I posted my first experiences with Twitter quite a while ago in May 2009. Since then it was difficult for me to actually participate in an effective way. Reading all the posts I was interested in and posting useful information myself. I still kept spending so much time on the platform, forgetting about all those other things I needed to do. Twitter became one of the tools, I loved to use for input, but I got overwhelmed by all the information, just like my google reader, which was stuffed with subscribtions of so many interesting blogs, that the “1000+” – sign is something I got used to an eternity ago.

Collective intelligence on the other hand was a term I stumbled upon in the beginning of this year, so while I was already using twitter. That there might be a connection between those two didn’t occur to me until month later. But how did I get to know collective intelligence? If I remember correctly did I watch a video from a German professor (Prof. Dr. Peter Kruse), who is engaged in research about collective intelligence.

In this video he explains what the term means (Wikipedia tells us: Collective intelligence is a shared or group intelligence that emerges from the collaboration and competition of many individuals.) and why it will be very important in the future, when information is free for everyone in the internet and only how good a person is able to  sort and evaluate this mass of information will determine how high someone climbs in a company’s hierarchy.

So when you think about it, social media, the internet and all of it finally offers tools to nurture the formation of collective intelligence. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) even has a center of collective intelligence. They mention Google, Wikipedia and Innocentive as the most important examples of collective intelligence on the internet.

A good article about the O’Reilly Web 2.0 Expo mentioning collective intelligence is from Heather Havenstein at Computerworld. She wrote: “While Web 2.0 technologies may have struggled in the past against criticism that they are self-indulgent time-wasters, Web 2.0 is now being touted as a collection of ground-breaking applications that can harness the collective intelligence of a multitude of users.”

So how exactly can Twitter help us sort / evaluate information?

Twitter is a way to spread information, which is useful to oneself to friends, colleagues or business partners. If the information is crap you either get called on it or nothing happens. But if the information is actually considered good in any way it will be shared = retweeted. Each person who shares this information read it and evaluated it before sharing, so you can say that a post, which got shared a certain amount of times contains valuable information.

BUT it is hard to say if 2 times is good or 10 times is already enough. I believe that information, which gets retweeted by a rather small group of people is likely to just be useful to them. For example the information, that you should add salt to water only when it is boiling and not in the beginning or the water will take more time to boil, might only be useful to hobby chefs, but not too a vast majority of internet users. As a consequence, information, which gets shared a really high number of times is information, useful to the majority of users. Objections?

So to see if an article is good. I could post it and count the clicks on my tiny URL or the RT (Bit.ly shows you both). Or I read a tweet form a person then copy the link or information and search it using Twitter Search. A problem is that people sometimes change the text of the message they want to retweet, even the link, so they can monitor it themselves. That makes it more difficult to know how often information got shared.

Some Applications can help you organize twitter, among others there are Twitturly (ranks most tweeted URLs), Tweettronics (monitoring tool, e.g. for brands), Tweetvolume and many more. But still leaves a lot to be desired.

Power distance is one of the four dimensions of cultural variation identified by Hofstede. He defines it as the extent to which the less powerful members of organizations (and similar systems) within a nation expect and accept that power is distributed unequally.

That practically means that in countries with high power distance (Asian, African, Latin American..), the employees expect the boss to give orders and they won’t criticise his desicions or give suggestions (among other characteristics). In countries with low power distance (North America, Netherlands…), the relationship between the boss and the inferior is more equal, the superior asks for his employees opinion and they more often call them on their mistakes.

In front of this background I thought about the experiences I had when researching on Asian Websites, which I did during my internship in Taipei. Those are the features on these websites, which could have been caused by the high power distance:

• organization charts – one person on the top
• message from the CEO prominently placed
• often absence of corporate blogs or any other envolvement of employees
• almost no pictures of “real” employees (as the people behind the brand)
• …

These are a few I thought are the most obvious. I’d like to know about your experiences surfing Asian websites!

low-context vs. high-context

These are terms first used by E.T. Hall to describe an attribute of communication. In relation to this context is ‘the information that surrounds an event’ (Hall & Hall, 1990) The opposite of context is text, which is according to Hall ‘the coded explicit, transmitted part of the message’ (Hall, 1976).

