Factors of social implementation of users

    In terms of differences between the Internet and the “real”, there is one of the essential ones - it is difficult to make a career in it that brings similar “real” opportunities. Not that it is completely impossible - there are examples of individuals, such as Alex Exler, who have gained fame and money mainly in the Internet field. But the singularity of these examples confirms the truth of the statement - unlike traditional society, the Internet has not yet formed the same effective institutions for climbing the social ladder. Some points are formulated below in which the differences between the Internet and the real world on the basis of the possibilities of social realization are manifested most of all. The completeness of this list and the importance of the individual items can be discussed.
    If in real life there is something that is not available on the Internet, but in principle it can be there, this is an occasion to talk about a certain hypothetical service that would fill an empty (or rather, insufficiently filled) consumer niche. Therefore, the items relate not so much to comparison as to what needs to be implemented in this service.

    1. User activity should be aimed at creating socially meaningful content. In fact, this leads to a certain understanding of the wiki principle, when users jointly develop certain content that has value not only for them. In this regard, for example, Wikipedia falls under this criterion more than Habr. Not because of the quality of the content on Habré, but because of the "media-tape" nature of its positioning - Habr’s materials are written for short-term getting into the field of general attention and subsequently are used little. In the case of, for example, journals of scientific publications or encyclopedias, the situation is almost the opposite - the articles in them are intended for long-term use (although, possibly, rare). In science, this principle of filtering generally works, when only something new can be published, supplementing or systematizing past results, even if we are talking about different magazines that are not related to each other by anything other than topics. In the media, within the same service, there can be hundreds and thousands of notes of the same type, theses, considerations, arguments, discussions, articles and more. Therefore, if you were able to publish in a scientific journal, you almost fall into history, which of course plays into the feeling of the authors' social fulfillment. As a result, there is a high “step” - you either do not publish at all, or publish immediately at the highest level (this, of course, is idealization, in practice these principles are partly blurred, but I am talking about the principles themselves). The need to overcome this step stimulates the team game - most of the scientific work is done in collaboration. You can also sayabout lshaya its degree of orderliness.
    It is interesting to note that getting Wikipedia into the wiki niche is associated not only with the filtering system, but with positioning. However, at the same time, the author’s beginning on Wikipedia is practically reduced to zero.

    2. The filtration system in science (and other institutions of traditional society) is based on the inequality of votes - participants who achieve better results in any field have a) a greater weight of voice in this area, b) b aboutthe smallest opportunities (authority, power) in managing various resources related to this area - intellectual, professional, informational, administrative, financial, computing, etc. These principles can be implemented within the framework of the Internet service. Note that in real life the estimated results are not only the production of their content, but various types of useful activities, for example, the systematization of other people's content. Regarding paragraph a), the problem is how to make the weights of votes contextually dependent (or thematically dependent). Apparently, the solution is related to the ordering and structuring of resources - in such an environment it is easier to define the context. It should be noted that the filtration system in itself means one of the criteria for ordering - in this case, on the basis of quality.

    3. Author's activity should find the maximum amount of relevant (able to evaluate) audience. In the "real world" this is achieved through the formation of thematic communities and cultural traditions within them. At a deeper level of consideration, the reason is again seen in the ordering of resources - identifying the relevant audience is easier in an orderly environment, like any relevant content in general.

    4. Formats of user activity should meet the natural laws of communication, thinking, development, and qualitative transformations of knowledge. In particular, communication and thinking have a pronounced component of randomness, they rarely strictly follow a given topic, touching on many other topics through associative relations, generating parallel chains of discussions and reasoning. However, the result of this rather chaotic process are (may be) fairly ordered structures of knowledge. In addition, the development of knowledge implies, on the one hand, an increasingly detailed division of related topics according to different criteria, on the other hand, on the contrary, the union of dissimilar elements into common sets also by different criteria.
    Regarding quality transformations of content. We can say that it is easier for people to generate content a) in small formats; b) in the process of discussion. These two interrelated factors are actively used in Internet services, which leads to the aggregate production of huge volumes of small-format materials through various services. Traditionally, the accumulation of such copyright materials on a specific topic is accompanied by their qualitative transformations - the enlargement of semantic units of content, the appearance of articles and books. In turn, these units are traditionally what goes into the asset of copyright achievements, which is submitted to the judgment of specialists and the general public and works for the social realization of the authors. However, in the Internet space this enlargement process is difficult due to a) the dispersion of materials for different services; b) poorly ordered content by topic. In other words, there is a disproportion - the advantages of the Internet are used to enhance understanding at one stage, and in the next stage, on the contrary, there is inhibition. Of course, to be limited to one service instead of millions is not an option, but these considerations can be foreseen in this service.

    5. Stimulation of money - a separate issue and should be linked to ways to monetize the service. In real life, this is one of the main motives of human activity, as well as one of the criteria for social realization and success.

    So, the topic of streamlining and systematization, however, not only content, but various resources, which corresponds to the understanding of society as an organized resource environment, is a common thread in these discussions. It seems that these keywords “orderliness” and “resources” make it possible to climb the social ladder in a traditional society. However, in the projection on the Internet space, all resources are content, so the next step is to consider possible ways of ordering, because not all of them can simultaneously satisfy all of the above points.

    Udt 03/25/20096. In one aspect, the evolution of the Internet shows pendulum fluctuations: from the initial stand-alone sites, people switched to blogs and social networks, but according to the latest information, the number of stand-alone began to grow again. What is not surprising - they provide more opportunities for author self-manifestation. Take the same site of Exler - this is actually a kind of media, including a blog and forum. An online publication with a single-person editorial staff. Similar can be said about roem.ru Sinodova. However, the initial mass exit (or coming) to blogs and social networks is not surprising either - in fact, this is the same personal site that is very easy to create and maintain, but this is not the main thing. The main thing is well-known - it is in a (social) environment with which you can frend, get in touch, form communities and so on. In other words, the author’s beginning is good, but it makes no sense if there is no suitable environment. Synods, for example, said that the main audience of roem was originally formed in his LJ.
    The conclusion from this is obvious - as soon as mass services begin to provide authors with rich opportunities for self-manifestation, similar to those that stand-alone sites now provide, the pendulum will again swing in their direction. If we apply this provision to our hypothetical service, a problem arises that startups usually warn about - in a start-up project it is hardly advisable (and even hardly possible) to make a tricked out functional. In general, it may seem that the implementation of all these points is impossible in any initial simplified version of the project. Now I think that this again is tied to ways of organizing, or rather, ways to present content, which will be discussed in the next article.

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