Opening Note

Intuitively, we know that individual values, qualities of leadership, and character play a vital role in the success of organizations, societies and markets, and yet their impact are terribly difficult to measure empirically. Now that tens -- indeed hundreds of millions of people are spending a significant portion of their social, recreational, and economic lives online, there is an unprecedented opportunity to analyze rigorously people's online behaviors and the interaction of individual values, reputations, and social institutions.

Furthermore, should it be possible to demonstrate the measurable effect of individual and institutional values upon economic and social outcomes for online activities, it might also be possible to design value and reputation-based social technologies to improve a wide variety of online activities: economic production, social co-operation, digital media, education, and scientific research.

One of the key challenges, however, will be to capture and organize the right kind of data so that they can be analyzed in a meaningful way to measure the effects of values. For instance, my fellow fellow at the Berkman Center, John Clippinger, is working towards undertaking this task by developing a 'meta' social network of networks, layering on top of existing social networks, where natural experiments can be performed with large samples of subjects who are naturally pursuing online social and economic lives. While Clippinger focuses on social networks, my other colleague Gene Koo and myself are interested in this domain by way of 'pro-social' values of games.

One of the major obstacles to producing commercially successful games that convey pro-social values and behaviors is finding talented game developers who not only share the vision of pro-social gaming but who also have the resources and the skills to create compelling games that appeal to broad audiences, including disadvantaged youth.

However, it is not enough to have engaged talented game makers; game publishers have to be convinced there are markets significant enough for pro-social titles that they are willing to invest the required resources to produce such games with or without additional financial underwriting. The cost of developing a modern, commercially viable game have become so extravagant that game developers are increasingly unwilling to take risks on untested ideas like pro-social games. Violent games are not only proven in the market but are also backed by developers with the experience needed to deliver profitable titles. By contrast, games that are not only social but pro-social lack market credibility and developers expert in their creation.

We believe that, although some advocates worry that games depicting violence might promote aggressive behaviors in players, games also have the potential to advance pro-social values and behaviors. After all, games offer choices, and such choices could invoke ethical, civic, or moral dilemmas.

We are now framing a research project focusing on those pro-social values: social entrepreneurship (games that inculcate the values, skills, and behaviors necessary to build businesses with “double bottom lines”), compassion (games that lead to provoke reflection about other persons and invoke a desire to alleviate physical, emotional, or mental suffering, particularly where such efforts would require a significant cost or sacrifice), fairness (games that raise the question of what constitutes fair play, explore the costs/benefits of cheating, or invites players to structure new rules of fairness), and trust (games that demonstrate the causes, costs, and benefits of reliability, reputation, or deception; our primary focus should be on the value of or dilemmas associated with trustworthiness, not strategic analysis of whom to trust).

Some examples of working hypotheses that we intend to test include:

• Pro-social values have no positive impact upon the outcomes of the social and economic production of social networks.
• Pro-social values are only evolutionary stable strategies for 'repeat games.'
• Pro-social values are only evolutionary stable when reputation scores are visible and cannot be changed or forgiven.

Every few weeks, some folks from the GAMBIT games lab at the Program in Comparative Media Studies at MIT and the Berkman Center here at Harvard come together to discuss these and other issues surrounding pro-social games. Some of our thoughts make it to our blog.

I also welcome you to the 10th anniversary celebration of the Berkman Center to be held on May 15 and 16. There is a special session covering valuable games on Friday, May 16, called "The Dilemma of Games: Moral Choice in a Digital World," led by Gene Koo, some GAMBIT members, and myself. We will focus on ways games may promote such values as compassion, charity, or sacrifice. Can they marry these values to the kind of "systems thinking" that games promote and which are becoming more vital in our networked world?

WGBH, the renowned public television station, is launching a transmedia TV show and game that tackles these questions head-on. In this workshop, we seek your input in shaping this project that aims to teach children about environmental systems and their own choices within that system.

For more information look here.

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Closing Note

Around the Consortium in the last few months, we have been giving a lot of thought to the term "viral marketing" and the ways in which content can be passed along through online social networks. We've also been thinking of the complimentary concepts of stickiness and spreadability. Henry Jenkins, C3's founder, has theorized that "sticky" content, designed to draw in audiences, has given way to "spreadable" content, designed to be circulated by grassroots intermediaries.

My latest research focuses on patterns in the most discussed and viewed video on YouTube related to the top 10 movies of summer 2007. Many of the trailers posted by the audience members had been taken down in response to copyright claims. This made me wonder about how the studios had promoted the films, and if they were relying on a sticky or spreadable model. Regardless of what was going on on YouTube, were they encouraging fan promotion and sustainable engagement by building in interactive and participatory features?

