April 27, 2010 at 23:25Why Lift
I read the new laws of the Habrashariate rules for publishing texts and was horrified. Recalls the traditional efforts of effective managers to optimize the work of programmers, as a result of which all good programmers quit. Citizens (exclamation point is prohibited). I invite everyone interested to make my project “Social Elevator” together and go there (smiley not allowed). Self-promotion is also forbidden, but I only timidly and quietly in a personal blog (I can’t do it in “I PR, because karma does not allow me)” I will refer to my previous post - I already wrote about the Social Elevator. But, as usual, in the end you understand where to start. Those. I did not find a very clear justification for why this is actually an elevator, whereas this should be the basis of the whole story. In the proposed text, I correct this defect. Moreover, having added this option, I realized that one important, almost central thing still remains vague. But I will single it out in a separate text. Moreover, this time it turned out as long as in the first version.
If the results of the activity of one are needed by many, this contains the criterion of social self-realization. Social elevator - a mechanism that ensures its acceleration. From the definition, a spectrum of questions is visible - how many, how much are needed, many now or many in the future, are affected by the results of many directly or indirectly, and so on. The answers to these questions form a picture of factors or conditions conducive to the self-realization of people in society, the disclosure of their potential. The project "Social elevator" projects these factors on the Internet space, uses the specific advantages of the Internet to increase the efficiency of the process.
Growth
Again, the definition implies, first of all, that the larger the social environment, the more consumers. The conclusion from this is simple - we need a set of conditions that ensure the growth of the environment.
The semantic network of objects of arbitrary types, expressed in the simplest model “objects + communications”, is able to adequately reflect the “real”, real society, since the latter is actually such a network. This in itself can be a promising fact. But Internet reflection is acquiring new properties, we can operate on virtual network objects in the same way we cannot do it in real life (or we can not always, or we can, but much more difficult). It resembles a situation in mathematics when Rene Descartes came up with a coordinate system, as a result of which it was possible to write geometric figures in the form of formulas and then operate only with these formulas, obtaining new results.
The potential of the object-connection model is that in a fairly general form it solves the problem of structuring resources, which has all kinds of applications. Partly due to the general thesis that the efficiency of many processes is enhanced in a structured environment, partly because human activity generally comes down to structuring a variety of resources. But in its simplest form, this model can be interpreted as a tool that satisfies the need of users to structure and organize content. This need is already apparent at the individual user level and further scaled up for small communities, large and arbitrarily large, as they grow in scale, only gaining relevance. This approach does not have full-fledged alternatives - competitive services or software solve certain aspects of this problem within specific scales and goals. Those. We have the relevance and scalability of the model, which is a stimulator of unlimited growth. Hence an important consequence - the project does not require an initial large “critical mass” of users in order to develop.
The growth is also facilitated by the possibility of network objects belonging to different clusters simultaneously. Combining them into a new cluster on another basis is worthless (the functionality allows), but can significantly change the emphasis, the context of user activity. Such a spontaneous shift in the semantics of connections as a result of the creative activity of users means multidirectional network growth. Of course, this requires that the ability to create new clusters become familiar to users.
As was (almost) mentioned above, any project means structuring resources (human, informational, financial and others). In this sense, the environment of communication objects allows users not only to structure content, but also to create their own (copyright) projects, including business projects. The ability to make money using the service is a stimulator for the development and growth of the network - interested authors-owners will take care of this themselves. The described so far had little to do with social self-realization. However, business projects (and not only them) are aimed at the production of something demanded by many, so the factor of self-realization is included. We note in parentheses that the definition of social realization adopted here in terms of results (products, etc.) and their consumers brings its task closer to the tasks of the business.
