This paper aims to analyse the effectiveness of Twitter usage across six different organisations, holding twelve different Twitter accounts. Despite the high amount of organisations using Twitter there is little known about the return on investment, application strategies and the impact on organisantions' brand. This is why I found this paper interesting, there is little research on this topic and the explosion of Twitter in recent years has given companies little choice about employing Twitter in their marketing communications plan.

It is interesting to see the two different categorisations of interactivity in this paper 'interpersonal interactivity' and 'machine interactivity'. The analysis that Twitter offers both creates a clearer understanding of how organisations can utilise Twitter to channel different forms of customer interactions. This to me is very valuable knowledge because one can then encourage users to interact in different ways depending on desired outcomes. Also Twitter's dual communication capacity of one-to-one and one-to-many is key, by understanding this organisations can use their account or multiple accounts to meet different communications needs such as brand awareness, listening or service recovery.

The findings show that there are different strategies and sometimes a lack of one within organisations. The six different organisations studied had very varying approaches and success across their two geographical bases of Australia and the US. More importantly the results show that the lack of consistency across different company accounts demonstrates a struggle with Twitter and that organisations are yet not sure of the best strategy. An example taken from this paper is Microsoft USA and Microsoft Australia, which had a big difference in followers and application of Twitter.

I would be interested in looking at future studies on this topic as it relates to understanding how and when platforms should be used. The way that people use Twitter seems to be a 'the more the merrier' approach.

This case study shows how companies and more specifically Shell is using a Wiki for employees to collaborate and share information. What I find interesting is the use of an open system in a highly corporate and what one would consider rigidly structure environment. The article presents a very positive image of Wiki use within a corporate environment where information is not traditionally shared openly to members unrelated to a team or project. I wonder about the potential this opened approach has to impact the hierarchy in organisations and the sort of opportunities and threats it could create. An interesting question might be whether the sort of shift we are seeing in power in some governments could become evident in the workplace. One of the reasons people contribute is to gain status (Wasko & Faraj, 2005), would gaining status on your work's Wiki increase the human capital promise of future reward of being promoted?

It is evident that enough employees use the Wiki to collaborate and that Shell has achieved its aim to aggregate mass contribution in terms of content and generated interest among a wider audience. Their Wiki now has entries from over 6000 users; this shows that an opened content system can be useful amongst organisations if implanted well. It seems companies are seeing the value in providing an opened platform to distribute ideas and to promote resources being shared.

Additional references:

Wasko, M. & Faraj, S. (2005), 'Why Should I Share? Examining Social Capital and Knowledge Contribution in Electronic Networks of Practice', MIS Quarterly Vol. 29 No 1, pp 35-57. Retrieved on March 08, 2012 http://csz.csu.edu.tw/pp/COMMIT/%E6%96%87%E7%8D%BB/%E4%BF%A1%E4%BB%BB-%E6%89%BF%E8%AB%BE%E7%90%86%E8%AB%96/Why%20Should%20I%20Share_Examining%20Social%20Capital%20and%20Knowledge%20Contribution%20in%20Electronic%20Networks%20of%20.pdf

The Kony campaign is an interesting one as its full impact is not yet clear. The integral role that social media has played in allowing people to express their point of view however is undeniable, it is interesting to explore whether this online activity will have real life implications on the desired outcome. This article presents the different opinions from the public and illustrates the online influence the campaign has had. In her lecture Pickerill (2011) mentioned that during the London anti-war protest groups did not use social and online media effectively, the Kony campaign is a direct contrast to that because it has used online platforms so effectively. The campaign may be used as a model to create big movements in the future. Whilst the anti-war movement was not one happy family because of differencing social and religious backgrounds the groups shared a common cause and a more structured approach may have been more successful. Absolute priority was lost.

