xdiscipline Thoughts across disciplines by Engin Erdoğan

Today is Labor Day, a celebration of the economic and social achievements of workers around the world. Just the right time to introduce our new project, User Labor, to address the issue of the economic sustainability of social web services. 

With User Labor, we propose an open data structure, User Labor Markup Language (ULML), to outline the metrics of user participation in social web services. Our aim is to construct criteria and context for determining the value of user labor for distribution. We believe that universality, transparency, and accessibility of user labor metrics will ultimately lead to more sustainable service cycles in social web. 

Web 2.0 services have been assuming the availability of user-generated content in exchange with the utility they offer. For example, in a (needless to say, social) photo sharing service, people upload photos, which create traffic. Traffic creates advertising revenue, which sustains the service. In this cycle, what is supposed to sustain user-generated content is access to the service. However, some user-generated content creates more value for the service than the other. So, how does the service sustain the one that offers higher value, relative to others? In order to answer that question, we need to know how much potential value (i.e. ad revenue) a user generates with how much traffic, through how much content. This is the idea behind User Labor, to determine metrics. 

What next? Potential outcomes are, finer use typologies (instead of just power user), richer service offerings (instead of just free and premium), even a new resume format for users to be used across online services… Also, discussions to emerge around how different users can be rewarded, in what terms.

You can read more at User Labor website. 

Also see Burak, my partner in crime reporting on User Labor in his blog.

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On April 7, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) put a new rule into action. According to this rule, the reports of all NIH funded research must be made available to public within one year in PubMed, a free-access digital library of biomedical research. This is a great step towards increasing the public accessibility of scientific research. After all, if public pays for the research, the work should be accessible to public.

But why one year? Why is the arbitrary limitation? Because, otherwise the business of scientific journals would be threatened. Apparently, some of these journals have hired an aggressive PR firm to work on this “issue” of open access. Funny how scientific journals are dealing with this similar to how the oil companies dealt with global warming, or how cigarette companies lobby to influence policies.

In spite of all the business shadiness, it is quite exciting to think what open access would enable. This is an infrastructural step for open accessibility. Next step is to make it more user-friendly. For example, Public Library of Science (PLoS) already requires a more user-friendly abstract in research submissions, to make the submission easier to understand for people outside of the field. Ultimately, advanced science may find interfaces for capturing larger audiences. This is particularly hopeful for new generations who would grow up with such access.

On the other hand, having an expert community is still instrumental, just like in any other field. However, an expert community can co-exist with public access. On a similar note, the expert reactions and reviews on scientific research can be also open, which makes me think about the traditional peer-review systems. The journal editor-expert review cycle is already being re-considered, maybe this news will be of inspiration to those who is in the process of re-shaping the peer-review systems.

NPR’s Science Friday has a nice program on this issue, you can listen to it here.

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A couple of late night snapshots from my sketchbook on two-way consumption in (mostly ad supported) web services.

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At a recent travel, I came across the real-time feedback devices in Beijing Airport. These devices are situated right in front of the passport police, and the traveler can rate passport police’s service.

I like the idea because it gives the traveler a quick opportunity to react to good service or poor service without writing a letter. Also, it is incentive for the officer to think more service-oriented. Finally, this is an interesting instance of real world adopting a digital convention, immediate feedback.

I am curious who collects this feedback and how it is processed.

Related:
Can I also see my own information please?

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Yesterday, a bunch of social network services (Orkut, LinkedIn, Friendster, Hi5, Engage, Ning, etc) agreed upon a new platform called OpenSocial, initiated by Google. With this new platform, developers will create applications that work across services and people will be able to reach out to their friends in other networks through these applications. Basically, this is like Facebook’s functionality enabled across other social network sites. The scale has just got much larger.

My friends in Facebook, created by Friend Wheel Application

We are witnessing the emergence of a new medium, where the user is the content. It’s no coincidence that social advertising networks upon these platforms are being developed as we speak. From a business perspective, there is a huge potential. The continuity of social interactions through little applications (as we see in Facebook) can be overwhelmingly high in these networks, which is free content for the service. Applications, or ephemeral tools for engagement are developed virtually at no extra cost. The more user activity, the more knowledge for the service, the more basis for targeted advertising.

I think it would be quite fair to say that users work for these services. With advertising or other revenue models, the service can make a lot of money through the immaterial labor of users. The scale is no joke, we are talking about approximately 100 million users (and increasing).

Two questions:

1/ Will the users ever get compensated for the value they bring to the service?
2/ If so, how much would that be and who will determine this value?

Related links:

• OpenSocial official site
• TechCrunch announces
• Ning is now live with OpenSocial
• OpenSocial to Expand Meta-Markets?

Also check out Burak Arikan’s provoking points on OpenSocial at his blog.

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Last night, I was thinking about how I would explain the phases of prototyping as I experience them and I did a very quick sketch (below). The diagram is not very pretty but well enough to make my point. I guess this should be one of the principles of prototyping: pretty enough to communicate the point.

Obviously, it is no surprise that the number of ideas decrease and the resolution of the prototypes  increase as one goes through these steps.

Here are some more thoughts on the steps:

Illustrating the idea
These are mostly low-res sketches that explain the core concept. They are products of brainstorms, individual sessions, or random trains of thought. When I sketch, I focus on the core of the idea and do not think too much about details and secondary uses. Such sketches help me ask whether the idea is relevant to what I am trying to accomplish and worth the investment. And of course, whether it brings something new and exciting to the table. Depending on the complexity of the idea, these sketches are useful for getting immediate feedback from people.

