

Why Kelele?

Kelele is the Kiswahili word for noise. We are organising a gathering of African bloggers in the tradition of historical African societies where everyone has a voice.

The specific theme of Kelele ’09 Nairobi is Beat Your Drum – which connects the traditional Africa method of getting your message across vast distances – the talking drums – to the 21st century and the tools we use today, blogs and the Internet.

Sponsorship

We are working to make Kelele a world-class conference, but in order to do this we will need Sponsorship to cover costs such as delegate’s flights, venue, AV and bandwidth.

We’d like to invite all organizations with an interest in blogging, Africa and citizen media to become a sponsor of the inaugural African Bloggers Conference: Kelele!

There are a variety of ways that you can become involved as a sponsor for Kelele – your contribution doesn’t only need to be financial in nature. If you’d like to find out more about the sponsorship opportunities, please email daudi.were@gmail.com

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In theory it’s a great idea – 30 000 people each put forward $50 for a year’s membership in nvohk inc. For their $50 they get a “founders t-shirt”, get to vote on stuff like logo design and advertising decisions, get discounts on nvohk t-shirts, and split 35% of the profits between them. It works for the company because each t-shirt owner then has a vested interest in helping the brand succeed, and passing on work of its success.

Where I think the company could improve its offering is to start connecting members and create an online space, like a Ning social network, for them to discuss their investment in public with each other and the project founder, Brendan Lynch. This would increase trust and interest, and make it a bit more like the original concept, a proven success model, on which I believe it was based (probably unknowingly) – the South African Stokvel.

Stokvels, according to The Beehive, “…have been around in South Africa for many years. They are a good way for people to help motivate each other to save, and many stokvel or savings clubs are like social clubs where members also help each other in ways other than with money. Regular stokvel meetings have become a social highlight in many communities”.

The internet can allow ad-hoc communities to form around virtually anything – the initial social object could be saving money, but then extend as people seek other ways to connect with and help each other. In the business case, such as with nvohk (or to quote a more familiar South African example, Verity), I believe that the investors want the project to succeed, and some of them would have at least enough interest in it to want to chat with other investors with the same interest via a convenient virtual platfrom like the official website of the project.

I think the concept of the digital stokvel has great potential to be applied to brand campaigns. Watch this space for more case studies to come.

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As as any web platform becomes very popular, so it becomes more enticing for people to game it to promote their own interests. If this is allowed to continue then the system can become cluttered and the ordinary user’s experience suffers. So, regrettably, it’s often necessary for someone to decide what is allowed and then kick out people who aren’t playing by the rules.

Here’s a talk by Jason Calcanis at Le Web which I think pretty much explains the importance of curatorship of web communities (with thanks to Charl for the link):

It is also important to clearly state the Terms of Use for any community site. We learned this lesson when Muti.co.za was criticized for the founder’s direct involvement in blocking certain users who were deemed to be spamming the system. Although I believe Neville’s actions helped keep the site useful to it’s users, not having public guidelines may have made it seem like a personal decision taken against certain users. Muti now has clear Terms of Use, and the community is flourishing.

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In the clip, Jimmy explains that Wikia is developing a freely licensed search engine, using open source software, to compete directly with Yahoo, Google and all the big search players. It Aims to match or exceed the quality of the major search engines

He also makes a strong “political statement” that it’s not healthy that so much power is in the hands of a few search companies who are secretive about how the information is ranked (other’s think so too).

Lastly, he showed screenshots of the Facebook-like contributor interface, dubbed by others as his “Socialpedia”.

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At the iCommons Innovation Series last week in Joburg, Jimmy Wales stated that any business that was dependent on people not copying its products or services was doomed, whereas those that embrace the culture of sharing, and that build in systems to facilitate and benefit from sharing would thrive. This is most obvious in the music industry, where even Madonna has left her old record label which was dependent on DRM and record sales and moved to a label that prioritizes alternative revenue streams such as her brand, her live performance revenues, and merchandising.

In the Attention Economy, having the goodwill of a community can make you rich, and power comes as your ideas, products and services circulate through that community. In this new economy, participation is key, since it is the highest form of Attention that a person can give. It must be pointed out though, that simply creating a platform for participation (such as a Wiki or a video-channel) is not enough to get people involved. You need to help them connect with people that have shared interests.

How do you think Wikipedia maintains the level of quality participation it has? The answer is that behind each article there are little communities of people who are connecting with each other through a shared interest in the subject matter they are compiling – each contribution, discussion and edit is a form of social currency that can escalate their status in the community. People blog for much the same reason. So perhaps the human need for recognition and connection is really the driver of the new web economy.

