Lizzie Jackson

I am one of the ‘Convenors’ (’hosts’ in my language) of the new-ish group on Facebook ‘Open RSA’. Thanks Alex for leaving a comment yesterday leading to Jeremiah Olswang’s evaluation of Facebook on his Web Strategy blog. One of the things Jeremiah says particularly caught my eye,  ”a lot of data goes in, but very little comes out.” The growth pattern of the Open RSA group (started almost two months ago now) was a trajectory which could rival a space shuttle take-off. Within hours Open RSA had over 100  members. This was followed by a period of rapid posting by a small group of people, and (presumably) much lurking by the rest of the group.

There has been a steady growth in members to the new group, but it seems to be the same people are posting all the time. I remember having a chat with Marc Smith from Microsoft who talked about his research project ‘Picturing Usenet’ which tracked thousands of accounts, revealing behaviours. He began to see clear patterns of use i.e. people tended to be a ’type’ either a lurker,  performer, or provider/supplier (of information). Different terms were used, but that’s the  gist.

Groups tend to have people who dominate, people who help, ‘quiet people’ and hundreds of lurkers. The other thing I have noticed over the years is the subjects under discussion churn and the same stuff comes round again and again (given time).  This sounds rather negative, it isn’t, I think it’s a feature of non-visual environments where people don’t have facial and body signals available. Ritual, habit, special terms and language have a much greater importance in highly textual environments, much more than in real life. I also believe relationships form much faster there’s a kind of hothouse effect which takes place.  Some useful stuff on this in ‘Understanding the Psychology of Internet Behaviour’ by Adam N. Joinson