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Though this study is informative and interesting, there are some serious limitations that should be taken into account if we are to generalize its results to all situations of collective action (like organizations). We may do a longer writeup some time in the future, but here are a few questions that it raises: Oh, and here is a link to the original paper: http://ow.ly/3VaS4 -----Is this a problem of the technology, or of fluency with the technology?---- "This is the danger with lean media, and is especially frustrating because it implies that if a willingness to cooperate can be effectively conveyed to other group members-perhaps an easier problem to fix than curing opportunistic intent-the problems of non-cooperation..they just did not know if they could rely on others to reciprocate." (p. 119) These conclusions suggest that fluency with a medium and the norms of communication through that medium may play a significant role in trust. In other words, if i am not good at communicating my intent to cooperate within the limitations of any medium (including face-to-face speech), i will have a hard time building trust. ----Are all digital media still as "lean" as email was in 2005?--- This study bases its concept of "media richness" on 1986 work by Daft and Lengel which suggested a continuum of media richness that contains face-to-face on the "rich" end and things like reports on the "lean" end. The assumption that social media, MMORPG's, digital collaboration platforms, etc are also at the lower end with email is very, very questionable.  ----Can we generalize the behavior of business students to all situations of collective action?---- The participants were all upper-level business students from the early 2000's, who are socialized and train to deal with colle

----Norms of anonymity may have changed since 2005---- There seems to have been an increase in people using digital technologies (especially social media) as a way to build their identity, rather than anonymize it. In fact, services have sprung up to provide people with personal landing pages (http://lifehacker.com/#!5534456/five-best-personal-landing-pages). If this is true, then there is likely a corresponding pressure to build and maintain trust in a world of digital trails and easy search.

"We like to think that more information drives smarter decisions; that the more details we absorb, the better off we'll be. It's why we subscribe to Google Alerts, cling to our iPhone, and fire up our Tweetdeck. Knowledge, we're told, is power. But what if our thirst for data is actually holding us back? What if obsessing over information actually reduces the quality of our decisions? That's the question raised by Princeton and Stanford University psychologists in a fascinating study titled On the Pursuit and Misuse of Useless Information."

The MacSerial Community meltdown has some big lessons, particularly in the context of these days of "Web 2.0″ and "user-generated content". It also speaks loudly to the questions raised, debated and debated again in the wake of the events leading to Kathy Sierra's decision to stop blogging. It involves cyberbullying and power plays, and in the best human tradition, reads like a soap opera. But this meltdown is distinctive - it was over two years in the making and involved trusted volunteers. The genesis of the conflict appears to begin two years ago, when two moderators came into conflict with each other. One was ready to strip the other of their mod powers when they withdrew to their own server, voluntarily resigning mod powers. However, the underlying conflict was not resolved and was driven farther underground. The lessons learned for community creators include: Visibly manage volunteers; Stay active and visible in the community; Don't let resentments fester; and, Define community boundaries, communicate them, and enforce the rules.

ChompOn has released some interesting findings (pdf) related to social media sharing and its value to e-commerce. Specifically, the firm sought out to answer the question: "What is the value of a social action in online commerce?"  What they came up with is that a Facebook Share was worth $14, a Facebook "like" was worth $8, a tweet was worth $5, and a Twitter follow was worth $2.

Stories last. Stories exist in all cultures. By definition, they entertain, educate, preserve, and even help carry on values within communities like Fogo Island. Branding appeals to our emotions and our reason. Stories speak to our deepest questions about our own existence. Stories stick because they hold real value. By definition, they entertain, but they also educate, and even instill moral values. In fact, the best stories guide our actions. They become the source code for who we are and who we want to be. For corporations to survive, they need deeply compelling stories at their heart.

The White House began their "office hours" today at 2 p.m. EST. They asked Twitter followers to submit questions about the debt debate using the hashtag #WHChat. As their last response, they took the opportunity to play the internet's oldest practical joke on a user (and catching the rest of us in the wake).

According to an article that appeared in the Tennessean, two members of the Perry County Vikings - brothers Rodney and Ryan Belasic - were ruled ineligible by the Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association because of residency issues. The reason questions about where the two brothers' eligibility came about from Facebook posts made by their mother. To play football for a county high school in Tennessee, the entire family must reside within the county lines, and thanks to complaints about the brothers not cleaning their room while visiting their mother in Henry County, something she complained about on Facebook. This, naturally, caught the eye of interested parties, opening the door for the TSSAA's eligibility investigation. It was believed that entire family had moved counties, but the mother's Facebook chatter revealed that wasn't the case

The mass media, including interactive social-networking tools, make you passive, can sap your initiative, leave you content to watch the spectacle of life from your couch or smartphone. Enlarge This Image Apparently even during a revolution. That is the provocative thesis of a new paper by Navid Hassanpour, a political science graduate student at Yale, titled "Media Disruption Exacerbates Revolutionary Unrest." Using complex calculations and vectors representing decision-making by potential protesters, Mr. Hassanpour, who already has a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford, studied the recent uprising in Egypt. His question was, how smart was the decision by the government of President Hosni Mubarak to completely shut down the Internet and cellphone service on Jan. 28, in the middle of the crucial protests in Tahrir Square?

The political debate in Wisconsin continues to heat up, and we're provided with another story which looks to stoke the flame. Wisconsin Rep. Sean Duffy (R), a newly appointed U.S Representative from Wisconsin's 7th district has caught the attention of the online world for a YouTube clip of a Polk County town hall meeting. Duffy was asked questions concerning his salary, and his answers have raised the eyebrows of many who have seen it. The story is of particular interest because after the clip was posted on YouTube, the Polk County GOP looked to take it down.

Location based social network Foursquare celebrated 10 million registered users yesterday but how are businesses and organizations using the platform? I wrote a year ago next month about the incredible potential offered by Foursquare accounts for organizations: following a Foursquare page as a user is like opting-in to view the world through the lens of that organization's geo-annotations. It can be awesome. (My favorites? History Channel and Eater.) Are businesses getting into it? For one perspective on that question, I extracted some data from the 128 most recent Foursquare Pages that have been created. The 128 most recent Foursquare Page holders have added 728 tips in 311 cities so far. They've amassed a total of over 8,000 Foursquare followers and they came in with some social media experience as well: those organizations already had an aggregate of over 800,000 Twitter followers.

It's an age-old tale: CNN anchor meets girl by harassing her on Twitter; girl refuses to accept anchor's further advances; anchor has a Twitter temper tantrum. On Sunday, Piers Morgan joined thousands of Twitter users in mocking 21-year-old Georgia Ford for tweeting, "'Is Wimbledon always held in London?"