Once upon a time, I had a plug-in for Winamp that did something I thought was insanely cool. While I listened to the music, it would make a webpage of the last bunch of songs that I had finished listening to that was nice and neat. Periodically, I could update my website with this page, and had a link that said something to the effect of “click here to check out what I am listening to.” Once the user clicked, they were taken to the oh-so-cute page of music listings. It was one little way that I could say to the world, or whomever was at my site, “hey, check out some of what I have! Maybe some of it will be interesting to you!”

If I was so inclined, it could even be configured to FTP the page to my server automatically once the page was updated so my site could in theory have the latest most up to date version of my listening habits. I never did that, but it was there.

You may have noticed the last.fm link on the sidebar of my blog. This site does exactly that, and more. Rather than FTP a page to my server, it updates its server with the last song that I listened to. Rather than overwrite a page, it uses a database for more effective use of technology. But the magic is in the fact that not only do I do that, others do too. And so, I can see what other people are listening to, something new might pop out at me, and I can find other people that are also interested in a particular obscure band or format. This makes the same thing that I did before broader. It makes it social.

The technology itself isn’t daunting. Rather than move pages to my server, I update a database on my server. And not just me. Others make accounts and update the database with their listening habits as they happen. It seems so simple. Why didn’t I think of something like that?

There are a lot of seemingly simple ideas that are floating around the technology realm that is improving user experience and the value created with interacting with whatever site. So why isn’t more of that happening? In her post “Adopt Early, Adopt Often”, Suw Charman makes the case that a lot of companies are too slow on their development cycles and need to adopt at a more rapid pace. Interesting post; however, there may be legal constraints for rapid fire adoption. Banks and other financial organizations, for example, might have various due diligence processes that must be adhered to, either for internal controls or legal compliance. Also, the posting doesn’t explain how to avoid just adopting the flavor of the week, the X is the New Black sort of thing, which would have the adverse effect of incurring continuous changeover costs with successive adoptions. These costs may or may not be trivial. While customers would probably respond favorably to incremental improvements, rapid fire adoption might leave the customer with a feeling of confusion, that the experience is too chaotic. Finally, one has to adopt the technology in a productive manner, not just do the “me too” instantiation, like was pointed out in her “How can anyone get a blog this wrong?” post. Grabbing any implementation for the sake of simply saying that something was adopted will not do. The technology itself, and more importantly how it fits in with current practices and models with both its enhancements and limitations, needs to be properly understood. Otherwise, you will be jumping on the next Beta Max or Microsoft Bob.

At the other end of the spectrum is avoiding anything new or being a foot dragging traditionalist. Quite possibly that mindset was at the law firm mentioned in the “How can anyone get a blog this wrong?” post. Since paper is the natural output of the legal process, and the firm is likely to be cultured organizationally to tend in that direction, how can PDF not be anything but a natural progression? Failing to see the limits of the medium of PDF (slower load times over the web and use of plug-ins for a browser) and the advantage of what the technology offers (HTML is a markup much like PDF in a general sense) leads to a failed implementation. It is even conceivable that the implementation was done quickly in line with the rapid fire adoption. Given the likelihood that the PDF documents already exist, or are easily generated in line with normal office practice in this case, it would be trivial to move them to a directory on a web server, and update the index page dynamically.

But, proper implementation can lead to a success, synthesizing something that gives a value that wasn’t there before. For a breakdown of how the BBC implemented various technologies, see SHiFT: Euan Semple – The Quiet Revolution. By enabling the conversations in the corporation, even a large corporation like the BBC, information can get out and the talents of the organization as a whole can be better utilized. All it takes is a little forum, a little talking.

This is social computing, doing away with outside consultants, arbiters of the ‘what’ and ‘how’ a company should implement something. Consultants have their own interests, which may not be the company’s. Or the consumers. This is a success story.

Consultants, mind you, need not be the Mid-Town Agency type with expensive threads, power ties, and other trappings of success. Consultants are any agency that is used to filter out what is available and what is suitable for our tastes and standards. Or wallet. We use a consultant when we look at the movie listings in a newspaper. The paper is a consultant of what is important in the world, what cultural pop stars are on the rise, and what time that latest box office rave is playing. Similarly when we tune to our favorite Top 40 format radio stations. The paper gets the news feeds, condenses them, decides what is and is not important for their circulation. Same with the radio station; if it is owned by a major company like Radio One or Clear Channel, it is getting from a central source all the available input and a prepackaged decision as to market suitability. Consultants are also the mavens in your life that you look too to provide expert advice, be it a lawyer, a doctor, or that girlfriend of yours who always knows the least little bit about every song ever made.

The choke point for putting information or creative output in the hands (or minds) of consumers is the distribution channel. There are a thousand movies to see. There are even more books. Tom Shone writes in the New York Times Book Review (“Criticism for Beginners”, Dec 17, 2006, p. 27) that there are 10,000 new novels produced every year, which he calculates would take 163 lifetimes to read. This is obviously information overload, and one single person cannot possible get to all of that vast information solely. The lowering of distribution barriers will only increase that output and is addressed in “The democratisation of everything and the curators who will save our collective ass”. Consultants, like Big Media Journalists, are the curators of information. By using social computing, we enable a large scale increase of the amount of information and experience that can be tapped into. Keeping in mind ‘Sturgeon’s Law’, we can still get out the useful information from within, and develop a closer sense of communication, a togetherness almost. Humans are social animals, and the place we spend half the waking hours, work, needs to meet our needs of communication. Social computing allows for a dialog rather than dialectic with information flow and creativity.

Ms. Charman makes an interesting distinction. Previously, we had gatekeepers. They had the access to things like games, movies, concerts, books, what have you, and told us what was worthwhile. Now, with social computing, we don’t need gatekeepers. Each of us has access to a piece of something. Using social computing, via MySpace or last.fm, we share that information. Competing ideas come in and varied opinions are shared. The need now is not for a gatekeeper that has access to the totality, the need is for curators to help sort through the potential information overload. There is a subtle distinction here. I can go to a museum and have a curator point me in a particular direction and guide me through the exhibits as the expert. But that does not stop me for being able to wander around seeing all of the display items on my own without any outside input. And the cost to change curators of information with social computing is minimal.

Certainly, there will be a need for expert advice on particular issues. We will still need to see doctors for disease diagnosis and treatments. But, with blogs and wikis, we will be better armed with available information and a more knowledgeable patient. Similarly, lawyers will still present briefs on behalf of petitioners, but again, the client is able to prepare herself better with the availability of legal codes on the web.

Steve Yelvington, summarized the shift in relationship of producer, consumer, and arbiter this way:

The end of mass media. Here’s what the 20th century gave us: A population of consumers whose economic role was to eat what they’re served and pay up. These “people formerly known as the audience” are alienated, disengaged and angry. Instead of setting our sights on building a nation of shopkeepers, bankers and passive consumers, what if we set our sights on building a nation of participants in cultural and civic life? Perhaps this world where everyone can be a publisher will not be such a bad place.

The customer in a social computing context is no longer a passive consumer. Now, the consumer is active, seeking out, or simply exposed to much more, things worth retelling, the good things, the curiosities, and the irrelevant. They no longer have to take what is given to them. They can find something else. In fact, they might already have a couple of ideas of where to start.