One of the conditions for growth comes down to the question of how many are able to be useful to many others. Large social environments are differentiated by functions, they inevitably turn into a system of interconnected parts. Therefore, it is important to use different skills and talents of users. Being the author of popular content is one of the most sought-after skills on the modern Internet, but it does not exhaust all user activity. It should be noted that the Internet as a whole is losing to the real world, because cuts off the area of everything connected with the material world. This reduced space is further narrowed due to the uncharacteristic nature of the Internet environment of widespread vertical hierarchical structures in real life, which suppresses the involvement of managerial, managerial talents. Non-characterization however does not mean impossibility or unnaturalness. I believe this is just a consequence of the lack of sufficiently large and diverse systems. What does the elevator offer in this regard? - As a prerequisite, the basis for the emergence of hierarchical relations between users is proposed an operation of delegation of authority, valid within user projects. This is especially true for business projects, since hierarchies in real life are mainly based on money. This also shows the need for cash transactions between users, which means an intra-service payment system. Valid inside custom projects. This is especially true for business projects, since hierarchies in real life are mainly based on money. This also shows the need for cash transactions between users, which means an intra-service payment system. Valid inside custom projects. This is especially true for business projects, since hierarchies in real life are mainly based on money. This also shows the need for cash transactions between users, which means an intra-service payment system.
In the context of social realization, those areas of activity that can be rated are primarily interesting. In this regard, we will cover a large number of users if we evaluate their abilities as evaluators of the activity of other participants (I will write about this another time). You can evaluate the traditional production of content (objects) and less traditional production of relationships, types of objects and clusters, i.e. actually structuring activities. In a variety of projects are varied and types of activity. In the spirit of Sotslift’s service, it’s not so much to list and implement all these possible types as to give users the tools to organize their own rating systems within user projects.
The vast majority of users, however, do not think about self-realization, about their business projects (and generally about projects) and are engaged in the most popular activities on the Internet - communication and self-presentation. Nevertheless, this activity brings a lot of information to the semantic network, structures its specific areas. In addition, such users are the main consumers for most projects and make the main contribution to the growth of the network. Therefore, their participation should also be stimulated by something. Here we can say the following.
1) communication and self-presentation fit well into the model of communication objects, probably even better than in services specifically dedicated to this. Firstly, because it allows you to maximally generalize the functionality of “communicative-presentation” services: the user determines which clusters or types of “active” objects (users, communities, organizations) are his “friends”, which of them can create, see and perform other operations with objects and relationships in its space, specify which objects / relationships, their specific clusters or types. And also to divide your space into subspaces and define rules separately for them, and so on.
Secondly, because all this is complemented by the specific advantages of the semantic network of objects. For example, the two main types of objects in communication and presentation - “post” and “comment” in different contexts (spaces) can have different positioning. Comments, usually having a “secondary” role and limited functionality in someone else’s author space, (at the same time) will become full-fledged objects in other spaces. Moreover, if a comment contains a certain thesis or argument on a topic, it can be tied to a cluster of “arguments” related to a specific topic and be of great significance there.
An interesting is the ability to friend not only people and communities, but also objects of any type, thereby expressing your interest in them. Creating a traditional bookmark on the site, in a sense, we "friend" this site. The list of interests in the LiveJournal user profile also actually represents “fake” objects of various types. In the case of Sotslift, this list can fulfill the traditional function of friend-relations for aggregating information from a common network based on the characteristics of these interests. If, let’s say, iPad is among the “friends”, news and other useful information about it will be regularly presented in the feed.
In a more general perspective, a service based on an object-connection model fully allows you to implement a promising trend for the development of information aggregators, providing high-precision (multi-criteria) information filtering. This feature is associated with the many types of objects (and relationships) created by users. For example, right now I can’t create a friend in my LJ by two criteria - the author and the tag in his blog to read only what he writes on topics of interest to me. This is still a problem for LJ, since not all authors provide tags for their posts, and there is a problem with fuzzy tagging: for example, a post with the tags “Internet, Internet, web, web” is interpreted by the machine as different, and people as one. In order for the machine to perceive one, additional efforts are needed - for example, merge tags into a cluster and, when mentioning one of the tags, load all objects indicated by tags from this cluster. But this kind of activity is not organic (and difficult to implement) for LJ and organic for the semantic network, because in such structuring its meaning lies.