To make this concept clear and accessible to you I’ll tell you a little story:
Karl from Germany is studying Chinese Culture together with Monika. When they invite their Chinese friends Ling and Nan over for dinner, Ling gives them a wrapped box. Karl takes the gift and says “Thanks”, but the moment he makes a move to unwrap it, Monika says: “Karl” and gives him a special look. Karl understands and puts the gift aside.

The text in this communication is “Thanks” and “Karl”, but the context is more interesting, because the context behind “Karl” is rather large. Monika and Karl share the same knowledge about Chinese culture, which includes the custom of Chinese to unwrap gifts only when their guests are gone, in order to hide their feelings concerning it. This is a method to protect their guest’s and their own “face“. So Monika actually reminded Karl of this principle by simply calling him by his name. A different person, which doesn’t share the context would not have been able to understand this message.
According to that cultures with high-context communication generally use less text and more context, for example Chinese or Asians. Cultures with low-context communications use more text than context.

That’s why you would expect the German website of Yahoo to have more text than the Chinese or Taiwanese one, which is not the fact. This is the contradiction I mentioned above and which threw me a curve.
Just now I was able to create a theory explaining WHY.

Since Germans are used to low-context communications they put their message across in an effective way using a certain amount of text. But Chinese are used to high-context, so since in the web, there is hardly any context, they try to make up for it by more text which leads to bigger websites than the ones of low-context cultures.

But here I have to state that this is only one possible explanation. Aside from culture which influences communication there are several factors which we shouldn’t forget. What kind of website are we dealing with here? How big is the target group they are focussing on? What characteristics does this target group have? And what goals is the company trying to achieve with the website.
I am just trying to give all this yet another angle.

To demonstrate what I mean and analyze it I picked out the website of yahoo for Taiwan and the USA.

You can clearly see that the page of Yahoo USA is offering less information.
So what did Yahoo Taiwan do differently?

• the “sign in – field” is bigger and has more options
• advertising (acer, LG and a housing project)
• less news (above acer ad) and more shopping (shoes, mobile phones, cosmetic)
• when you view the page in your browser you’ll also notice that the Taiwanese site is longer
• less icons

(to only name a few)

I asked myself: Why do they do it that way?
Obviously their customers are different. Consequently does the difference between Chinese and Americans (please excuse my generalization here) dictate the way Yahoo sets up their websites.

And in general it’s a culture difference, because culture is:

“the system of shared beliefs, values, customs, behaviors, and artifacts that the members of a society use to cope with their world and with one another, and which is transmitted from generation to generation through learning“ Bates DG, Plog F: Cultural Anthropology. New York, McGraw-Hill, 1990, p 7

If the members of a society use their culture as a “tool” to deal with the world, it is no wonder it should influence the design of websites online.  In the next few posts I will describe some aspects of culture, which are most influential for web design.

Somehow I had assumed I would write it in German, since I am German. But just today I realized that this might not be the best way to do it and looking into the problem some more, I discovered that there are more advantages than disadvantages for writing my thesis in English:

PRO:

• the thesis will reach a wider audience
• international marketing opportunities, e.g.:
  • link on website to download sites: Scribd, Docstock, Grin
  • job-hunting: HR staff can read thesis
• it is possible to find a native speaker for corrections
• a lot of marketing terms are in English (or mostly used in English)
• most of the resources are in English
• I consider my English sufficient enough

CON:

• It is not my native language
• finding a native speaker for correction is more complicated
• possibility of problems with staff of my university (unconfirmed)
• little knowledge about American / English formatting standards for dissertations

I think everybody, not only students, who write their thesis about something concerning the Internet or international issues, should consider writing their thesis in English.

I am of the opinion that every topic is of international interest nowadays.

For example: When you write a thesis about “the German taxation system for small and medium sized companies in Hamburg” it might not only be interesting to Germans. Companies considering to open an office there might be interested in this research in order to determine whether their plans convenient or they might consider another location. Moreover it might help them to deal with the taxation issues during their start-up period.