My advice is to do whatever you can to help reduce people’s sense of separation from each other and your brand. As a participant in one of last-week’s workshops pointed out: A relationship is an ongoing conversation. So I leave you with a question to consider: How will you start facilitating ongoing conversations through your company, with your company, and through your products, services, portals and communications?

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Heather made a very exciting announcement at the event:

There is going to be a free culture house built in Cape Town. Imagine a place you can pop into for coffee, and be exposed to the latest multi-media and open content, create and remix using the latest tech and open software, learn about and organise free-culture events, or just meet other enthusiasts to work on new projects. It’s going to be the first of many around the world.

Ian Gilfillan is also running a bid to host Wikimania 2008 in Cape Town

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This same principle of having a conspicuous hierarchy of regular customers applies very strongly to building and sustaining online communities. Digg, for example, used to have a list of “Top 100 Diggers” which was very hotly contested because appearing on that list gave those users power and reknown. Unfortunately Digg has now removed the list from their site, and is already starting to lose top users. One of them, Greg Hartnett writes:

So this is how I see it playing out: more and more top users will continue the exodus, which will in turn contribute to the deterioration of the quality of the content being submitted. The SEO crowd, and others trying to game Digg, will continue with their efforts, and an even greater percentage of front page stories will have gotten there through artificial means. Average users will grow tired of the spam (or perceived spam) and return less and less often. Daily visitors will diminish over time, resulting in a front page story that generates a couple of hundred visitors. At this point, the SEO crowd will realize that the ROI is no longer there, and they’ll move on to the traffic generator du jour. In their wake, they’ll leave Digg in shambles – a mere shell of the site it had once been.

In the end, Digg founders and investors will be left scratching their heads at what went wrong. You should have nurtured your top users – not screwed them.

People are highly motivated by praise and recognition – more than they often let on

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Good Designers Copy, Great Designers Steal – Picasso

Interesting, considering the source of that one. And:

A dwarf on a giant’s shoulders sees farther of the two. If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. – Isaac Newton

I mention them to emphasise the importance in business of sharing and collaboration in order to increase speed, productivity, and (ironically) creativity. This is a big reason why we should support Creative Commons.

Check out this vid of the recent iCommons Salon (entitled “Bring and Braai”) held in Cape Town, where Lawrence Lessig (CEO of Creative Commons) emphasises the point that digital borrowing and remixing is being criminalized… and what we need to do to make sure that we have the digital freedom to create freely. Jimmy Wales also appears with a call for more African Language contributors on Wikipedia. Heather Ford and I had fun MCing the event :

By the way, Missing Link sponsored and produced this video… They rock!

p.s. 09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0 :-p

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When I first started blogging, I would be eager to write about something, but then I’d see it written on another SA blog and I would get demotivated. I was looking for the scoop in every case… So I ended up not posting very often at all.

Part of what’s interesting when analysing blog posting volumes is how the number of posts increase around major news events.

So anyway, my point: I took a lovely hike last week. At various junctures there were sign posts marking the way, held up by a pile of stones. Everyone that passes these sign-posts should add a stone to the pile because the winds and rain are constantly rolling other’s stones away. It’s a seemingly trivial act, but it’s a way to help guide other hikers and show them that they’re on the right path.

So, having said that… A bunch of support stones have already been piled up for the recent 27 dinner. But I’d like to add mine. Some thanks:

• To the people who put their name down on the wiki and actually came!
• To Stormhoek for providing the wine and organising the venue.
• To my business partners at Cerebra, Mike in particular, for continued support of the 27-dinner project.
• To Zoopy for creating a dedicated 27-dinner channel and sponsoring TWO Sony DVD Camera’s as prizes for people at the dinner who shot videos and pics and uploaded them to Zoopy. (Winners to be announced at 27-5 in Joburg in May)
• To Henk, who donated 3 Skyrove wifi hotspot kits. We auctioned them off at the dinner to raise funds for iCommons. And also to the angel bidders who bought them: Nikki Friedman, Jacques Marneweck, and Ian Gilfillan.
• To the speakers: Ian Gilfillan (Deep, soulful and technologically advanced!), Glen Verran (Passionate voice of the SA podcasting movement) and Mike Scott (Hilarious, profound and inspiring cartoonist).

I know that lots of good networking and socialising happened. I, for one, am chuffed at the result… Although, to be honest, I would have loved to have seen more racially diverse representation there, especially on Freedom Day.

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