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August 2, 2009

boing boing and baked-in sociality etc.

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Boing Boing is one of my favo­rite blogs. It’s also one of the most widely-read blogs in the world, and deser­vedly so.
So why is it so popu­lar? The most obvious ans­wer, “Great Con­tent” is a no-brainer. Of course it has great con­tent. Peo­ple wouldn’t read it if it didn’t.
But “Great Con­tent” is only half the story. The other half is just as impor­tant, though a little more subtle. And what is that?
Short Ans­wer: “Socia­lity”.
It’s not just that Boing Boing’s con­tent is fun to READ. It is. It’s also that Boing Boing’s con­tent is fun to SHARE.
“Wow. What a cool article. I think I’ll email it along to my friends at work. Bet­ter yet, I think I’ll men­tion it to my hun­dreds of Twit­ter follo­wers. Hell, I’ll even blog about it…“
Boing Boing has a lot of “Socia­lity” baked-in, i.e. its con­tent makes for great “Social Objects” i.e. their blog posts are great “Sha­ring Devi­ces”.
We are pri­ma­tes. We are social crea­tu­res. We like to socia­lize. And we socia­lize around objects. Boing Boing cranks out “social objects” by the ton, that we can effort­lessly pass along to our friends.
And that’s where the true value of Boing Boing lies. Will sen­ding your friend, Bob a link to this cool post about Detroit pho­to­graphers per­ma­nently change his life for the bet­ter? Pro­bably not.
But giving you something that allows you and Bob to socia­lize with each other [“Cool post, Dude!!!”] digs deep into what really mat­ters to us pri­ma­tes: Socia­li­zing i.e. Sha­ring our­sel­ves with our fellow spe­cies.
And what’s true for blogs like Boing Boing is true for any other pro­duct. It’s not what the pro­duct does that mat­ters to us so much, it’s how we socia­lize around it that mat­ters. This is why the iPhone is so suc­cess­ful. Sure, we like having all those cool apps, but being able to talk about and recom­mend cool apps to our friends [“Cool app as social object”, Exactly!], that’s what we are gene­ti­cally hard­wi­red to like even more.
Read Mark Earls if you don’t believe me…
[N.B. I didn’t coin the term “Social Object”; it was an idea I was tur­ned onto by the bri­lliant Jyri Engs­trom. Here’s a great video of Jyri spea­king about social objects in 2008.]

[Backs­tory: About Hugh. Twit­ter. News­let­ter. Book. Inter­view One. Inter­view Two. Limi­ted Edi­tion Prints. Pri­vate Com­mis­sions. Cube Gre­na­des.]

7 Responses to “boing boing and baked-in sociality etc.”

1. vasantharaj says:

   August 3, 2009 at 12:41 AM

   this infor­ma­tion is really use­ful to me, thank u
2. Jamie Lee says:

   August 3, 2009 at 2:28 PM

   What a great insight. Rea­ding your post promp­ted one of those little “a-ha!” moments that remind me how much fun lear­ning can be.
   As an iPhone jun­kie, I espe­cially appre­ciate that refe­rence and can una­bashedly relate to the truth that half the fun of having an iPhone is chat­ting with other addicts about all the great apps I’ve “dis­co­ve­red.” I have star­ted spon­ta­neous iPhone con­ver­sa­tions with wai­ters, ran­dom cof­fee house patrons, peo­ple on the street, play­ground moms, and other com­plete stran­gers. My favo­rite encoun­ters are with iPhone new­bies who are deligh­ted to have the input of a more “sea­so­ned” addict.
   Busi­ness may be busi­ness, but humans are — as you point out — “social crea­tu­res.” In per­so­nal and busi­ness rela­tionships, it always behoo­ves us to remem­ber that fact and tai­lor our com­mu­ni­ca­tions accor­dingly.
   Thanks for the moment of clarity!
3. Layne says:

   August 3, 2009 at 3:27 PM

   Hugh, we used to read (in those anno­ying books about how men and women are dif­fe­rent) that males bond over objects and fema­les over “sec­rets” or basi­cally com­mu­ni­ca­tion. I won­der if anyone’s done a study in social net­wor­king stats, by gen­der, of link sending/posting? Thanks for the Boing­Boing links — I’d not been there — go figure.
4. David Carr says:

   August 4, 2009 at 4:35 AM

   The inter­net lets the crowd raise-up the things it likes with links and tags and re-posts, and damn the things it doesn’t like with a poin­ted lack of atten­tion. Old pas­sive mes­sage, big idea, objec­tive corre­la­tive crea­tive with a big call to action, and series of key frame proof points doesn’t cut it any­more. There is too much noise: now things have to be good enough to share.
   But just because something is good enough to share and inhe­rently inte­res­ting doesn’t mean it will catch on and spread through the net­work. The work that is inte­res­ting must be struc­tu­red for the net­work, as demons­tra­ted by Sha­re­dEgg. That is the nature of suc­cess­ful Social Objects or the ideas that use them.
   Work/Ideas must allow the crowd to create nodal points within their part of the net­work. A Nodal point is a (poten­tially dis­tri­bu­ted) collec­tion of con­tent, con­ver­sa­tions and links that spread a meme/concept and cause the ideas and jour­neys around it to be resha­ped and drag­ged just like a planet’s mass influen­ces the pas­sage of time around it. It is a key point in the narra­tive of the net.
   Anything we create must also con­tain an idea that can be repro­ces­sed and pla­yed with, pas­sed on and owned.
   This gives us two key cha­llen­ges, one com­mer­cial and one socio­lo­gi­cal: (1) how do we make things that are good enough to share, and good enough to create or con­tri­bute to nodal points; and (2) how do we use crea­tive to help shape the net­work so that the nodal points it throws up in the future are use­ful and “the best for society”?
5. John R. Sedivy says:

   August 5, 2009 at 9:59 AM

   Well said — I had not con­si­de­red the aspect of socia­lity before! You are correct that great con­tent alone does not create a great blog. I believe that great con­tent is the foun­da­tion and the social expe­rience (sha­ring) is what pro­pels the bog to grea­ter heights.
6. Dan says:

   August 5, 2009 at 2:15 PM

   Your take on Boing Boing is right in line with mine. I agree that the rea­son they are so popu­lar is because their con­tent is the kind of stuff that peo­ple want to share with their friends. This gene­ra­tes the kind of natu­ral lin­king that all blog­gers want for their blogs.
7. James Cioban says:

   August 11, 2009 at 4:08 AM

   Just came across this and love the con­cep­tual fra­me­work. With the social web dri­ving so much more busi­ness today, the con­cept of mea­su­ring your marketing’s poten­tial as “social objects” is a power­ful. More busi­ness­peo­ple, espe­cially in stodgy, old-line indus­tries (e.g. auto­mo­bi­les or copiers need to grasp this sim­ple, but ele­gant idea if they want to pro­pel their mar­ke­ting from the “as-is” to the “needs-to-be” in a timely manner.