Five Levels of Social Conversation

you missed humor - like 4 dopes getting lost in Barcelona recorded and sprayed around the interwebs on Qik.

mmm... I wonder if you can create an engine that will categorize twitter users to these levels. This way you can highlight who is doing what, and avoid following people that are not interesting for you...

I think these levels depend more on the intensity of the relationship, than on social communication.

You only reach level 5 with your closest friends, including spouses/children/parents.

The rest strongly depends on What's In It For Me, that is: what can I get out of the relationship and how deep do I need to go to achieve that?

Just a thought.

Not sure how #4 is social conversation.
Also, I'd suggest "let's get to know about each other" P2P-type media is its own category. This would cover everything from friendshipping to dating, pornotunities, etc.
And I'd add a category for news. "Hey! Look what's happening where I am this instant! What do you want me to show you?" (the previous category notwithstanding)
Finally, serious and deep may be under-rated for now. ;)

Hey Chris. I think this a great and really interesting topic. I hadn't considered conversations as being on 'levels' like this. I think this is important for people to note as they attempt to socialize with one another.

Personally, my entire interest (minus the edges of the bell curve, of course) is in categories 4 and 5. I'm into progressive, intelligent conversation. I'm into conversation about skills that I share with someone or skills that someone else has that I'd like to understand more about. I'm into challenging conversation with people who have really thought about and potentially researched what they're saying and are coming to the table "loaded for bear".

The other three categories register to me as water-cooler banter, and at the lowest level, drivel. It's merely "ping & ack". "do you see me?" "yes, I see you... over". I'm not saying that's what it *IS*. I'm sure it's valuable to the people that engage in it. I'm saying that having gone to the top schools growing up and being exposed to great thinkers and intelligent people that made you bring your "A" game if you wanted to stand a chance in the debate, I'm conditioned to the sport and entertainment of interaction through speaking or through text. There's neither sport nor entertainment for me in "Dog with fleas" conversations. Not watching, and CERTAINLY not participating.

Besides Level 5 conversations, I really enjoy kicking it with or just listening to people like Kenyatta Cheese, Bre Pettis, Charles Hope, Mike Hudack, Kathryn Jones, Dina Kaplan or Kathleen Grace who are really DOING SOMETHING in the space. While I'm applying myself to learning what *I* need to know for editing or filming, they're applying themselves in complimentary and supplementary areas of internet video that I might not have the time or interest to study myself, but I'm always interested in hearing what's new with them as content creators and distributors AND as people.

I think Kfir Pravda has a great idea in comment #1. There needs to be a way to categorize levels of conversation or to pinpoint where communities are of people that are interested in levels of conversation above social banter. I think it's a great thing that people can express themselves and find fellowship on the internet when they don't have any IRL socialization. At the same time, having to sift through the drivel to mine serious and deep conversation is a turnoff to someone who would like to spend less time SEARCHING for intelligent content and more time reading and responding to it.

Hi Chris, thanks for this very interesting topic, I have been called to its attention by Bill.

I would respectfully point out to you something about #1 that in my opinion you are missing the purpose of, based on cultural biais.

In other cultures, this is the basic way to create a link between people, and therefore it is critical. If you ignore this step, you will never be able to pass the stage number 1 and be able to go to a deeper level of conversation.

I found your categories very interesting, but still as a reading of a given culture that can be limiting and excluding.

I guess they are not yet common and not sure if you would put them in one of the already listed category...but what about Advice Show or How-to shows. I'm guessing we might start seeing more of them on platforms like YahooLive and Seesmic.

Kinda tough to have a level-5 convo in 140 characters or fewer. BTW, did you take any of my playlist recommendations? I only sent you 30 or so. Now music - that's something I could talk about in depth.

I feel there's something missing between levels 3 and 4. But 5 levels seems about right so perhaps it's that level 2 is just level 1 with more interesting people.

The idea of some sort of automatic filtering system - as suggested by kfir Pravda and Bill - for these levels takes us down a scary path. Surely it's up to us to do the filtering. And besides, we often change what we want to talk about and even what appears, at first hearing, to be the most banal conversation might lead to insight.

@Graham: I agree. What I was saying about filtering was on the personal level, not the app level. It's similar to how if you go to a message board, you have categories for technical discussions, categories for philosophical discussions, and categories for "how was your day?". When we go there, we only click on the content we're interested in. Same thing with YouTube. Some people are interested in how-to. Some people are interested in comedy. You're not limited to arriving on the YouTube front page and sifting through the thousands of new videos to look for the ones marked "Comedy" and "How-To". You can go specifically to pages dedicated to topics or genres you're interested in.

@Andrew: Agreed about the 140 character limitation, however, Twitter also includes links. I know people coughcharlescough that LOVE to post about political topics. I know other people that like to post their current location in the world. Other people like to post about new tech. The ability to group by topic would be useful. Also, we weren't talking just about Twitter. It was more a conversation of what people find of value in conversations and how we relate to each other because of it... Online *or* IRL.

@Denis - I think humor probably goes into "My Dog Has Fleas" or "Production" depending on the level. Just a guess.

@Kfir - that engine would make MANY services better for me.

@Case - agreed.

@Brian - Production is sometimes conversation, insofar as it's something that someone puts a little extra effort into, but can still be conversational. Ze Frank's The Show, for instance, maybe?

@Bill- I'll deal with *you* in that huge email.

@Otir- Interesting point. I'm curious how you might categorize conversational types in YOUR culture, and/or curious how other cultures see it. You're totally right to point that out.

@Ann- I agree that those platforms will make how-to stuff burgeon even more.

@Andrew- I saved up everyone's recommendations (and thank you), and I'm building something this next weekend with them. : )

@Graham - you're right that there's some value in the banal, but is there something wrong with us having an option to filter the noise?

