Share / SML Network Theory

“Seek first to understand, then to be understood.”
—Steven Covey, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People: Habit 5

”Seek first to share, then to be shared.
Seek first to like, then to be liked.”
—SML Network Theory

I know a lot of people (artists in particular) who are completely dumbfounded by social media. Following the advice of their friends, they signed up on Facebook, on Instagram, on Twitter, on Flickr, on LinkedIn, because their friends told them that if they sign onto one of these networks they will gain exposure.

Yes, you will. But you need to participate. Simply creating a Facebook account and a page and not participate in anything is much like appearing on an island in the middle of nowhere and expect travel tours to flight over as a travel destination.

If you talk about other people and be interested in other people’s work, people will be curious about your work in return. The same philosophy opined by Covey is the same in social media.

But be sincere about it — often I see companies / brands / people liking all kinds of random things in hopes of gaining followers. You won’t go far. You might be able to fool the dumb search bots in hopes of gaining linkbacks via SEO but ultimately humans are the ones who care about your content. If you want people to care, then care about others. Never follow accounts in hopes of being followed back.

That tactic is seen all over Twitter. I see it all the time—they follow you, as soon as you follow, they send you a direct message as spam and then unfollow immediately—it was so annoying that I have stopped seeing who is following me anymore. I blame that unhealthy number-game on Twitter to the promptly displayed stats. And is the number 1 reason why I suggest companies to not actively display stats visibly on people’s profile as it creates an unhealthy ecology.

In the hayday of social media analytics, the follower/following ratio is often used to calculate one’s influence and thus popularity. If being well-read is a sign of intellectual maturity, then one must question how logical that influence analytics data really is. Thus you will see that better analytics engines such as Klout calculates influence based on engagement, and I think that kind of calculation is much more accurate.

/ SML.20121230.PHIL
/ #smlphil #ccby #seeminglee #smluniverse #smlnet #smlopinions #smlanalytics
/ #network #theory #socialmedia #facebook #likes #twitter #flickr #LinkedIn #Klout #philosophy #marketing #strategy #opinions #analysis #analytics #influence #engagement
/ #HongKong #HK #China #CN

Control all 3 (connectors + mavens + salesmen). Control the network.

The Law of the Few.
The success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social gifts:

1. Connectors = SML#Hub = SML#HR
2. Mavens = SML#Journalism = SML#Media
3. Salesmen = SML#Marketing = SML#PR

— Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point

Control all three. Control the network.
— SML Network Theory

“Control all three. Control the network.” / SML.20121204.PHIL

People often ask me why I am so active on social networks, what I am trying to do, and what my “end game” is. My objective for SML Universe (org) is to give a voice to people who have no voice because of social bigotry. In order to do what I set out to do in order to effect change, Malcolm Gladwell’s book The Tipping Point suggests that I need to become all three types of people: connectors, mavens and salesmen. And this is what I try to do.

1. Connectors = SML#Hub = SML#HR

I try to go to different universes to meet random people. People who don't do what I do is interesting to me because I don't know anything about them. I am usually interested in things which I don't know anything about so I ended up meeting lots of people who do not seem to relate. Because of this, I find myself often functioning as an HR for jobs, and I am more than happy to send introductions to people because I believe that when awesome people come together they often create amazing, beautiful, and creative things.

2. Mavens = SML#Journalism = SML#Media

When I see interesting things happening when I explore the random universe, I like to blog about them. I enjoy photography so I tend to record a visual record of what I see. Photojournalism is therapeutic and it gives me opportunities to write, so I do a lot of it. It was said that pictures say a thousand words and I certainly believe so. Often people don't have the time to read my essay length blog posts but most don't mind looking at photos. So that works out nicely. I also started turning my photography into videography interviews. I enjoy every opportunity to create as the act of creation gives me the thrill. It is my happiness life hacks. The bonus is that I get to write music as soundtracks so those are all very fun.

3. Salesmen = SML#Marketing = SML#PR

When I publish content I always simulcast to multiple social media networks. Most people believe that they only need to be on a single network, so in order to to reach the entire critical mass I post the same thing to multiple networks, all with very different audience. This works out nicely. Content where people like on Flickr are often very different than those for Instagram or Foursquare or Twitter or Facebook or Tumblr. Since I can't really tell when and why people will like something, covering the entire UGC content media network is important, and is also what I advise / recommend companies in the business of reaching critical mass do when I do marketing strategy for them.

