Category Archives: online community

Comcast DOES Care

Just a quick testimonial regarding a recent GREAT customer service SLASH social media experience I had.

I get back from a long trip to find my cable was turned off.  Strange clerical error, whatever, there are much worse things to stress about. I call, get it all taken care of and think I am all set.  But then days pass and my cable becomes increasingly more pixelated.  And then my internet goes down – and that’s just not ok.

I had heard of and seen people using the twitter @comcastcares account to help them with problems, so I thought I would try.  Not having internet in my house, I used my iPhone’s Twitterfon app and tweet my request for help.  Within minutes I had a reply saying that there weren’t any outages in the area and if I DM’d them my phone #, they could look into it further.  I dutifully complied and was then asked by another customer service rep from Comcast if they could help.  2 replies in 10 minutes!  I asked my first rep if I should get help from the 2nd rep and they went ahead and told them that they were on the case.

Within 15 minutes, I got a call form a local Chicago operator who then ran through some basic tech support and determined I needed an onsite person.  This was RIGHT before Memorial Day, so I wasn’t expecting an onsite person anytime soon, but the phone rep got someone to come ON MEMORIAL DAY.  And they actually came! And fixed it!

Now it sucks that it was messed up in the first place, but the fact that their tech support team was able to respond to my request using social media and then follow through with multiple other methods of communication REALLY impressed me. I am sure it’s not the last problem I will have with Comcast, but at least now I can have some faith that they can help me get it taken care of in the future.  Way to go Comcast!

NCSoft’s UGC misstep

Reading a great dialogue on The Brainy Gamer from the other day about NCSoft’s apparent naiveté when launching the Mission Architect feature for City of Heros and City of Villains.  Many users started making stories that were giving big attribute payoffs for little effort.  Many of the commenters were incredulous that NCSoft didn’t think through these fairly obvious user scenarios before launching and build in some catches.

I think there are a couple lessons to be learned from this, some of which those of us in the kids community space are fairly familiar with:

  • Some users will be bad, very bad.  Sometimes that means inappropriate behavior, sometimes it’s blatantly breaking the rules or gaming the system.  Rather than throwing your arms up in the air and damning those users, think of them when you are designing and plan for them.  It’s useful to first design the game play for the optimal setup, but be sure to factor in a brainstorming session where you think through all the possible OTHER ways someone could play your game.  This exercise usually helps make your ideal game play even better too, plus you will be able to start patching up obvious audience weak points sooner. 
  • Have your PR and Community staff ready for anything that could happen.  Maybe you won’t have a crisis, but what’s wrong with having your staff ready for one.  Proactive verbiage on your site that acknowledges your aims for gameplay, while subtlety explaining what is NOT desired can be very useful.  Run through scenarios with your community staff (or customer service, etc) on how they would handle certain situations.  You won’t be able to prepare for everything, but going through the exercise of tackling worst-case-scenarios keeps your team agile and poised to handle any situation that they are presented with.
  • Try to stay positive – Those of you who know me personally know I have a knack for summoning the dark clouds at times.  But I am strangely the opposite at work.  Try to figure a way to spin a bad situation in a better light, like the game is much better now that your users have found that whole, etc etc.  Helps your users, game and your staff morale too.
  • Use experts.  Everyone thinks they are a community engagement specialist.  And sure, that anecdote about your kid, brother or friend who you feel is an example of a model player may give a bit of insight as to how community efforts could be designed.  But there are those of us who do this for a living, who have honed our professional instincts in various situations and have information and resources to help projects run better when you are dealing with audience feedback loops.  They will know how to handle filtering of content, when to jump in before it gets ugly (and after) and why certain choices might be better than others.  It’s their job, let them do it so you can be even more awesome at yours.

I often warn people that attaching community to your brand (whether that is a virtual world, chat/im, or ugc, etc) is a poor choice if you are not ready to support it.  And support is multi-faceted, usually involving many teams – marketing, audience, customer service, IT, design, etc.  This is not to discourage people for starting a community or adding these sorts of features, but just a friendly warning to not underestimate the resources it takes to run a community.

I think NCSoft’s idea for Mission Architect was great, as was Little Big Planet’s level designing and all the other gaming titles being inventive about how to give their fans a deeper experience.  Hopefully the missteps at this stage can simply be treated as cautionary tales that we can build off of, instead of scaring people away from the possibilities that engaging your fans on that level can offer.

Kids Online unconference – May 31

Hi all –

First of many plugs about the Kids Online Unconference that is happening the day before the Ypulse Youth Mashup. The whole thing is 5/31/09-6/2/09, but come to what you can.

We need to start getting a headcount, so if you could let myself or any of the other coordinators know if you are planning on attending, that would be great!

To sign up for the listserv we have set up, go to this link http://lists.idcommons.net/lists/info/kidsonline and click the “Subscribe” link.

Thanks!

Social Media Safety Refresher

My entire family is slowly migrating to the digital landscape and specifically social media. One by one, not just my teen and twenty-something cousins, but my parents and aunts too. I personally do not remember my first interaction with the web, but I am positive it wasn’t anything as overwhelming as it could be now. I just finished talking to my cousin who was understandably concerned about posting pictures of her young kids in public forums. I gave her a couple tips, but I thought it was also a good opportunity to share with the class.