You can see that you might just not know to whom your research could be of benefit.

This opens up a great opportunity for you to promote yourself and your work. Additionally to the advantages of writing a thesis in English, which I mentioned above, if you have a personal website it is always good to give something away for free. This can build credibility and drive more people to your website by word-of-mouth.

Now I will see if I can eliminate or diminish the disadvantages.

My 20 first steps:

1. account/domain – at fatcow.com for hosting my website

2. wordpress – install (get it installed)

3. disquis – for comments on my posts

4. twitter – get an account & start tweeting

5. FTP – download FileZilla & learn how to use it

6. theme – choose a free one, upload with FTP and modify it for own use

7. post – my first post, tweet about it

8. plugins

      a. feedburner

      b. Google analystics

      c. SEO

9. blogs – read, read and read to further knowledge

10. Google Reader – install and add blogs to organize information & share via twitter

11. resume – add to website & link it

12. wordpress 2.8.1

13. twitterlater – automation tool, e.g. send “Thanks for follow” messages

14. motivation statement – write a first edition and add to website

15. email – for www.christinarogge.com

16. linkedIn – connect with new twitter friends

17. input – attend presentations, networking events, read books, listen to people

18. networking – events, websites, social media – connect it all to my website

19. target group – who do I want to reach?

20. job opportunities – find jobs online via new social media tools

You can see that it looks pretty chaotic and not very strategic, but I mentioned in my post “Just do it! the nice-approach” already, that to get things done you just have to do them! That obviously also raised a lot of issues along the way:

My 10 first problems:

1. how can my posts be of use to others?

2. how can I be innovative?

3. picture build in post screws up layout

4. when pasting text from word to wordpress editing problems occur

5. feeling of information overload

6. twitter account suspended

7. following people on twitter I never followed

8. google reader won’t open in Windows explorer

9. Is my English writing good enough?

10. wordpress telling me things I don’t understand, e.g. “All in One SEO Pack must be configured. Go to the admin page to enable and configure the plugin.”

Some of the problems are not solvable, but manageable, like the information overload. The twitter account suspension was apparently their fault. They wrote on their status site, that it was an accident. All the other difficulties I expect to overcome within time and by gathering more experience.

My 5 steps for the future:

1. Tag cloud – install when there are enough posts

2. twitter tools – research and install useful ones (tweetdeck)

3. new theme – get a more professional theme with more features and less bugs

4. motivation statement – re-editing

5. posts – increase value for readers

And of course: Continue regularly tasks & identify more future steps!

Fortunately I have a friend, Alex Trup, who took me under his wing and patiently explained several things to me. Like how I should find a wordpress theme and edit it, or that Disqus is more powerful than the wordpress commenting system.

He also pointed out how important twitter is nowadays and that I should register an account. It made me remeber that I came across twitter on several levels recently: Jon Steward was making jokes about it on “The Daily Show”, I got an invitation from a friend to join twitter and on the professional networking website XING Nicole Simon, a member of the group “Global Business Women”, announced publishing a book about twitter (in German) called “Twitter – Mit 140 Zeichen zum Web 2.0“. This book explains twitter, its history and influence and gives recommendations about how to use it effectively. So now I am on twitter as well. It is to early for me to give a profound opinion about it, but it is exciting.

The major realization which struck me was that it is important to just do it. Start the website although one does not know everything about it yet. Because the Internet is developing so fast, you can try to plan, but will never know if it is outdated by the time you are ready to implement. I do understand the common fear of having a website online that might misrepresent oneself. I did fear this myself: “What will a possible employer think, when he comes across my site?”, “Is my English sufficient enough?” and “Will I be able to come up with enough interesting posts?” In some aspects I still haven’t overcome those fears, but they make me strive for improvement.

 I am not entirely a website-virgin, but taking a serious approach to create a professional website is challenging. Not only do I have the incentive of branding and marketing myself through this website, but I also chose to make this project the topic of my Bachelor thesis, working title “Self-Marketing in Web 2.0″.

In the process of establishing and constantly improving this website I might make rather drastic changes, but I welcome you to comment on them or give recommendations. I will certainly appreciate it.