Interesting opportunities lie in the "extension of functionality" for third-party sites. For example, in various scientific (and not only) online publications there are no discussions at all tied to published articles. In the system of communication objects, an object of type “link” will contain a link to such an article (and any other material) and it will be possible to discuss this object, build various links for it with other objects and relate it to different clusters as if we were dealing with a full intra-service facility.
2) Usually without thinking about their own projects, communities at times actually organize them around spontaneously arising interests, doing this in not the most suitable formats, such as a forum. Organize a charity event, Internet support of any local event (for example, the creation of an HOA), a service (also geolocal) of joint purchases at all kinds of discounts, etc., etc. The proposed Sociallift service allows you to arrange this kind of social activity, at the same time highlighting and stimulating activists and organizers. Side note: in general, there are many socially significant projects that are poorly monetized and to which the attention of neither a large Internet business, nor “garage” startups, nor the state owes to its traditional inertness, shortsightedness, fears, etc.
3) In a more glamorous aspect, the masses always follow their idols. If the service is used by a different kind of elite, the masses will catch up with it.
Ensuring the attention of a relevant audience.
Almost everything that stimulates participation has a consequence of the growth of the network, so it would be possible to list further. However, the task of the “Social Elevator” is not reduced to merely ensuring growth and diversity; this condition is necessary and primarily important, but essentially indirect.
Creation of copyright projects within a common space implies the implementation in some form of ideas for encapsulating and hiding data inherent in object-oriented programming, when the internal interacts with the external through some definable interface. Opened to general access is potentially accessible to many, and subject to quality, many also need it, i.e. (potentially) the condition of social self-realization is fulfilled. Potentially, because additional measures are needed so that this product reaches precisely those consumers who are interested in it. On the Internet (and not only), getting to consumers means to get into the field of their interested attention. This is the more immediate task of the Elevator. How is she solved? - 1) Due to the properties of the model, communication objects. Structuring means the concentration of resources around various attractors (network nodes), the principle of "all in one". In particular, the concentration of relevant materials around a variety of topics (tags, taxa). Such a concentration is actually a local thematic top, getting into which for relevant objects is almost guaranteed, simply by virtue of belonging to the topic. This alone guarantees increased attention to the relevant audience. However, whether it will be maximum depends on the size of the top, its “degree of locality”. Too big top ceases to be top. What to do in this case? - Structuring involves, among other things, dividing thematically related objects into subgroups according to more and more specific features, i.e. dividing a large top into smaller “floods”.
2) But if the differences between the types become too insignificant, and the number of objects of these types still remains too large, additional measures are needed. Probably, the approach used in social media is suitable here - rating authors, objects generated by them (and various activities in general). An open question regarding ratings - in what space do they operate? It used to be said that inside user projects. (Inside them, an unrated, authoritarian sorting option is also possible). But themed tops, this is a common space. I plan a separate note about this.
3) By creating types and clusters, you can position objects so that they will attract increased attention. For example, an object of type “argument” tied to a certain topic may claim more attention than an object of type “opinion”. Just because there are as many opinions as there are carriers; they are listened to only if the carrier has authority. While there are few arguments on any subject, it is difficult to add something new to them. The same can be said about objects of the type (thematic) "resume". This is essentially the format of an encyclopedic article on a topic - you need to briefly summarize all the knowledge in this area. Collected into a common cluster, such objects would serve as Wikipedia articles and, accordingly, were in demand, at the same time adding a rating to the author. (Those. the author’s rating can be made dependent on the type of objects he produces. If the community agrees that a new argument has really been added to the discussion, the rating increases significantly, but if a person gives out only his opinion under the guise of an argument, his rating, on the contrary, decreases significantly).