More sex is safer sex / Steven Landsburg

Source: Possible Side Effects / 2007-07-08 / New York Times

Steven E. Landsburg (Google), a professor at the University of Rochester recently published a book called More Sex is Safer Sex: The Unconventional Wisdom of Economics, where he applied economics theory in everyday life. The book is largely based on his column called Everyday Economics on Slate Magazine.

I haven't read the book yet, but it looks quite interesting based on the book review on New York Times, where he suggests that the AIDS epidemic is "the price of our permissive attitudes toward monogamy, chastity, and other forms of extreme sexual conservatism."

You can also read the first chapter of the book on New York Times' Web site.

SML on SEO

In the world of SEO (Wikipedia: Search Engine Optimization), content is king. If you write good content and thus draw enough target audience, search engines will be your friends.

If you are mainly interested in the U.S. market, then Google is your friend, because that is where this search engine has the highest market penetration. If your target audience happens to be in Asia or Europe, then you are probably better of with Yahoo!, because it has long had an international brand presence and Google just started to expand into those markets recently.

Interestingly, most Americans find it surprising that Yahoo has more netizen population than Google overall (Source: Compete.com). Since Google has more American population than any other search engine, it is natural to assume so. However, if you survey your friends outside the U.S. to see which search engines they use most, and you may be surprised with your results. In my random sampling, I have found that almost all of my friends in the UK prefers MSN Live Search.

To find out just how well you rank among all the search engines, I recommend Jux2, a meta search engines which combines and compares the results of Google, Yahoo and MSN. You may be surprised of how many results are specific to a single database. If you are trying to appeal to an international audience, you will do best to optimize your search strategies for all three primary players.

If you are an individual, can you utilize these techniques to compete with global international companies? I think so. I Googled SML (initials for See-ming Lee, my name) today, and this blog is prominently featured on page one among approximately 7,450,000 results. I am competing with global players and acronyms here. It's definitely a very 'gratifying' activity. :)

Do you have to spend a lot of money? Does it take a long time to see your ROI (Wikipedia: Return on Investment)? I don't think so. I believe that I am gaining these benefits all by writing a few poems recently. And I published pretty much all of them within the last four months.

I fell into all these mostly out of my recent interest in network theory. Based on my research, I have a hunch that Google's algorithm has largely to do with network theory (Wikipedia: Network Theory / SML Bookmarks: Social Media / SML Bookmarks: Network). This is a hunch, not a proof. Theoretically speaking, I don't think that any proofs are definite. You can, on the other hand, validate your confidence level based on statistics and analytics reports.

Copyright 2007 SML SEO = See-ming Lee + SEO. All rights reserved.

SML SEO = See-ming Lee + Search Engine Optimization

Source: Amazon

After reading Turtles, Termites and Traffic Jams, my exploration of decentralized networks went down a very viral path. I discovered that the application of network theory is enormous and has huge implications and applications on every seemingly unrelated topic that I have come across.

It can be used as a tool and device to understand cities, computer networks social networks, human-human interactions (speech), human-computer interactions (HCI), computer-computer interactions (protocol), diseases, computer viruses, nature. If you think about it, all these things boil down to a single category: communication.

My recent interest in networks has in turn got me into search engine optimization — because search engine is essentially a highly networked database with stored properties between data collections. Here are the steps I have taken to research this topic:

1. Study network theories (mostly through books and wikipedia)


2. Dive into every social-networking sites and analyze their business strategies


3. Domain-shopping and create targeted content as a way to validate the theories studied

It appears that my SEM (aka Wikipedia: Search Engine Marketing aka SML: Search Engine Masturbation) has paid off — I discovered today that I have accidentally fell into a gold mine:

1. Googling design, technology and marketing returns about 209,000,000 results.
   SML currently secure results #1, #2 and #3.


2. Googling design, technology and strategy returns about 159,000,000 results.
   SML currently secure results #3, #7 and #9.


3. Googling design, technology and marketing strategy returns about 109,000,000 results.
   SML currently secures results #1, and #2.