Facebook Privacy Settings

Whether you are concerned with your privacy or blissfully going through the interweb with blinders on, it’s a good idea to check out what your privacy settings are in Facebook (and any other site where you are sharing information). In Facebook, you can get to these settings here:

Here you can decide how various pieces of your shared identity are seen. For example, I don’t mind a great deal of my info being seen by not just my friends, but their friends and any networks I belong to. I am bit more restrictive with some of my info though, only showing it to my friends or groups I have made within friends.

Friend Lists in Facebook

One cool feature that Facebook has, for those of us concerned about who sees what, is Friend Lists. You can add groups of people into lists. For example, I have mine separated as such:

and then you can use these lists in the privacy settings I talked about above, by choosing the “Custom” option in the drop down:

You can also do this same thing on the Album level for your pictures.

Photo Sharing Sites

Another option that is popular in social media is sharing photos with friends and loved ones. While you can do this in Facebook, the privacy settings are blanket over every photo tagged of you or by albums. Many of the photo sharing sites offer privacy on the picture level as well.

Flickr and Picasa are 2 very popular sites. There are tons of others and I usually recommend uploading a couple pictures to each one and seeing which interface agrees with you most. Picasa just released a desktop client, very similar to Apple’s iPhoto, which is supposed to have Flickr upload capabilities integrated. Neat!

What to make private

Now this is totally a personal preference thing. What I like to recommend is that you go through a mild “what if…?” scenario exercise:

  • “What if a potential future employer saw this picture?”
  • “What if someone can figure out your location from the background images in the picture?”
  • “What if I look HORRIBLE in that picture?”
  • etc

Whatever level of comfort you feel with the answers to those questions, set your privacy accordingly. But remember, there is such a thing as being TOO paranoid.

Bad things happen, sure, but paranoia is not a healthy way to live offline or online. The internet is just an extension of the real world. Very good things can happen when you are more extroverted in the offline space, the same can be true online. If you are are too closed off, a cool opportunity could possibly pass you by.

So be smart, use moderation in your decision and have fun (hopefully this is how you run your offline life too). This is a whole new way to connect with people, USE it!

Hope this helps! Let me know if there is anything else you want me to add.

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Kids Online updates

So I just realized all the frantic activity I have done trying to make sure all the Kids Online unconference follow up has been updated, I forgot to mention any of it on my own blog.  Oh the horror!

So, the unconference was a success. We started a wiki (http://kidsonline.idcommons.net) and listserv (http://lists.idcommons.net/lists/info/kidsonline) to keep attendees up to date

A handful of us went to the FOSI annual conference in DC last week.  It was interesting to see what government and the executive level of the bigger communities are thinking about and concerned with (everyone’s hearts are in the right place).  FOSI has a youtube page that they promised to upload the panels and Tanya Byron simulcast on (not there yet though)  If anyone have notes form that conference, please let me know.

Then we had a conference call this week (notes are here) and made a calendar of Industry Conferences that many of us would be interested in knowing about or attending (let me know if you want to help maintain this or have any good adds).  We decided that the main goals of the group should be:

  • to aggregate our non-proprietary resources for managing online communities for kids,
  • start thinking about what we as a group think best practices for running kids online spaces are
  • become a catalyst and info resource to help parents/teachers and other people who work with kids about the concerns and goings-ons in the kids online space

I also wanted to get going on a weekly podcast.  I think if everyone can send me the hot news and trends, etc that they think would make sense for those in the industry, I will aggregate and read weekly and then broadcast out.

Let me know if you want to help out with any or all of this.  Also let me know if you are not on any of these lists and want me to add you

Sign up now for the Kids Online unconference

Hi friends -

If you haven’t signed up for the Kids Online unconference, you should as soon as you can.  We are trying to get a good idea of head count.

It’s extremely affordable (especially as conferences go) and should give us a whole day to talk about all the topics we usually only get a session or two to discuss.  Plus it’s an unconference, so everyone can participate and anyone can suggest a topic.

Let me know if you have any questions.  There are still a couple sponsorship opportunities available too. 

Hope to see you in November!

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New (un)conference – Kids Online: Balancing Safety and Fun

Spread the word! Really affordable conference for practical info and discourse on kids online. If you have never been to an un-conference, you really are missing out. Everyone participates – SO community-focused! Hope to see everyone! – Joi

——–

About Kids Online
Our goal is to leave the day with greater clarity around some core best practices and have next steps as an industry to help kids being safer online.

Objective and Process
This is a day to dive in and work collaboratively on these kinds issues around kids online:

  • Who and what are we trying to protect digital kids from?
  • Are there standards and norms in practice that we can leverage to formalize best practices for industry?
  • Kids fake their ages to gain access to online content, do we as an industry care? If so, then…?
  • How do we create best practices that are flexible based on age range, content and willingness for parental involvement by industry or the child?
  • How can we create cyber-spaces that balance interesting and fun with safety?
  • What is the role of government in either defining or supporting best practices?
  • Any other ideas, issues, concepts that you think are important in this area.

