Two very simple games of experimental economics can decode the rules of the blogosphere and the web. They expose basic functions of the society - of any society - and consequently teach us how to be better bloggers, surfers, users, contributors.

The Ultimatum Game

A very interesting game in experimental economics is the Ultimatum Game. It takes place between two players, who play it only once.
An amount of money (lets say 100$) is to be shared between the players. A coin is flipped to determine which player will decide how the money will be split. The other player, the “responder” can either accept the deal and the money is split as the first player proposed or he can refuse the deal and neither player gets any money. The game is simple, but the results stand against any rational thinking:

• 2/3 of the experimental subjects offer between $40-$50.

• Only 4% offers less than $20 and

• more than the half of the responders reject offers smaller than 20% of the total.

The Public Goods Games

A development of the Ultimatum Game is the Public Goods Game.
In this game 4 participants have to decide how much to invest in a common pot. Each one has a starting amount of money and the option to keep what they don’t invest in the pot. The total amount invested (each decides without knowing how much the others invested), is multiplied and then divided equally among the players.
But this game is played in rounds and after each round the amount invested by each player is revealed.
Also in some of the games, players were allowed to spend part of their pool for the privilege of fining each other.
In other games, the players were rotated among different groups, so that individuals did not have the opportunity to encounter each other again.
The results of the game are intriguing:

• In the games, where fining was allowed participators made more generous contributions in the pot, but without the punishment collaboration collapsed.

• Even though there was no possibility for future interaction, very often players punished free riders and reported that they did it because they were angry at the cheaters.

The hidden rules of the games

Someone who knows and has studied the games can extract 3 simple rules in order to understand them.

1. People tend to be more generous than a strategy of rational self-interest predicts.
2. People will penalize cheaters, even at some expense to themselves.
3. These tendencies tend to influence individuals to behave in such ways that benefit the group.

But the reactions of the participants are not only to be seen in our ‘cultivated’ society. They seem to follow a universal pattern.

In some organisms and some human societies, individuals have been so willing to cooperate that they apparently act against their own self-interest in order to provide benefit to others. Why do antelope hunters in Tanzania and turtle fishermen off Australia expend their energy providing game for tribal feasts, even at the expense of their own families? Biologists think the answer is something called “costly signaling”: The hunters are letting others know that they are good citizens and good providers and therefore food husband and partner material.

Very often the hunters are sharing their catch at the expense of their time and their shares in order to send this “costly signal”. The others, who perceive this signal, tend to trust it because of the cost the hunters paid to signal it.
In the end this evolves to a reputation contest.

To biologists Pollock and Dugatkin, reputation evolved as a measure of an individual’s willingness to reciprocate, thereby raising the probability that the individual will be chosen as a partner in reciprocally cooperative activities like food-sharing, mating and hunting together.

So, a fourth rule emerges: reputation is the secret ingredient in cooperation.

The Cyberspace

It seems, that the way we react, when being part of a community is something coded in our DNA.
But is it really so?
The web is a place, where the conventions of identity, rules, society, space and time are very flexible. If these fundamental rules of collaborative societies would have value in the cyberspace, then we - the cyberspace inhabitants - could learn a great deal about our interactions in this non-world.

If we were to see cyberspace under the perspective of rational self interest strategies, then bloggers and users would:

• link only their friends or people who linked them first

• they would submit someones content only if he/she submitted their own

• never participated in any open source or free project

• they would never post in forums

Is there penalization in the web?
I can easily have multiple accounts in any community. I can promote my content tenfold, I can leave annoying comments on other blogs, I can delete wiki submissions and with a simple change of my IP address, remain unpunished. The only punishment is not even in the realms of the cyberspace; it incorporates the real world.

If the group behaves generously and penalizing, then this tendency will influence the individuals to be also generous. But if there is no penalty for any misbehavior, then - the game rules say - users have no reason to be generous. Instead, they act according to their self-interest.
Luckily, that’s where the stabilizing factor comes along: Reputation.

Maybe the punishment laws of the cyberspace are loose, but it works so well due to reputation.

Users with high reputation are highly acknowledged and trusted by other users. If a user has low reputation he is not trusted by many users, but it is a trust he/she can built with generosity. Similarly, when a trusted, popular user ‘misbehaves’ may not be directly penalized, but he/she will lose his/her popularity.

