I’ve been thinking about the topic of “Social Currency” recently. As I have demo’ed a few sites to co-workers and customers, I found myself using the term. I used it, for example, to describe the “props” button in blip.fm’s music service, or the “rockets” & “bombs” used in the jelli.net music service, as well as showing examples the more well known aspects of social currency in twitter & friendfeed of “likes”, “retweeting” and #followfriday.
From what I can see, there is some interesting parallel to “social currency” and certain concepts of spirituality, or I guess we can call it “spiritual currency”. I’ve read somewhere that spirituality is like a lit candle, that you can share your spiritual nature with others with no loss of spiritual power to you, just as you can light an infinite number of other candles with this one lit candle without diminishing the flame. I have witnessed this myself with the actions and power of spiritual figures like Ammachi (see www.amma.org) who travel the world spreading their spirituality literally through human contact (hugs). Seems to me that “Social Currency” works pretty much the same way; as long as you keep reaching out and passing on the goodwill, your own currency is never diminished and in fact grows.
In my very limited time on facebook, linkedin, twitter & friendfeed, I have seen a variety of approaches to how people are participating in these new social venues. The one thing I have seen for sure is that those who seem to reach out and try to touch as many people as they can, and are respectful in how they do so, seem to be building more and more “social currency”. There are of course some exceptions, but for the most part this seems to be true. Curious to know what others think on this topic.
Mark, you raised a very interesting point.
Challenge is that the same rules don’t really apply still. As you make a favour/help others in person, you know & can see who you are dealing with.
Online, even via various social networks, it maybe hard pressed to find the same person.. and also, does he really exist in reality?
So, I think something more fundamental is needed, which is the identity (with certain degree of certainty) before, the social/spiritual currency can be ‘transferred’ or ‘gained’..
that’s why when I can, I use mainly my real name and photo, just to add/produce further trust.
We can however talk all we want remotely, through email/social network or telephone. it is still NOT comparable to face to face for 15/30min.
Look forward to meeting you in person soon.
BR
@GarethWong
Mark,
I really like your connection to spirituality and the analogy of lighting other candles with your own.
The similar term I hear is social capital, and I use the analogy of information. Information is useless, but as we share it, save it, link to it and put it in meaningful contexts of our lives…it becomes more valuable.
So I try to make valuable information I see by acting upon it, by socializing it, connecting it and hopefully when it is found by others it is enriched with context and color.
And I agree with Gareth that using your real name or real nick name — like @chippy — is essential for building social capital, unless you are building equity in a fictitious persona.
Maybe we’ll meet face to face someday — maybe at an Intel Developer Forum, or CES?
I’m glad you got this notion down. I enjoyed the inspiration. Cheers!
–Ken