Community Guy – Jake McKee

Another win for internet privacy

Always good to see positive legal rulings:

Operators of newspaper Web sites, blogs and chat rooms that allow readers to post anonymous comments using pseudonyms do not have to readily reveal the posters’ identities in defamation suits, Maryland’s highest court ruled yesterday, further shaping an emerging area of First Amendment law in the Internet age.

The Maryland Court of Appeals reversed a lower court ruling and ordered that NewsZap.com, an online forum run by Independent Newspapers, does not have to disclose the identities of forum participants who engaged in an online exchange about the cleanliness of a Dunkin’ Donuts shop in 2006.

Twitter reaches 11% of online Americans

Wow. Still think that twitter is “pointless and dumb”?

Online microblogging services like Twitter, a popular social media tool for many media companies and television networks, are used by 11% of online Americans, according to a research report conducted by Pew Internet & American Life Project in December and released today. That’s up from 9% of online Americans using the service in November.

Back in May, Pew reported online microblogging usage at about 6% of online Americans.

Twitter users skew young, with one in five online Americans in the 18-to-24 demo using Twitter. But Pew also said the median age of a Twitter user is 31, compared to 27 for MySpace, 26 for Facebook and 40 for LinkedIn.

Facebook traffic benefits from 25 Things

I recently blogged about the TIME Magazine article that railed on the 25 Things meme. Turns out, the meme was of huge benefit for Facebook. From RWW:

According to the latest data from Compete, four times more people than usual visited the ‘Notes’ section on Facebook in January. Compete estimates that close to 20 million users used ‘Notes’ in January, while only about 4 million used it in October 2008.

But it wasn’t just the ‘Notes’ section that profited from this meme. Facebook itself saw its traffic grow by 15% in January, which represents the fourth largest single month increase in visitors to the site. In addition, 60% more profiles were created in January than in December.

We shouldn’t mock what we can’t, won’t, or don’t understand…

One of the greatest honors of my career

Over the years, I’ve had some truly great things happen in my career, including getting my childhood dream job and having one of my projects featured on the cover of Wired. I suppose there was some amount of skill involved in making these things happen, but it was also a huge amount of luck and good karma. I seem to be in the right place at the right time, having befriended and helped the right people often enough to see good things come back.

I’m proud to announce another great honor that comes out of another instance of right place and time… I’ve been invited to write the afterword for the soon to be reprinted The Cluetrain Manifesto.

That’s right, the book that changed the direction of my career will soon include my own story of how I applied the Manifesto ideas to my own job.

I’m not sure how broadcasted this reprint news is, but I’m sharing it with permission from the publisher. I’m sure you’ll be hearing more from the team soon. My afterword is but one bit of some fantastic new content that will be in the new version.

I’d like to publicly thank Tim Sullivan at Perseus Books for the invitation to participate in this awesome project, as well as for his great feedback on my story. And of course, where would we be without Doc, David, Rick, and Chris? Thanks guy; your dream is becoming a reality. Slowly, but surely. You four provided so many of us words and ideas that we were struggling to develop into coherent thoughts. In case you’re wondering if you really had any impact, Alex is proving that you did with his “Cluetrain a Day” series.

I’d also like to thank my former LEGO boss and LEGO Direct business unit founder, Brad Justus. If not for Brad, I’d never had had the opportunity to be part of building something worthy of writing about.

I’ll pass along more information about the reprint release as soon as the Cluetrain folks and/or Perseus Books publishes it. I’m still honored beyond belief, and can’t wait to see my story in print!

VIDEO: Measuring Community ROI

Two interesting watches on the topic of Community ROI:

Read this before the end of the year

Flickr’s George Oates wrote an amazing article about the lessons the Flickr team has learned over the years. This is, quite literally, a must read for anyone dealing with online community.

George introduces the article:

People don’t like being told what to do. We like to explore, change things around, and make a place our own. Hefty design challenges await the makers of websites where people feel free to engage; both with the system itself and with each other. Embrace the idea that people will warp and stretch your site in ways you can’t predict—they’ll surprise you with their creativity and make something wonderful with what you provide.

At Flickr, we’ve worked very hard to remain neutral while our members jostle and collide and talk and whisper to each other. Sharing photos is practically a side-effect. Our members have thrilled and challenged us—not just with their beautiful photography, but by showing us how to use our infrastructure in ways we could have never imagined.

It’s only in hindsight and with analysis that the strategies I share in this article have emerged.

Seriously, what are you waiting for? Go. Read. This. Article!

Randy Farmer Interview [VIDEO + Transcript]

A few months back, I interviewed the ever intelligent Randy Farmer for the OCRN. The interview was one of the better interviews I’ve conducted, due entirely to the impressive wealth of knowledge that Randy offered up. Shortly after the interview, Randy forwarded me the transcript of the interview, but I failed to post it.

That is remedied here, as well as a reminder of the link. Thanks again to Randy!

