This entry was posted on Sunday, March 1st, 2009 at 6:05 am and is filed under Business Factors, Change Factors, Choice Factors, Market Factors, Strategic Factors, Systemic Factors. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
03 1st, 2009
All problem situations, regardless of the specific kind of problem, have the same general structure. The three elements of this structure are:
1. the problem state
2. the solved state, and
3. the solution path.
The practical implications of the general problem structure for social networks and the operators of the medium are the requirements to specify very clearly the outcomes users want vs. the current outcomes produced by the operators (What Is), those users want the operators to change (What Should Be), and to search for a solution that closing the gap of differences in outcomes.
The Problem of Change
Generally speaking users of social networks want to use the technology for personal and professional economic gains. Operators of networks currently are keeping the majority, if not the entirety, of economics generated from user participation.
Additionally there is other change requirement for the adult and business segments including:
1. Security of individual identities
2. Security for ecommerce transaction
3. Integration of live video conferencing
4. User centric advertising income opportunities
5. User customization and control over content, connections and applications
This separation of current conditions vs. desired conditions are the driving issues of force which are constraining the truly explosive opportunities presented by the medium of social networks.
That all problems may be viewed as having a change or process component should lead users and operators to realize they could and should consider the problems with which the general market is grappling as general problems of change as well as specific problems of behavior and incentives for change.
Force Field Analysis
The current situation – In the case of users of social networks, the current behavior patterns of the operators — may be viewed as a response to a complex set of interacting and essentially opposing forces. Lewin termed this a field of forces. Many behaviorists might call it the “imbalance of consequences.”
The likelihood that operators will or won’t engage in any particular changes is governed in large part by their expectations or predictions of the effects and consequences of changes in relation to their goals and objectives; in other words, the extent to which it serves their purposes.
Operators want to increase economic gains, users want the opportunity for economic gains. All market matrix indicate that advertising spend is up for online advertisers. Businesses are moving to the medium but with concern for security. Users are getting creative; entrepreneurs are launching their own networks with different models.
What don’t market makers and market leaders apply thought leadership and simply close the gap between operator’s wants and user desires? The difference is one of thinking abundantly with possibilities or with scarcity and control of the current environment.
What say you?
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January 13th, 2009 at 7:37 pm
[...] media expert, Jay Deragon, explores how the force field analysis can be applied to to uncover hidden opportunities in the social media space by closing the expectation gap between the social network operators [...]
January 13th, 2009 at 7:46 pm
Jay,
I liked your application of the force field analysis to speak to uncovering hidden opportunities, or rather identifying opportunities that most may be too closed to see.
Keep up the great posts!
Michael Deutch
September 13th, 2009 at 2:09 am
found your site on stumbleupon and i liked your site..