4) Contextual advertising is a traditional means of attracting the attention of potential consumers. She could not have been mentioned in connection with the Elevator, if not for the fact that it can be especially effective in an environment with thematic tops, where increased attention is paid to all relevant objects, including advertising. Especially if it takes into account the direct (object frending) and indirect (when multi-parameter filtering / aggregation) users indicate their interests. This is consistent with the general statement that in a well-structured environment, the efficiency of all processes, including advertising, will increase.
If the results of the activity of one are needed by many, this contains the criterion of social self-realization. Social elevator - a mechanism that ensures its acceleration. From the definition, a spectrum of questions is visible - how many, how much are needed, many now or many in the future, are affected by the results of many directly or indirectly, and so on. The answers to these questions form a picture of factors or conditions conducive to the self-realization of people in society, the disclosure of their potential. The project "Social elevator" projects these factors on the Internet space, uses the specific advantages of the Internet to increase the efficiency of the process.
Growth
Again, the definition implies, first of all, that the larger the social environment, the more consumers. The conclusion from this is simple - we need a set of conditions that ensure the growth of the environment.
The semantic network of objects of arbitrary types, expressed in the simplest model “objects + communications”, is able to adequately reflect the “real”, real society, since the latter is actually such a network. This in itself can be a promising fact. But Internet reflection is acquiring new properties, we can operate on virtual network objects in the same way we cannot do it in real life (or we can not always, or we can, but much more difficult). It resembles a situation in mathematics when Rene Descartes came up with a coordinate system, as a result of which it was possible to write geometric figures in the form of formulas and then operate only with these formulas, obtaining new results.
The potential of the object-connection model is that in a fairly general form it solves the problem of structuring resources, which has all kinds of applications. Partly due to the general thesis that the efficiency of many processes is enhanced in a structured environment, partly because human activity generally comes down to structuring a variety of resources. But in its simplest form, this model can be interpreted as a tool that satisfies the need of users to structure and organize content. This need is already apparent at the individual user level and further scaled up for small communities, large and arbitrarily large, as they grow in scale, only gaining relevance. This approach does not have full-fledged alternatives - competitive services or software solve certain aspects of this problem within specific scales and goals. Those. We have the relevance and scalability of the model, which is a stimulator of unlimited growth. Hence an important consequence - the project does not require an initial large “critical mass” of users in order to develop.
The growth is also facilitated by the possibility of network objects belonging to different clusters simultaneously. Combining them into a new cluster on another basis is worthless (the functionality allows), but can significantly change the emphasis, the context of user activity. Such a spontaneous shift in the semantics of connections as a result of the creative activity of users means multidirectional network growth. Of course, this requires that the ability to create new clusters become familiar to users.
As was (almost) mentioned above, any project means structuring resources (human, informational, financial and others). In this sense, the environment of communication objects allows users not only to structure content, but also to create their own (copyright) projects, including business projects. The ability to make money using the service is a stimulator for the development and growth of the network - interested authors-owners will take care of this themselves. The described so far had little to do with social self-realization. However, business projects (and not only them) are aimed at the production of something demanded by many, so the factor of self-realization is included. We note in parentheses that the definition of social realization adopted here in terms of results (products, etc.) and their consumers brings its task closer to the tasks of the business.
One of the conditions for growth comes down to the question of how many are able to be useful to many others. Large social environments are differentiated by functions, they inevitably turn into a system of interconnected parts. Therefore, it is important to use different skills and talents of users. Being the author of popular content is one of the most sought-after skills on the modern Internet, but it does not exhaust all user activity. It should be noted that the Internet as a whole is losing to the real world, because cuts off the area of everything connected with the material world. This reduced space is further narrowed due to the uncharacteristic nature of the Internet environment of widespread vertical hierarchical structures in real life, which suppresses the involvement of managerial, managerial talents. Non-characterization however does not mean impossibility or unnaturalness. I believe this is just a consequence of the lack of sufficiently large and diverse systems. What does the elevator offer in this regard? - As a prerequisite, the basis for the emergence of hierarchical relations between users is proposed an operation of delegation of authority, valid within user projects. This is especially true for business projects, since hierarchies in real life are mainly based on money. This also shows the need for cash transactions between users, which means an intra-service payment system. Valid inside custom projects. This is especially true for business projects, since hierarchies in real life are mainly based on money. This also shows the need for cash transactions between users, which means an intra-service payment system. Valid inside custom projects. This is especially true for business projects, since hierarchies in real life are mainly based on money. This also shows the need for cash transactions between users, which means an intra-service payment system.