(Interview and transcript both after the break!)

More »

Handling fan enthusiasm during frustrating times

Fans are enthusiastic.

That’s a bit obvious, but worth noting. There’s a strange dynamic between organizations and their fans, where those working for the organization tend to lose their enthusiasm for the product/business. Over time, even the coolest products become “just a job”, and dealing with those fans can cause some employees to get irritated.

Such was the case with the Cleveland Browns general manager recently:

BEREA, Ohio — Cleveland Browns general manager Phil Savage has apologized to a fan for sending a profane e-mail following Monday night’s game against the Buffalo Bills.

Savage used an expletive in his response to the fan, who criticized the GM in several e-mail exchanges.

“It happened after the game,” Savage in an e-mail to The Associated Press. “There had been previous e-mails from him over the months and enough was enough. We have both apologized to each other since. The Browns’ fans have overwhelmingly been supportive of me over the past 3-plus seasons and I appreciate that greatly.”

Savage’s biggest mistake wasn’t replying to the fan, or even letting his frustration show through. Emotion can and should be shown as part of fan communications; emotion is what makes it a personal communication rather than CorporateSpeak.

Savage screwed up when he let his emotions get the better of him and his communication turned into something he wasn’t proud of. Cussing is never appropriate in dealing with fans; it’s weak communication at best. Savage was clearly irritated with the fan who had been hounding him for some time, and was pushed to the limit and lashed out.

To Savage’s credit, he followed up and apologized. So did the fan. This story turned out OK, but who’s to say it wouldn’t have turned into an internet frenzy just as easily?

Letting your emotions come through in a limited, controlled fashion is all part of great fan communication. Letting your emotions run wild is not. Never reply/post angry or irritated, and most of the time you want to re-read your fan communications with a buffer of at least 10 minutes.

It’s just safer that way.

(Photo from bearklektor)

More cool moderation services

Yesterday I pointed out Crisp Thinking as an example of the maturation of moderation services. Here’s one more example to back up my theory; check out Keibi:

The Keibi Moderation Suite® is a solution for the moderation and classification of user generated content (UGC). We help Online Communities discover and remove inappropriate content to optimize advertising inventory and improve revenue opportunity.

How It Works…

The Keibi Moderation Suite quickly processes large volumes of UGC – Images, Animations, text and Video both uploaded and on remotely hosted sites – and holistically grades it by looking at multiple signals such as individual item score, account it came from, and past history of violations. Potentially inappropriate items and accounts are prioritized for Moderator analysis. A unique users interface optimally designed for high throughput processing allows Moderators to quickly review items from multiple accounts simultaneously, easily investigate the location and author of questionable material, and pinpoint where problem content is most likely to appear.

… And Learns

The solution also builds intelligence overtime, essentially learning what you deem inappropriate, and which specific accounts are chronic abusers of terms of use. By incorporating past decisions in future assessments, the solution continually improves grading performance overtime, which further improves the efficiency of moderation efforts.

A Comprehensive Solution for Moderation Teams

Moderators simply click on an item to toggle through decision states choosing to Accept, Delete or Escalate. They can also classify their reason for choosing to Delete a Text item as Obscene, Racist, Violent or Abusive. An Alert system allows Moderators to forewarn others working on an aggregate Section or Account level of their decision against an individual item. Managers can view the activity level of individual moderators, conduct quality assurance testing to ensure terms of use are uniformly enforced, and leverage business intelligence reports to assess the overall risk of inappropriate content on the site.

Does anyone have any experience with Keibi?

Moderation Services are Maturing

My friend Tamara at eModeration turned me onto Crisp Thinking , a provider of community moderation software that helps live moderators make faster, better decisions. She says great things about them, and as one of the top experts in the field of moderation, when she speaks, I listen.

The clever people in our business have spent several years researching and developing a range of tools specifically designed to protect children from online predators. The first of these tools delivers long-range protection by monitoring, analysing and assessing online relationships as they develop over a period of time. It does this by examining live chat and instant messenger conversations. We call it the Engine for Relationship Analysis, or ERA™ for short. The ERA reads between the lines of these conversations, examining behaviour and providing an insight into what motivations correspondents really have.

But that’s not all. We’ve also developed another tool that protects children by scanning message dialogue for key words and phrase patterns. We call this the Engine for Content Analysis (ECA™).The ECA provides medium-range protection by searching for the specific content that can be an indicator for the types of harmful behaviour we’ve trained the ERA to uncover. As well as certain types of sexual and profane language, the ECA also looks for personal information such as phone numbers or addresses, the disclosure of which may compromise a child’s safety in the “real world”.

Finally, we’ve constructed a system to help virtual communities who host live chat facilities shield their young users from inappropriate content and enforce their codes of conduct. This is the Real-time Message Filter (RMF™). The RMF offers short-range protection by either screening out or blocking completely any inappropriate content before it reaches its intended recipient.

Has anyone used Crisp Thinking?