I take your point, Bill. It seems that what we need is a universal robust tagging taxonomy that carries across into all types of information. That would be incredibly useful but obviously depends on agreed tag names and puts the emphasis on the starter of a conversation to tag it correctly, if at all.

Chris, I think we need to filter the noise but it has to be driven by the individual rather than an application or some sort of conversation equivalent of net nanny type programs. There are huge dangers ahead when someone else has control of the filter.

My point was simply that we need to make something available that makes it easier for us to make choices, rather than to hand over the choice to someone else, hence my point about tagging in my reply to Bill.

@Otir: My apologies for skipping your comment. Somehow, I didn't see it before I posted just now. :)

I agree with your (what I'll call, for the purpose of this conversation) bottom-up concept of people getting to know each other. I think you're absolutely right, and not only is it a basic way of creating a link between people, but it's a well-known and easy way to attract the masses to your product.

If you can facilitate water-cooler banter, you create on a social site the same effect as people emailing jokes to each other in the morning. Does anyone email intelligent questions in the morning? No. Jokes and religious emails. Period. There's nothing wrong with that, but it speaks to the fact that this is how the vast majority of people communicate with each other. "Ping and Ack". "Do you see me?" "Yes, I see you... over". The value isn't in what they're actually SAYING, but in the fact that someone listened to them and spoke back to them. It's the basic take-away of human interaction. It's the reason why telling someone "I love you" is so powerful. It's the accepted verbal indication that you find someone special. The point is the feeling of being special, not the words used to convey that feeling from one person to the other.

For me, the way it works is top-down (again, for the purpose of this conversation). If someone's doing something or saying something that I think is respectable, whether I *agree* with them or not, THEN I become inclined to find out more about them as people. Even when I go to hang out with friends, the discussions revolve around interesting, progressive topics. It's never "Hey... Look at those birds. They're eating the bread on the ground" "Yes, I see that. It's spring in the city". :D To me, that's not only a waste of breath, that's an interruption of my own thought processes where I could have been mentally productive during that time that they were babbling.

Often, I just sit, watch and listen while friends debate politics or women's rights issues or restoring and racing muscle-cars because I enjoy hearing about their expertise in their chosen fields, and I enjoy the passion with which they discuss what they love about their lives.

When Chris and I were discussing this, I thought it should DEFINITELY have been blogged, because it was something I had never considered... the pesonal bias that I bring with me to any situation from being used to "higher-level" conversation.

@Case

I definitely thing it has to do with the established relationship, but I'm wondering if the existence of twitter has created an entirely new heirarchy of technological relationships that go beyond merely friends/spouses/children/family and really start getting into interesting uses of programs like twitter.

I wonder what the implications of these new relationship categories have on communication. (I will think about it and let y'all know via twitter, lol)

@Bill re: links in tweets, fair enough. Sometimes tough to follow links on my mobile so those convos pass me by.

@Chris thanks. I look forward to seeing the list and am pondering a similar experiment but afraid I might get exposed to something I don't like. :) Ah, the danger of the innerwebs.

@Everyone - Is the @ symbol going to become de riguer for comment posts? Or has it already and I've just missed it?

@case - i disagree

often times we reach that depth with folks who are not directly connected to our everyday lives.
I have often had the experience of being able to experience amazing depth with folks i am not close with, maybe because they are not known to me.

and sometimes folks can fall into stuck repetitive conversations with friends/family.

That's how I often use them anyway :)

It’s natural to want to overlay Social Media technologies on age-old, real-world social dynamics, but it doesn’t change them, it only changes their context and scope.

The relationship dynamics we have come to know between a colleague, a friend, a best friend and a brother are identical no matter what the method of communication we employ.

While you and I have had friendly, offline discourse, Chris, you probably don’t consider me a friend yet, although I would certainly say your personable nature has moved you closer to my most inner social circles. We just happened to meet in a professional capacity, although serendipitously, through one of the technologies you mention.

The growth of our relationship will not depend on social media, although we’ll employ social media as one of the conduits of our ongoing communication. It’ll still be the CONTENT of our communication that nurtures whatever depth our relationship achieves.

How is that different from meeting a new colleague in a real world situation such as a traditional office environment?

What you describe has more to do with filtering the sheer volume of incoming which is indeed a function of the technology, but it not ABOUT the technology. Just like in the real world, it’s about people.

With Chris' blessing, I'd like to let everyone know that Valeria Maltoni has some pertinent things to say about this topic in her article today "Revealing Yourself To Others".

http://www.conversationagent.com/

I like what you've written Chris and it seems to me that it is similar to some work I did this fall but was from a different perspective -- social network to virtual community of practice. Rather than post a lengthy piece here, I created a blog post to make the comparison.

It also occurs to me that there is a progression from entry and observation and first contribution (my dog has fleas) to that magic moment when a person knows s/he belongs to the group or community ... to a realization that one is part of a core group of leaders or influencers? In what ways does a persons contribution differ depending on whether s/he is inside the core conversation speaking around and out ... or whether outside the conversation contributing in e.g., periphery to core?

How about just for the sheer heck of it? Maybe people wonder if they are out of the loop? Missing out on the next best thing? Or just plain have too much time on their hands? Mostly I think having a connection with people, no matter how trivial is a need the average human has. Just my 2 cents, so I am not out of the loop : )

i think sometimes conversations start at one level and often can go into deeper territory over time- you can't jump into "life changing dialogue" without starting out at a slightly more superficial level.
The levels may be useful; ultimately it's about being able to have multilevel conversations, and willing to hear people as they drill down deeper.

At first blush 2 sounds like it might be a waste of time. But I find that if you stop and think about what a 2 post is trying to get at, you can elevate the whole discussion, even if it's just in your head, to another level.