PerspectivesAre you interested in submitting a Perspective Article? Be sure to read The Science Advisory Board's Editorial Guides for Perspective Articles. Click here. The Past and Future of Social Media at The Science Advisory Board by Alex Taft Manager, Online Communities, The Science Advisory Board It has to be official now: "Social Media" has broken through the final social hurdles with members of the United States Congress "tweeting" their reactions (positive, negative and some down-right funny) from both sides of the aisle during Barack Obama’s February 24th, 2009 pseudo ‘State of the Union’ address. While I don’t think that our members would necessarily find The Science Advisory Board’s Monday Staff Meeting worthy of such flippant reporting, it does make the point that social media technology is impacting daily the lives of many. Looking (all the way) back to the late 90’s, The Science Advisory Board represented a revolutionary step toward online social media as one of the first Internet-based professional networks. In terms of Social Media, Twitter’s cladistic ancestor was the Forum, which represented the primary means of professional/social collaboration in The Science Advisory Boards early history. Over time, The Science Advisory Board evolved to offer significantly more opportunities to communicate and mine information, and now represents one of a number of options (but still the only 100% private and advertising free choice) for scientists around the globe. I know many of you chose to participate in our recent Assessment Study of "The State of the Board." Armed with this data, I intend to implement as many changes to improve your experience with us as are feasible to keep The Science Advisory Board as the community for life scientists. But, to put all of this into perspective (pardon the pun), I believe it might be helpful to know where we have been with relation to the emergence of social media to better understand where we are going. 1997: Infancy  Only a short while ago, the concept of the personal computer was still a farfetched notion reserved for the imaginations of Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke. In the 90’s the tech boom successfully demonstrated the many advantages of personal computing, and forever changed the landscape of global communication. As a primary example, email exploded from relative obscurity and quickly became the standard for mainstream business and personal communication (with devastating consequences to lexicons and grammar alike). While still struggling with technological limitations such as bandwidth, the future is bright, clear and mostly predictable. The Science Advisory Board was born onto the World Wide Web on September 11, 1997, just thee years following the founding of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and only 4 years since the release of Mosaic, the first truly integrated graphical browser. Quickly, The Science Advisory Board boasted a strong membership of 3,000 members, clearly taking advantage of the scientific community’s predisposition for technological tenacity. The primary goal of The Science Advisory Board has always been to bring together a vetted community of life scientists to contribute their experience both to studies that directly affect the industries facilitating research, and to provide means for professional and social collaboration with their fellow colleagues. The internet, and more specifically the world wide web, offered a new and dynamic portal for The Science Advisory Board to improve its interaction with members. As a fledging online community, we recognized the need to develop a strong sense of membership loyalty and trust. Over the next 5 years the staff created additional member benefits and rewards programs to improve membership and demonstrate our commitment to your satisfaction. We recognized the implicit professional rewards and satisfaction that our members enjoyed through industry shaping study participation and forum dialogue. During this time we also strove to improve your personal rewards, creating a formal honoraria program, first with “RewardPoints” and now “ViewPoints,” to better recognize the time you invest into our community! 2003: Gaining Momentum to the Present  The staff introduced new Features, including articles highlighting member opinions in Perspectives. Instant Polls (although not necessarily statistically sound in their reporting) did provide a unique ability for The Science Advisory Board to keep its finger on the pulse of the community. Book, protocol, and website reviews became standard features for the benefit of our members in the resource sections. Membership swelled to 15,000 and the website took a distinctly more modern look and feel. It was during this time that the explosion of the first social communities, MySpace, Friendster, and Facebook--the now reigning champion--first started making headlines. Droves of consumers were already shopping online with stores like Amazon and Ebay, but the wave of online social communities drove the constant communication idea with family, friends, acquaintances and occasionally complete strangers. Of course, don’t let me forget to mention the social development of chat-based communities like ICQ, AIM and now Skype! I still remember my invitation to join "The Facebook" as it was known then, and thinking: this is stupid (well, I never claimed to get everything right!). I joined anyway, and little did I know that soon I would find myself logging in on a regular basis to learn of recent wedding engagements, social events and even the random thoughts of bored friends. Creating large networks of friends quickly became a standard of popularity and of social status in the “real world”, both by young and established generations alike. No longer was it assumed that friends communicating online were merely collaborating in the next big round of Dungeons and Dragons! What about The Science Advisory Board during this time? The most notable change at The Science Advisory Board was the steadily increasing size of our membership. The number of studies fielded to our members also increased, both with respect to volume and subject diversity. While the look and feel of the website has changed only a little over past years, our technology infrastructure has grown steadily as well. Can you believe that this box hosted the original Board???  Due in no small part to the foresight and strong foundation upon which this community was established, we remain strong in this new world of social media. You have already heard me boast of the strong and optimistic state of The Board, so I won’t rehash it. Today and Tomorrow I think it is safe to say over the last few years The Science Advisory Board has been in a holding pattern while new technologies gain footing and social media trends are defined. Now that we have seen modern politicians embracing their Blackberries for more than just email, I know that the time is ripe for The Science Advisory Board to continue down the path as the eminent professional networking site: to further empower you to impact tomorrow’s technology and to provide meaningful and easily accessible resources for your daily research. I invite you to comment in the forum your own historical-technological experiences with us! Anecdotes, humorous and serious moments, yarns of transition, and general discussion would be most welcome! ### << Previous Next >> [ View All Perspectives ] |
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