The lesson

If you have reached reading so far, then the lesson is pretty self-explanatory. Consider your goals when being online. Why do you participate in all these communities? Why do you blog?
To reach your goals, you have to first give something to the community. You must start building on your reputation. It is a slow process, because web users are very cautious (remember they can’t really punish you), but it is worth. In the end you will get back what you gave. Your generosity will be repaid. If you want:
…more traffic to your blog, then start by sending traffic to other blogs. Help other users start their blog, participate in their discussions.
…your submissions to reach the front page, vote other submissions first.
…better software, help the community develop better software. Send your feedback, the bugs you find,your code.

To succeed your goals in cyberspace you must be generous and patient.

They don’t know it but the comments of Terry and Paul inspired me for this post.

Howard Rheingold’s book “Smart Mobs” has been a valuable resource.

The World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland is over and surely left very good impressions to everyone. The subjects discussed varied from the future of mobile technology to water shortage and even a new kind of collaborative leadership and a new form of capitalism. All very interesting and intriguing points for the improvement of the world. This year, as most of you remember, the davos question was also hosted in youtube.

Davos on YouTube

The davos youtube channel reached 1,593 subscribers and 349,617 viewers, getting the 3rd place of the most subscribed channel this month. The purpose of the davos youtube channel was to get the voice of the public out to the economic leaders. In fact the concept of the channel got so popular, that attracted celebrities and leaders (from Bono to Tony Blair) to submit their own proposals. So google’s idea of this channel worked out pretty well.

The illusion of interaction

I have an objection here, an objection supported when the davos channel was first launched. The whole concept was to promote the views and ideas of the public; to get the word out to the economic leaders, who probably do not have much connection with the greater public.
I followed the daily davos blog with the hope of finding a single mention of a youtube video from a ‘normal’ user. I didn’t find any.
Did you? Were all submissions in the davos channel so crappy, is the public so stupid?
I find it hard to believe.
The only attempt for interaction was made by Robert Scoble, who streamed live video to his readers and asked the questions that came directly to his mobile phone (I suppose via twitter; the single reason to stay on twitter).

I’m expressing my skepticism here not generally against the Davos question, but specifically against the effort of the davos youtube channel. I get the impression, that it was just a PR move.

What do you think? How did you find the development of the davos discussion and its interactive perspective?

IT IS UNOFFICIALLY OVER.

I’m done writing my Master Thesis. The subject is Attention and Participation in the social Web.

A subject, which interested me in several posts of mine in this blog, as some of you might have noticed. A question, that is in every blogger’s mind:

When there are so many blogs out there, how do I get attention to my blog?

And I don’t mean, these “33 Ways to increase your blog traffic”. I find these posts very useful, don’t misunderstand me. They are speaking from experience. But, my main point in this thesis was to approach these questions more…well…scientifically.

My Problems

The issue, that occured to me while writing was, that many disciplines are involved in understanding and decoding the blogosphere and social networks in general: Sociology, social psychology, mass psychology, network theory, emergence, media studies.

Due to limited time (and pages), I had (and have) the feeling that I approached each discipline only at the surface. That before getting deeper into a subject, I got out and continued with another. I didn’t get to the core of each field. I saw each study, only from the perspective of attentiveness. Logical you might assume, since any other approach would abstract me from my main subject. But, still it is a worry I have.

The Wikilutions

That’s why (before presenting the thesis to my professors), I’m giving it to the public. So that everyone can read it, see how this whole network works and give something back.

It would be absolutely selfish to just give a pdf document of the thesis and simply asking for feedback. It is of course an option (you can download the *pdf here), but primarily it is about interaction. So I have uploaded the whole thesis as a wiki.

The purpose of the wiki is twofold.

1. to create a database, explaining in ’scientifical terms’ the functions and structure of social networks.
2. to invite people from different disciplines to add to the project.

Read and Participate

• So if you’re the reading/printing type of guy: download the thesis as pdf here.
• If you’re more the participate/write/critic type of guy: join the wiki community here.

Your feedback and contribution will be highly appreciated

Howard Rheingold, an authoritative figure on the study of social, political and cultural implications of technologies, launched a videoblog.