The conclusion was, simply put, no. Most of them had created fairly standard microsites with few, if any participatory features. There was a lot of reliance on interactivity and pushing audiences to a microsite, rather than on enabling audiences to participate in pulling others towards the property incorporating participatory elements. Overall, I found that most studios are relying on a sticky model for developing a film's presence online, representing a lost opportunity to invite the audience to be actively engaged with the film itself, and in promoting it.

These two newsletter pieces will examine the concepts in brief and discuss how they relate to cultivating relationships with consumers.

Two Invitations

Just about everything on the web is, by nature, interactive - in navigating through a site and accessing content, we interact with it. However incorporating participatory elements in a site, let alone elements that encourage pass-along and "viral diffusion" of content are indicative of not just the available technology, but the type of relationship that an organization wants to cultivate with it's consumers. They are different types of invitations.

First, let me explain how I see the differences between interactivity and participation, and how they relate to one another, based in part on Spiro Koiusis' work in the 2002 New Media & Society essay "Interactivity: A Concept Explication;" Yuping Liu and L.J. Shrum's work in the 2002 Journal of Advertising essay "What Is Interactivity and Is It Always Such a Good Thing?;" and Sally J. McMillan and Jang-Sun Hwang's work in the 2002 Journal of Advertising essay "Measure of Perceived Interactivity."

Interactivity, in its simplest form, enables consumer to access and control the flow of information they receive online by sending commands through a device to a server. The most basic website, with links from the home page to other pages or sites, is interactive.

Interactive sites or applications are often designed to be sticky, pushing information seeking audiences to return repeatedly to a destination to locate data or access a community. A website that is interactive, not participatory, puts the control and power over content, rents, and norms in the hands of the site owner.

It often enables personalization but restricts it to specific parameters determined by the owner, and limits opportunities for identity performance. Focusing on interactivity limits risks for a company or brand by keeping control of the site squarely in the hands of a small group or an individual.

Participation encourages spreadability because it puts more control over what content is seen and shared in the hands of consumers. The audience not only controls the information flow, but contributes to the information itself by rating, commenting, tagging, editing, posting, creating, and sharing content. Some of the risks that participation does not mitigate can actually be beneficial, most notably content that "goes viral."

Interactivity vs. Participation?

None of this is to suggest that participation is superior to interactivity - in fact, the best websites successfully combine elements of both. Many of the most popular sites - such as MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, eBay, Wikipedia and Craigslist - are comprised of both interactive and participatory elements, and often blend the two very successfully. To keep audiences returning to the site, they provide a store of information, but also encourage participation and spreadability of certain elements within and beyond the site.

Social networks rely on a model of invitations and network effects, so a user has both incentive to join and stay, but they promote participation above and beyond finding and friending. For example, MySpace and Facebook both offer a Newsfeed feature which combines interactivity and participation to facilitate viral diffusion with minimal effort or intrusion for users or their networks. The Newsfeed is interactive in that users log on to see it, and can click on links to learn more about the people, events, and information that is listed. This is combined with a strong participatory element: all of the content is derived from the participatory actions of users on the site (and with Facebook Beacon, their purchases elsewhere on the web), from making connections with other users to joining groups, becoming fans, installing applications, rating movies or music, RSVP-ing to an event, and a host of other activities.

The newsfeed is a sort of passive spreadability: the user controls what appears in the Newsfeed and has agency over that information, but does not have to take another step to inform people in the network. The Newsfeed further enables spreadability by inviting the network to interact with the page, learn more about what their friend has done, follow suit if they are interested, and then the cycle begins again when their that action is displayed to their whole network. Although this lacks the direct nature of a word of mouth (WOM) campaign, it retains the advantages of endorsement and trust as a "user generated" marketing effort.

Spreadability can also be a more active proposition, requiring more direct participation by the user to decide how, when, and to whom the content will be sent. For example, YouTube offers users a variety of options to spread content across the site and to other users using a variety of very simple, convenient methods, as shown in this screenshot (from this page):

Getting audiences to come back to a site implies revenue from advertising and, more indirectly, loyalty and affinity to a brand. A balance of stickiness and spreadability are a way for these sites to facilitate diffusion of content throughout various networks, and ensure that audiences keep coming back for those features.

The second part of this piece will appear as the Closing Note in next week's C3 Weekly Update.