We will take notes throughout the day from all sessions. This book of proceedings will be with all attendees talking about what we learned, synthesizing and next actions.

About the Unconference Format

The format we use means the agenda is created the day it happens. It is about getting things done and figuring out the tough problems. There is no committee deciding who does or does not get to ‘present’. Instead, Open Space is about breaking up into groups, working through issues, figuring out best practices and building consensus.

Attendees

  • The community we hope to gather includes:
  • Online Community/Virtual World Managers
  • Policy officers and Security Officers at large companies
  • Consultants in the kids online space
  • Identity technologists
  • State Attorney Generals
  • Legislative Staffers
  • Parents and Kids
  • Academics in the field
  • Bloggers

Speaking Opportunities

Anyone is welcome to create a session on a topic they find relevant to data sharing. The agenda for these sessions will be created on the first day of each event.

About the Event Organizers

Denise Tayloe and Joi Podgornyare the experts in Kids Online calling this event and Kaliya Hamlin an expert in digital identity and unconference facilitator have partnered to put this event together.

Kaliya Hamlin is an experienced unconference facilitator and organizer who has facilitated numerous unconferences, including the Internet Identity Workshop (IIW) and She’s Geeky . Since 2005, the (un)conference format has been used at the Internet Identity Workshop, a bi-annual event focusing on emerging open standards in user-centric identity. Since then, Kaliya Hamlin has received con-siderable praise for helping IIW achieve real results.

Denise Tayloe co–founded Privo to help helps consumers manage their digital identities and to create a software solution that would help companies effectively interact with children while in compliance with the federal law. Denise has be-come a recognized leader and authority in permission and identity management, has been an invited speaker on the subject at conferences related to marketing as well as at Trans Atlantic dialogues regarding children’s privacy issues across the globe and has been published in the official newsletter of the International Association of Privacy Professionals. Ms. Tayloe has also conducted private workshops to help companies understand the intricacies of COPPA and how to maintain customer relationships within legal boundaries. Ms. Tayloe has more than 14 years experience in business development, sales, finance and the development of companies innovating and providing business and technology related services.

Joi Podgorny leads the integration of interactive/online strategies into Ludorum‘s television, publishing and toy properties. Before Ludorum, she has spent the past decade helping build, manage, and scale online communities for kids while developing and implementing the systems and infrastructure needed to make these communities viable. Joi has worked as a consultant championing and implementing COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act) compliance and monitored networks, as well as developing and implementing strategies in the realms of digital production, integrated marketing, and youth interactive research.

When:

Thursday, November 13, 2008 at 08:30 AM – 5 PM (PST)

(Hopefully have some dinner groups afterwards to continue the conversations, as well.)

Where:

Computer History Museum
1401 N Shoreline Blvd.
Mountain View, CA 94043

Registration – http://kidsonline.eventbrite.com/

Early Bird by Sep 30, 2008 $95.00
Regular by Oct 31, 2008 $125.00
Kids (10-25) by Nov 12, 2008 $50.00

Sponsorships are available. Please contact any of the event coordinators if you are interested.

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Most interesting OCM job post … ever!

Community Gardener

Montreal, QC

You are the friendliest, happiest, smiliest person on the face of this Earth.

When you walk past, crying babies begin to burble. You call people and they hear a smile over the phone. Your emails cause people to forget their troubles. When friends ask for help, you’re always willing to lighten their load and brighten their day. You make the sun shine and the grass green and the birds sing.

Akoha is a funded startup in Montreal developing a new type of social game. We’re a team of startup veterans from the Internet, venture capital and gaming communities in Montreal. Right now, we’re getting ready to launch a online and offline social game designed to make the world a better place. Although we’re in stealth mode, we’ve still garnered press coverage on TechCrunch, Mashable, VentureBeat, Worlds In Motion and Virtual Worlds News. We’ve also been awarded the 1st Runner Up Selection Prize for Canada’s Most Innovative Startup at the Canadian Innovation Exchange 2008.

We’re looking for a Community Gardener who will help us grow and nurture a community of players, fans, and supporters of our game. You’re someone who lives and breathes the Internet. You’re creative. You’re influential. You use Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and Google Talk every day. You’re active in the blogosphere, producing your own blogs, videos, and podcasts. You love writing, listening, and learning.

You think that communities, web applications, and the social web are powerful things. You’re passionate about giving people the tools to work together, online and offline, to build something greater than they could ever do individually.

You want to change the world.

Good luck finding someone, Akoha.  Can’t wait to meet this amazing person at the next community conference. They should be easy to find, I will look for the halo…

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GREAT video on the value of kids virtual worlds

Go now and watch the Fast Company video from these posts. No, I’ll wait. The whole thing too, it’s all good.

http://www.virtualworldsnews.com/2008/04/video-disney-on.html
OR here
http://redcouch.typepad.com/weblog/2008/04/ive-said-it-bef.html

Well done Disney. Slow hard clap. I virtually shake your hand.

There are some days when I am so proud of what I do. These sorts of videos are the ones I have to watch when I am not having one of those days. ;) I just wish I saw it when it was originally posted…

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