In this campaign we can see that people are not stuck in their identity because the campaign has promoted one collective of people to share their views, for and against. This ties in with Shirky's (2011) comment about sites treating all people the same which is what this campaign has done in trying to get as many people possible together to have their say openly. It is an issue that everyone can have an opinion about and one can see the value of mass self-expression coming together for one common cause. This article states "[w]e are entering an age when the shallow political power of the public - will increasingly help shape our policy debates. And yes, that is scary to professional foreign policy experts, much in the same way reference book authors with graduate degrees were rattled by the idea of an online encyclopedia created collectively by amateurs." I believe this is a slightly utopian statement because whilst we might be entering an age of 'more power to the people' in a seemingly large-scale collaboration such as Wikipedia, an opened system, a small group makes most of the edits and most of contributors make only one edit. The seemingly large-scale collaboration is really run by small groups (Shirky, 2011). Understanding how people contribute and how valuable that contribution is, is an important part of understanding online collaboration.

Additional references:

Gillan, K., Pickerill, J and Webster, F. (2008) Anti-War Activism: New Media and Protest in the Information Age London: Palgrave Macmillan. Retrieved on March 03, 2012 from http://dbs.ilectures.curtin.edu.au/lectopia/casterframe.lasso?fid=640749&cnt=true&usr=not-indicated&name=not-indicated

Linuxcon & Shirky, C. (2011). Clay Shirky: Good Collaboration is Structured Fighting. Retrieved on March 22, 2012 from http://video.linux.com/videos/clay-shirky-good-collaboration-is-structured-fighting

Linuxcon & Shirky, C. (2011). Clay Shirky: Good Collaboration is Structured Fighting. Retrieved on March 22, 2012 from http://video.linux.com/videos/clay-shirky-good-collaboration-is-structured-fighting

Shirky here associates collaboration with "structured fighting", he points out that structure is what makes all the difference and that it can lead to results and assist in identifying patterns in order to build better collaboration platforms and active communities.

The idea that people who want to participate should not always be allowed to, stands out, as it is common view that the Internet is for all to have their say. Stackoverflow and StackExchange are employing the philosophy of filtering users. StackExchange handles topic areas beyond just programming and identifies trusted and active users. This creates filtration of contributors and assists in understanding communities and projects suitable for this type of collaboration. Shirky says that Internet etiquette always said that new users should prove themselves first but "no one did it". These sites are an "attempt to say that we don't have to treat all people the same".

Open source projects like Linux originally exposed the power of large-scale collaboration, something that open source have given is the ability to manage this. To contribute to source code developers must prove themselves perhaps this is where many online collaboration platforms need to move in future. This cuts the size of the human pool but still allows for large-scale contribution because the whole world is still an option for contribution.

Shirky explores the contributions made to opened systems and finds that a small group makes most of the edits as over 75% of contributors make only one edit. The seemingly large-scale collaboration is really run by small groups that care about the project. Should capable contributors be given privileges? It will be interesting to see online platforms exercising this approach and its something worth exploring.

The Wall Street Journal (2012). Open Source Code Quality On Par with Proprietary Code in 2011 Coverity Scan Report. Retrieved on March 18, 2012 from http://www.marketwatch.com/story/open-source-code-quality-on-par-with-proprietary-code-in-2011-coverity-scan-report-2012-02-23

This press release endeavors to answer a question that has been asked by many. Is open source code as good or better than proprietary code? The research took place in 2011, to test the quality of open source software. The most active open source projects were analysed together with proprietary software code.

It is interesting to see that over 37 million lines of open source code were analysed compared to 300 million lines of code from proprietary software. It seems disproportionate to test 37 million against 300 million.

The results came back with a defect density of 0.45 for open source and 0.64 for proprietary, coming to the conclusion that open source code quality is on par with proprietary code quality, particularly in cases where code bases were of similar size. Specifically Linux 2.6, a project with nearly 7 million lines of code, with a defect density of 0.62, which is similar to that of its proprietary code base counterparts.