In the context of social realization, those areas of activity that can be rated are primarily interesting. In this regard, we will cover a large number of users if we evaluate their abilities as evaluators of the activity of other participants (I will write about this another time). You can evaluate the traditional production of content (objects) and less traditional production of relationships, types of objects and clusters, i.e. actually structuring activities. In a variety of projects are varied and types of activity. In the spirit of Sotslift’s service, it’s not so much to list and implement all these possible types as to give users the tools to organize their own rating systems within user projects.
The vast majority of users, however, do not think about self-realization, about their business projects (and generally about projects) and are engaged in the most popular activities on the Internet - communication and self-presentation. Nevertheless, this activity brings a lot of information to the semantic network, structures its specific areas. In addition, such users are the main consumers for most projects and make the main contribution to the growth of the network. Therefore, their participation should also be stimulated by something. Here we can say the following.
1) communication and self-presentation fit well into the model of communication objects, probably even better than in services specifically dedicated to this. Firstly, because it allows you to maximally generalize the functionality of “communicative-presentation” services: the user determines which clusters or types of “active” objects (users, communities, organizations) are his “friends”, which of them can create, see and perform other operations with objects and relationships in its space, specify which objects / relationships, their specific clusters or types. And also to divide your space into subspaces and define rules separately for them, and so on.
Secondly, because all this is complemented by the specific advantages of the semantic network of objects. For example, the two main types of objects in communication and presentation - “post” and “comment” in different contexts (spaces) can have different positioning. Comments, usually having a “secondary” role and limited functionality in someone else’s author space, (at the same time) will become full-fledged objects in other spaces. Moreover, if a comment contains a certain thesis or argument on a topic, it can be tied to a cluster of “arguments” related to a specific topic and be of great significance there.
An interesting is the ability to friend not only people and communities, but also objects of any type, thereby expressing your interest in them. Creating a traditional bookmark on the site, in a sense, we "friend" this site. The list of interests in the LiveJournal user profile also actually represents “fake” objects of various types. In the case of Sotslift, this list can fulfill the traditional function of friend-relations for aggregating information from a common network based on the characteristics of these interests. If, let’s say, iPad is among the “friends”, news and other useful information about it will be regularly presented in the feed.
In a more general perspective, a service based on an object-connection model fully allows you to implement a promising trend for the development of information aggregators, providing high-precision (multi-criteria) information filtering. This feature is associated with the many types of objects (and relationships) created by users. For example, right now I can’t create a friend in my LJ by two criteria - the author and the tag in his blog to read only what he writes on topics of interest to me. This is still a problem for LJ, since not all authors provide tags for their posts, and there is a problem with fuzzy tagging: for example, a post with the tags “Internet, Internet, web, web” is interpreted by the machine as different, and people as one. In order for the machine to perceive one, additional efforts are needed - for example, merge tags into a cluster and, when mentioning one of the tags, load all objects indicated by tags from this cluster. But this kind of activity is not organic (and difficult to implement) for LJ and organic for the semantic network, because in such structuring its meaning lies.
Interesting opportunities lie in the "extension of functionality" for third-party sites. For example, in various scientific (and not only) online publications there are no discussions at all tied to published articles. In the system of communication objects, an object of type “link” will contain a link to such an article (and any other material) and it will be possible to discuss this object, build various links for it with other objects and relate it to different clusters as if we were dealing with a full intra-service facility.