As written in Smart Mobs:

I’ve launched a video blog at http://vlog.rheingold.com and plan/hope to update it weekly. Spread the word! It all started when I started thinking about updating A Slice of Life in My Virtual Community, which I wrote twenty years ago. It didn’t take long to realize that a description of how I spend my time online these days would be conveyed more effectively via video/screencast than plain text. Once I got rolling, I realized that it would take more than one episode to show how and why I spend time reading RSS, scanning blogs, blogging, gardening wikis, posting in virtual communities, Twittering, teaching, etc. So the first month or so will feature episodes of A (re)Slice of Life Online. However, once I started including my indoor and outdoor offices in the videos, it occurred to me that I ought to explain something about the parts of my life that haven’t been so visible to my readers — the painting, gardening, sculpting that are as important to me as the publishing activities that are most visible to others.

Howard Rheingold summarizes in 4.31 minutes the development of digital media and introduces the concept of participatory media and their 3 distinct characteristics:

• many to many distribution
• evolution in social media
• development of social networks

Stay tuned for more video podcasts of the author, where “he reslices his life online.”

True communication had always language as a barrier. Any discourse above the fundamental, pantomimic level requires a common language. Although the worldwide web has brought us all much closer tearing down any sense of space, this basic obstacle in the exchange of information still remains.

Sure there is a multitude of ‘bots’, which can translate any web content, but lets face it: “Automated computer translation is decades away from producing acceptable content for most forms of communication.”

In the steps of Wikipedia, the Worldwide Lexicon calls on the collective knowledge to bring online communication in new realms. The translation of web content is in the hands of the users.

Now the project brings a new plugin, which makes translation much easier. It justs adds a small pencil in the page and by clicking on it you can start translating the site’s content.

Wisdom of crowds

The potential of abuse is quite obvious. By installing this plugin (either in your site or blog), you give everyone the opportunity to translate your content in any way he/she wishes. Still, the worldwidelexicon relies on the wisdom of crowds to aggregate information correctly. Anyone comfortable with two or more languages can choose any web page and translate its content. Meanwhile other users are also free to rate your translation and even redo it or edit it. An emergent microbehavior where many agents work to develop a macrobehavior develops.

Conclusion

Trusting the collective intelligence is, in a sense, an objective issue. It depends on the personal experiences, views and morals of each one of use. Some believe in collaborative projects like wikipedia, where no central control guides the development process. Others are looking forward to projects like the Google Knol, where they see a trustworthy source, capable of collecting high-quality data. But I’m asking you: do you believe in the wisdom of crowds?

Additional resources on worldwide lexicon;

VentureBeat

O’ReillyNet

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has started a project called Steve Tagger. According to the museum:

“Steve” is a collaborative research project exploring the potential for user-generated descriptions of the subjects of works of art to improve access to museum collections and encourage engagement with cultural content. We are a group of volunteers, primarily from art museums, who share a common interest in improving access to our collections. We are concerned about barriers to public access to online museum information. Participation in steve is open to anyone with a contribution to make to developing our collective knowledge, whether they formally represent a museum or not.

Anyone can register for free and start tagging the museum’s collection (at least the works of art displayed online)

Judy Breck has also posted an article on the smart Mobs blog about ‘smart mobby activity at the Met Museum tagging site‘

While I’m wondering if we are facing a wise crowd, initiatives like the one of the Met Museum and the davos question show that some people have complete trust in the collective intelligence.

In a previous post about aggregation of information I noted the role of the administrator, as someone who will moderate the discourse. Teut Weidemann in his interview remarked that “…total control will destroy a community pretty fast”. So indirect control actually means letting the community takes its own course and interfere only when things really go out of hand.

Learning from software

But indirect control has one more implication. Consider the StarLogo software. It is a software which demonstrates the development of bottom-up systems but also obeys to a centralized control; namely the commands of the programmer.

But the programmer does not define what will StarLogo generate. Instead he/she gives the micromotives (actions) and lets the software evolve a macrobehavior of its own. The programmer does not control the process any more.

Do you remember Gearheads, the computer game with the windup toys on a chess board? It uses the same principle. You released the toys and then it was up to them how the game would develop (sorry I couldn’t find a proper link to the game; help would be appreciated).

To summarize

So what do such software tell us? That indirect control - apart from the obvious role already mentioned - is about providing tools to the community. Tools, which will give the group the necessary input in order to nourish a healthy discussion. Now its up to you to decide the form these tools can take.

It may be questions, polls or surveys. It may be the way you moderate comments (or comment on others - they are part of your network too). Let your imagination go wild. ‘Navigating’ your community correctly, giving the right input, will draw the attention of a diverse and independent group; and in the end of the process (although you can suggest that this process sometimes never ends) the subject of discussion will be examined under many perspectives and with great objectivity.