Yes, it actually does improve productivity, admittedly in our social lives at present but there’s no reason not to see the same techniques being used at work.

Lets take the classic before and after:

Before

Single inbox / Single telephone line

40 socially related messages a day come into my inbox varying from:

• party invites
• group banter
• suggestions and ideas
• jokes and funnies
• photos of newborn babies / wedding snaps

It would be fair to say that I am not equally interested in all these - I am more interested in party invites than jokes and funnies, I like the odd photo of a wedding, especially if I was there, but not the full 600 photographer set.

In the past I had to go through each of these 40 emails in turn to discover if it was socially important or a “nice to have” to be read when I had some spare time.

Now, with Facebook this prioritising of communications (or “triage”) saves me the time and hassle of doing this:

• party invites are important and I get an email notification
• group banter I don’t hear about unless I visit the group or it’s related to me (on my wall)
• suggestions and ideas I might see if I visit my newsfeed and see what others are up to or are posting about but if I don’t have time I don’t get overloaded
• jokes and funnies - I can choose to install Super Wall (an application) and get notifications - or I can again just pop in to see them on my news feed if I’m in need of cheering up
• if its a photo of a baby then that can be shared directly with me (if I’m close enough - i.e. an uncle) or shared quietly (I might spot it if I happen to log in). So I only see baby photos of the people whose babies I actually have a chance of meeting.
• For wedding photos the Facebook tag shows me only the photos that are of me first (vanity checking) and only if I choose to do I surf the rest

So long term the Facebook system is helping me process the flow of digital social communication to increase my social productivity - I can focus on what’s important socially.

Now we just need to see apps that do the same for the flow of business productivity…

I’m just getting stuck into the book Nudge by Richard Thaler. Running a social media consultancy rebranded as Nudge I thought it pretty essential to buy as soon as it came out so it’s been lurking on my shelf for a few months. 

We chose the word “Nudge” for our company name because we felt it helped describe the best way for brands to market themselves on social networks. Advertising on social media is not about forcing a message to users by interrupting them, as  a television advert might do in the middle of an episode of Coronation Street, it’s about making the advertising message available as a choice the user can be interested in and then can take. Being on the social network means being there to be investigated, discussed with friends and eventually chosen.   

As choice architects we help present products and services in the right way on social media. For friends chatting about what presents to get, for example, our wishlist application helps them choose the right product that their friend want. For those wondering where to get the best video news coverage on facebook? Our Sky News Video app puts the breaking news for their chosen channel in their Facebook profile. And there are more fan pages and applications in the pipeline…

While it’s still early days for the nudge approach, it’s already clear that social networks are a place where we do gather information, work out what we’re interested in and discuss interests with our friends. It’s not where we buy (we use Google and the High Street for that) but it is where we build our list of choices.

Our job as choice architects for our clients on social media is to nudge them to make great choices. Anyway, time to keep reading…