Notes:

1. Your personalized results may vary.
2. Sign out from Google to view neutral results.

Here are a collection of books that I recommend if you are interested in this topic:

Source: Amazon	Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi "Understand the properties of networks, and you will understand the principles governing life." — See-ming Lee
Source: Amazon	Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams: Explorations in Massively Parallel Microworlds (Complex Adaptive Systems) by Mitchel Resnick
Source: Amazon	The Computational Beauty of Nature: Computer Explorations of Fractals, Chaos, Complex Systems, and Adaptation by Gary William Flake
Source: Amazon	A New Kind of Science by Stephen Wolfram
Source: Amazon	Nexus: Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Theory of Networks by Mark Buchanan

If you like these books, you might also be interested in other books that I recommend.

Innovation = Synergy of existing ideas

Innovation is about the creation of a new idea based on existing concepts.

1. This applies to Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, where medical researchers look through NCBI, the National Center for Biotechnology Information, to browse connections among proteins to look for clues to fight diseases and human health crisis.

2. It applies to Internet culture, where users mash-up existing services together to create new products and services where 1+1>2.

3. It applies to human relationships, where human beings unite through common interests, via six degress of separation: Friendster, MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn.
   

4. It applies to agriculture, where farmers combine different species of vegetables through genetic mutations to produce seedless watermelons, tomatoes that do not bruise during shipping, high-starch potatoes and cataloups that resist viruses.

5. In the business world, innovation is about connecting existing ideas into new concepts. The idea behind Social Retailing (SM) is made possible by connecting shopping and community, a concept which seems odd at first but once you find the key to connect the two, it makes sense.
   

The challenge in linking these nodes lies in finding the chain of links (the key) connecting these concepts. However, I have found a very powerful tool today on the Web that may very well be used as a successful formula generator. It's called Six degrees of Wikipedia.

Here are some interesting searches I conducted on the site and their resulting degrees of separation:

1. Social - Community - Internet - Shopping

2. Social - Community - Public space - Retailing
   

3. Retailing - Online shop - Web browser - Wii (a)
   

4. Retailing - Department Store - Hercules - Playstation
   

5. Retailing - Consumerism - Mass media - Xbox
   

Bottom line: brainstorming is made much easier when the path of connections is clear.

Credits

a. Adam S. Kirschner.

Friends and family

I have been through a whole lot last year. 2006 is officially the most miserable year of my life. If we can chart our life in a Cartesian graph, with x = time and y = (-1, 1) to signify absolute negative to absolute positive, I hope that last year remains to be my life's absolute minimum.

While I enjoy the happy times (>0), I do think that it is important to have frustrating times (<0). Without the down points, one could not possibly appreciate the many wonderful things in life that we take for granted.

If I draw another graph, with x = the y-axis of my Life graph, y = number of friends, the resulting graph looks like a Bell curve. When I am at my lowest point, most people drift away, until finally there remains only my family and one handful of folks who are my friends. Similarly, one gains many friends as life become positive, but as one drifts towards fantabulous times, one also gains many enemies, and as such y would also tends towards 0.

If we consider the ratio of number of friends / time, we have the rate of friend acquaitance, and at least for myself, that's the happiest of all times. Mapping this, it appears that the sweet spot would be around -0.3.

Nerd point aside, we find something equally interesting. To find one's closest friend, either fuck up your life, or become extremely successful. You can immediately identify who's friend and who's foe. Obviously, you cannot control your life (as you are not a controlled subject). However, examining one's history will allow you to discover.

While I have been in very desperate moments, I am grateful that I have identified my friends. They have been there to support me in every way possible. I am also deeply grateful to those who have the patience to work with me. I don't know how I could have gone through all these without them.

Theorizing aesthetics

I have always had an idea of theorizing aesthetics. I believe that aesthetic judgement, though seemingly abstract, can be quantified. And through the discovery of these aesthetics principals, it is possible to create aesthetic composition through programmatic algorithms.

Designers don't like this view of the world. The larger part of the design community, will in fact tell you that designers should be ashamed of themselves if their designs were formed by theory. I, on the other hand, believe that aided with such tool, it will provide enormous advantages in realizing a design.

The music community has created many variants of algorithm-based music generators. Artists have long utilize color theories in their paintings. Itten, from the Bauhaus, wrote a monumental book called The Art of Color on the subject matter. The language of architecture and urban planning was eloquently catalogued in Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language. This book on architecture has in turn inspired four programmers (Gang of Four) to write a book called Design Patterns, which revolutionized the object-oriented programming space.

So why is the design community so afraid of composition theories?

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Copyright 2005-2007 See-ming Lee. All rights reserved.