Demonstrating user value
This is where I put ideas in context and demonstrate value for potential users. At this phase, I usually think of linear sequences at first, like a story/narrative and how the idea fits in, how it meets a specific need. I try not to think about the specifics of the technology unless there is a big issue with the infrastructure. Prototypes at this stage do a better job than basic illustrations especially when the complexity is high or anticipated use situations are unconventional.

Simulating functionality
Simulations vary from canned interactive prototypes to working systems that are close to the actual. These types of prototypes are best for usability tests (and self satisfaction) and can reveal a great deal of information that enlighten the path to implementation. I try not to spend too much time on close-to-actual prototypes unless I am convinced about the value of the idea since this is pretty detailed work and consumes a lot of time.

So. Illustrate-demonstrate-simulate. Nice rhyme.

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A stock’s detail page in Meta-Markets

Meta-Markets is an experiment on which I have been collaborating with my two close friends, Burak Arıkan and Cenk Dölek. Burak, the ultimate prototyper, single-handedly put the core together with his endless energy and spent by far the most effort on it. Cenk, the perfectionist, has created the interactive graphs for stocks and is tying lots of loose ends together to make things work at their best.

One of our aims with this project is to explore the value of online immaterial labor through leveraging the mechanics of stock markets. We have questions. How can we ascribe value to the creative work that people put in to exist - express themselves and connect to others - in online environments? Can we approach these efforts as products? If these products are one’s intellectual property, can owners offer their products to public for raising capital and to make better products?

Market activity in the last 48 hours

To explain things in a more practical way: In NYSE or NASDAQ people trade shares of companies. In Meta-Markets people trade shares of bookmarks, profiles, videos, or blogs. Just like companies, socially networked products have ever growing values. When product owners issue their shares in Meta-Markets, they raise capital – today play capital, but tomorrow real capital.

Currently, we have markets based on product categories such as blogs, photos, etc. And we selected pilot services for these product categories based on the accessibility of their APIs. In the end, Facebook, Flickr, Delicious, and Feedburner became our initial set. Obviously, these services are represantative of their respective categories and we are planning to introduce more than one service in each category as long as we have access to their APIs.

4 markets active, more to come

Our experiment is still in its early stages. In tech speak, we are in private alpha. We are dealing with everything from server load to semantics on a daily basis. Our user base, which started with friends and friends-of-friends, is now extending to a variety of curious, ambitious, and tolerant people. Hopefully pretty soon, we will come to a stable enough state when we can open up the membership to all creative souls.

If you would like to keep an eye on what’s happening in Meta-Markets, check out our development journal.

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I have been visiting Seoul for work. I thought Korean cars’ model names were quite interesting, maybe indicating the impact of business life on social status. The last photo is not as clear as the others, it says “president” at the back of the car.

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I am sure you heard of the term prosumer. The emerging target audience segments that not only consume, but create. As defined by Wikipedia:

Prosumer is a portmanteau formed by contracting either the word producer or professional with the word consumer. The term has taken on multiple conflicting meanings: the business sector sees the prosumer (professional–consumer) as a market segment, whereas economists see the prosumer (producer–consumer) as having greater independence from the mainstream economy.  

This is important for product design, especially for software. Because, it is an indication that the meanings of product, use, and user are evolving. End-product is not the end of the product’s development, it’s a platform that people can use, change, and build upon. In addition to being consumers, users can be sounding boards for feedback during development cycles and they can also be developers who can add unexpected twists to your end-product.So, how does one embrace and leverage this new form of target audience in product design? Here are some ideas for starters:

• Release earlier. Instead of getting lost in internal feedback cycles, put the product out and get users to involve as soon as possible.
• Make polishing a parallel track. As long as the core experience is there, people can start experiencing the product, while the perfectness is improved in parallel.
• Encourage and promote mix-mash-mod. An aspiring developer can extend your product to reach a new audience in the most unexpected ways.
• Communicate the background of updates with collected feedback. After all, your users own your product, they might want to know.
• Facilitate knowledge share between users. Let people teach each other tips and tricks on how to build upon the product.
• Make your users proud of their effort. Give visibility and credit to development efforts and treat people as your collaborators.

Feel free to add if you have more.

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I am quite annoyed at the airports because of all the security check points. It’s just tiring to disassemble myself and belongings, walk 2 meters, and reassemble. However, I realized that I am even more annoyed at passport/document check points in most countries.

When I enter/exit a country, a lovely officer checks my passport and documents. And looking at my passport, they enter some numbers in the computer. It’s okay until here, they need to check if the passport is real, my documentation has official basis etc. The thing that really bothers me is that I cannot see what’s on the screen. I cannot see what the officer is looking at, and seeing what’s about me. The officer’s monitor is equipped with the screen privacy filter. I cannot see my own information unless I am sitting at the officer’s seat.

A privacy filter protecting my information from me. This makes me really uncomfortable, I feel like I am a potential suspect. This is like being in an investigation room. You are a potential suspect and someone (who you cannot see) behind the one-way mirror is identifying you.

I think I should also be able to see what the officer is looking at, so that this is a much more mutual social transaction. He does his job, I travel with less stress.

Photo credit: Shingo

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