It would be interesting to explore the testing model and reliability of these results. However, going with the press release's proposal it would be right to say that "Open Content Systems" which have a de-centralised knowledge base and social approach achieve quality through "the Wisdom of Crowds". Open source contributors are usually characterised by their independence, a good sense of cooperation, and common sense, it would be right to say that the type of people who are attracted to make a contribution strive for quality and high achievement. It is interesting to observe that those who generally contribute to open systems have a similar attitude, attributing to the quality produced by Open Content Systems.

Watson, R. (2006). How the FreeBSD Project Works. Retrieved on March 20, 2012 from http://www.watson.org/~robert/freebsd/2006eurobsdcon/eurobsdcon2006-howfreebsdworks.pdf

This paper presents the FreeBSD community from the perspective of the developer. The community is very large and active, developing an operating system, which is extensively used. Whilst to be part of the FreeBSD community one must prove themselves, the amount of contributors is sizable and the organisation produces quality code that is used by closed systems. As explained by the Jury Theorem the number of people directly impacts the crowd's aggregated knowledge, the FreeBDS community is wise, diverse and large, developers submit new versions of code that replace previous versions and achieve an aggregation of quality.

FreeBSD has pioneered online development practices, the Project exists primarily through electronic communication and collaboration. Developer's services are mostly offered via FreeBSD.org, which include source code repositories, mailing lists are the life-blood of the Project, and the forum where almost all project discussions takes place. The FreeBSD.org website and Wiki are also central for communication.

The most important resource for the Project is developer time, both volunteered and sponsored. Some work on FreeBSD in a few spare hours, others work fulltime. According to Watson the diversity of experience from developers across dozens of countries contributes to the success of FreeBSD, combining the practical "real world problem" focus of consumers building products with the expertise of researchers working on cutting edge computer science research. This diversity enables the community to continue to learn and is associated with increased group performance.

Key to the collaboration is that FreeBSD is not a traditional organisation of downward delegation of authority as it is volunteer driven, the delegation of responsibility occurs up as much as down. In this way the organisation is de-centralised and fluid. Quality is paramount to the organisation's success; this paper shows the approach works, it will be interesting to explore non-developer online communities to see if this method can be applied and contribute to quality.

Sears, N. (2003). A project model for the FreeBSD Project. Retrieved on March 18, 2012 from http://niklas.saers.com/thesis/thesis.html#id2968675

This thesis examines the FreeBSD Project, its operational model, approach to collaboration and suggests a model for organisation. It provides insight into its strong global community and why the FreeBSD Project is an explanatory success of open content systems, which have transformed the way in which knowledge bases are constructed in a case where thousands of contributors commit quality code with more often than not, no monetary rewards. Even & Wolf (2005) believe that the de-centralised and social approach to knowledge accumulation owes much to the open source movement.

The open source community prides itself on writing secure, well-reviewed software Linus Torvalds states, "given enough eyes, all bugs are shallow" (Raymond, 2000). This is a paradigm in the community and a belief that has many examples where problems have been fixed within hours of having been discovered. At the time of the thesis there were approximately 5500 contributors to the FreeBSD Project.

Ultimately the thesis shows there is a strong de-centralised structure that has a model where scattered contributors can create a reliable operating system and share knowledge; success can be attributed to the 'wisdom of the individuals'. 50% of the surveyed developers were paid to some extent; companies such as Sun and IBM have contributed many projects to the community suggesting that some developers are paid for their time going against common myth that participants don't get paid. According to Saers however, a larger part of the open source community doesn't get paid for their contribution. Saers points out a study about what motivates people who don't get paid to contribute, finding that student's and hobby programmer's, motivation is the fun of contributing as a hobby and expanding their skills, knowledge and the increased human capital promise of future reward of being able to get a job in the industry. The gratification is explained by Maslow's pyramid and the need for a stable, usually high evaluation of oneself.


Additional References:

Evans, P. & Wolf, B. (2005). Collaboration rules. Harvard Business Review. 83 (7-8), 96-104.
Raymond, E. (2000). The Cathedral and the Bazaar. Eric Raymond.