The Fix

Your “Three-And-A-Half-Minute Sweet Spots of Web-Time”

We live in a digital environment characterized by increasing information overload and attention deprivation and, like it or not, we are captives in an evolving web-based and web-defined pop culture from which few can escape. The notion of social capital generally refers to the value of our human relationships but remains largely a default metaphor for the value of networking that can’t be quantified. Social capital wants to be measured, but we don’t know how to do it. Why is measuring social capital according to “sweet spots” important? How we deal with these sweet spots may well change our lives, both individually and collectively.

Stewart Brand, creator of The Whole Earth Catalog, observed several decades ago that information that wants to be free, becomes free. And Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail, presents a compelling case in his recent Wired magazine article (to become a book in 2009) that in a world driven by ”freeconomics”, music that wants to be free, becomes free. Likewise, social capital that wants to be measured, becomes measured; and we can harness all of these accelerating forces of self-organization to our advantage if we can identify and use the full power of our most effective sweet spots of time on the web.

Before we can measure social capital in our digital culture, at least three elements–networks, content, and time–must work together in harmony so that social capital can be easily created, stored, and exchanged. On the web, time is the element most taken-for-granted in the exercise to establish measurable values. The web is basically a series of network connections between transmitting and receiving nodes. Every second that you are on the web, you are receiving or transmitting signals and noise. It is likely that more than 99% of the time, from your perspective, you are on the receiving end of mostly noise and only occasionally content that is relevant to you. You create social capital on the web only when you transmit what is considered relevant content by a defined number of receivers in one or more interconnecting networks.

Time is the only true common denominator that we all have in equal measure and value most in life. During your entire life, your effective web-time will likely be less than a million minutes (say, an average of 1 hour a day X 365 days X 40 years = 876,000 minutes). Although we often hear predictions about the profound impact that the web will have on our lives, very few actually calculate how much time we, as individuals, will actually be on the web based on reasonable assumptions. In both receiving and transmitting web content, 876,000 minutes of web-time is not a lot–so use those minutes wisely

Clay Shirky, a long-time student of web-dynamics, suggested in his widely read and discussed article on ”Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality” that the web cascades according to a power law, largely driven by supernodes. Supernodes are connectors of networks (rather than individuals), who replicate content according to a multiplication table rather counting fingers and toes. The filtering function of supernodes creates by design or result a selective pattern of web-usage that has now become known as “the long tail”. In order to participate in nature’s ordering of her complexity, you should strive to be a supernode yourself or attract other supernodes as often as possible by creating relevant web-content using the “sweet spots” of web-time that I propose are best positioned to pass the de facto filter test of our time-constrained pop culture.

The sweet spot of digital data that “wants to be” multiplied (rather than discarded as noise or merely added in onesy/twosy fashion) through network connections is content that can be experienced in discrete units of time during a unique web session. I suggest that 30 seconds is too short and 10 minutes is too long to maintain your attention on the web when you are in “time-conscious” mode. Because your total lifetime experience on the web(!) is probably less than 900,000 minutes as demonstrated above, you want to do everything in a hurry (to just get the gist and move on, maybe return later, more likely not, always chasing the new, new thing). Based on anecdotal evidence and personal experience, a more reasonable period of time to transmit and receive web-values in our fast-paced digital culture is somewhere between 2 and 5 minutes. Let’s split the difference, for now, and say that 3.5 minutes may be the “optimum” period - to listen to one song or read a blog that has the potential for “accelerated self-organization” (which is just another way to describe the operation of power laws in nature). Web-content packaged in short sweet spots of time that are just long enough are amenable to multiplication rather addition (geometric vs. arithmetic growth).

The web-time needed to listen to an artist’s album or a fan’s playlist with appreciation, or to read a detailed article with understanding, is too long and, let’s face it, this will rarely happen. Why would this be so? Even utilizing three-and-a-half-minute “optimal web-units” means that you only have time to check out about 250,000 sweet spots of comprehensible content (both good and bad) on the web during your entire life! [876,000/3.5 = 250,286]. I’ll wager that because cyberspace is infinite, you thought you would have boundless time to explore it and find all the good stuff to your heart and mind’s delight. If more than 99% of your time on the web is receiving noise or content not relevant to you (see point 2 above), the sweet spots of the “good stuff” may be even a small fraction of these, say, 250,000 optimal web-units during your entire life. Holy Smoke! How do we change the math?

As a transmitting node on the web, you have only about three-and-a-half-minutes to have your music heard, blog read, or media presentation absorbed to hook a receiving node to repeat it, save it, or pass it on. Clearly, just saying “check out my stuff” is not enough. At the same time, “hooking” a receiving node or two does not trigger the multiplier effect initiated by supernodes. Supernodes perform a key role in measuring social capital by acting as de facto filters for the good stuff that comes packaged in sweet spots of web-time.

Due to the dynamics of networks, all these sweet spots of content that “hook” (think, X) are being transmitted and received simultaneously in mind-boggling complexity with the “opposite of X” (that is, web-content that is essentially noise to be filtered rather than replicated). In this milieu, what web participants connect and replicate in actual fact are the “sweet spots that hook.” These sweep spots are capable of being measured as optimal web-units and, thus, are measured. This process of accelerated self-organization seems to be circular, but don’t worry about it. Just remember that the optimal elements of social capital on the web (based upon the constituent framing elements of time, content, and connectivity) self-emerge and we will deserve the future that we create.

Your job on the net, if you choose to accept it, is to find your own sweet spots–both as a creator and supernode filter.

My three-and-a-half-minutes are up. Unless, of course, you choose to re-read this, save it, or pass it on.