2) Usually without thinking about their own projects, communities at times actually organize them around spontaneously arising interests, doing this in not the most suitable formats, such as a forum. Organize a charity event, Internet support of any local event (for example, the creation of an HOA), a service (also geolocal) of joint purchases at all kinds of discounts, etc., etc. The proposed Sociallift service allows you to arrange this kind of social activity, at the same time highlighting and stimulating activists and organizers. Side note: in general, there are many socially significant projects that are poorly monetized and to which the attention of neither a large Internet business, nor “garage” startups, nor the state owes to its traditional inertness, shortsightedness, fears, etc.
3) In a more glamorous aspect, the masses always follow their idols. If the service is used by a different kind of elite, the masses will catch up with it.
Ensuring the attention of a relevant audience.
Almost everything that stimulates participation has a consequence of the growth of the network, so it would be possible to list further. However, the task of the “Social Elevator” is not reduced to merely ensuring growth and diversity; this condition is necessary and primarily important, but essentially indirect.
Creation of copyright projects within a common space implies the implementation in some form of ideas for encapsulating and hiding data inherent in object-oriented programming, when the internal interacts with the external through some definable interface. Opened to general access is potentially accessible to many, and subject to quality, many also need it, i.e. (potentially) the condition of social self-realization is fulfilled. Potentially, because additional measures are needed so that this product reaches precisely those consumers who are interested in it. On the Internet (and not only), getting to consumers means to get into the field of their interested attention. This is the more immediate task of the Elevator. How is she solved? - 1) Due to the properties of the model, communication objects. Structuring means the concentration of resources around various attractors (network nodes), the principle of "all in one". In particular, the concentration of relevant materials around a variety of topics (tags, taxa). Such a concentration is actually a local thematic top, getting into which for relevant objects is almost guaranteed, simply by virtue of belonging to the topic. This alone guarantees increased attention to the relevant audience. However, whether it will be maximum depends on the size of the top, its “degree of locality”. Too big top ceases to be top. What to do in this case? - Structuring involves, among other things, dividing thematically related objects into subgroups according to more and more specific features, i.e. dividing a large top into smaller “floods”.
2) But if the differences between the types become too insignificant, and the number of objects of these types still remains too large, additional measures are needed. Probably, the approach used in social media is suitable here - rating authors, objects generated by them (and various activities in general). An open question regarding ratings - in what space do they operate? It used to be said that inside user projects. (Inside them, an unrated, authoritarian sorting option is also possible). But themed tops, this is a common space. I plan a separate note about this.
3) By creating types and clusters, you can position objects so that they will attract increased attention. For example, an object of type “argument” tied to a certain topic may claim more attention than an object of type “opinion”. Just because there are as many opinions as there are carriers; they are listened to only if the carrier has authority. While there are few arguments on any subject, it is difficult to add something new to them. The same can be said about objects of the type (thematic) "resume". This is essentially the format of an encyclopedic article on a topic - you need to briefly summarize all the knowledge in this area. Collected into a common cluster, such objects would serve as Wikipedia articles and, accordingly, were in demand, at the same time adding a rating to the author. (Those. the author’s rating can be made dependent on the type of objects he produces. If the community agrees that a new argument has really been added to the discussion, the rating increases significantly, but if a person gives out only his opinion under the guise of an argument, his rating, on the contrary, decreases significantly).
4) Contextual advertising is a traditional means of attracting the attention of potential consumers. She could not have been mentioned in connection with the Elevator, if not for the fact that it can be especially effective in an environment with thematic tops, where increased attention is paid to all relevant objects, including advertising. Especially if it takes into account the direct (object frending) and indirect (when multi-parameter filtering / aggregation) users indicate their interests. This is consistent with the general statement that in a well-structured environment, the efficiency of all processes, including advertising, will increase.