Beth Canter, the social media networking consultant, is a blogger who not only writes smart things but has a talent for finding other smart bloggers and reblogging them. What I love about her work (including the re-work) is that she is a pro. As in p-r-o. She has experience and so she doesn't just invent things (i.e. the wheel) and assume that no one else has, no one else knows what it will do, and no one else knows how it works. No, as with all forms of media, new media also operate by certain kinds of tacit community rules, expectations, and norms. And people like Beth have huge first-hand experience assessing those needs. She doesn't just make it up. This is a breath of fresh air in the world of new media insights, which come fast and furious and often don't hold any water or have any traction or whatever metaphor you want to use: they just don't do it.

The insight today, in a blog post reblogged by Nina Simon, is that by far and away the most visitors to a website are spectators or, crudely, lurkers. (Cat in the Stack readers will note that I've written numerous columns on "Lurkers Welcome!" and I know from this blog as well as from my Facebook life that most people watch, they don't actually do.) The big insight here, though, is that watching isn't about not caring, it is not feeling confident of a point of entry. This is why the simple "Like" check mark on Facebook gets so many more hits than "Comment." You can like anything for any reason and it's a low point of entry to click on the "Like" box.

Simon's advice, analogously, is to CONSTRAIN self-expression. That seems contradictory to the Everyone Her/His Own Self-Creator rhetoric of Web 2.0, but it makes sense. As she says, not everyone will paint an image on a mural if given a paint brush. But give someone premixed paints and ask them to please fill in this one box, and they often cheerfully comply.

Guess what? It is the old Biz School truism: collaboration doesn't just happen! Collaboration needs planning, even in Web 2.0 world. Except for cranks who love to zip in, leave a snarky comment, and then zip out, most people, faced with a blank COMMENT box, have no idea what to write and don't like the frightening feeling of leaving a mark that may live on the Internet forever. Even my 20 year old friend, a Level 80 World of Warcraft computer genius, expressed nervousness about blogging, putting ideas out there that would live long after he had his first job as an investment banker where snarkiness might not be the preferred mode, at least not in public. But a simple, anonymous task that contributes to a greater whole? That's a different matter.

Anonymous participation, even mental or highly specific, should be part of the repertoire of Web 2.0 participatory choices. You cannot enforce freedom of choice. So then, we need an array of kinds of choices if we are really going to make participation participatory. I like that concept a lot.

Here's the url for this very thoughtprovoking blog, with a shout out of appreciation to both Beth Kanter and Nina Simon: http://museumtwo.blogspot.com/2009/03/self-expression-is-over-rated-bett....

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And, below, is a truly beautiful YouTube video by Katie Hines, an undergraduate at Kansas State University, who works in the digital media lab with visual anthropologist Mike Wesch who makes some of the most deeply profound, inspiring, and incisive videos about the culture of the Internet, what it means, what it can do, what we want from it. Katie, in this video, tackles issues of participation, anonymity, and intimacy.