BJ Fogg is a professor who (along with others including Dave McClure) led the "Creating Engaging Facebook Apps" course at Stanford. In 10 weeks, the students in the course created Facebook apps that were installed over 16 million times that were being used over 1 million times a day.
I caught up with him last week via a phone call, and was able to both gain a better understanding the of impact of the Facebook course, as well as get a glimpse of what’s coming next.
CFC: What surprised you most about what your class learned?
BJF: The students did this amazing thing, with NO budget. Nobody could have predicted the success. Nobody.
CFC: You’ve stated that "mobile phones will be the #1 platform for
persuasion soon." What makes mobile so compelling, in your opinion?
BJF: Mobile is so compelling for three reasons.
1) Mobile devices are always there with us and we love them
2) Mobile devices are very
personal and private
3) Mobile devices are powerful and have these amazing capabilities
(ed. – BJ noted that just before we got on the phone, traffic was snarled in front of him and he would have been irretrievably stuck, but his phone allowed him to access a map, look at the current traffic patterns and find the only path that wasn’t tied up. He then added that "had the phone
been a little smarter, it would have warned me earlier.")
CFC: What is "persuasive technology?"
BJF: People are persuading people all the time. What’s changed is that we
now have modes of interaction that are designed in software. There’s a
bias in that system, based on the software. The paths, the chutes and
tunnels will be set up in favor of whoever builds the system.
Facebook is all about getting you to upload your picture, go back, invite
your friends, etc., The only way that users have done things is to set
up groups. Users don’t have any specific channels [to exert persuasion]; they have to
improvise. When designing a system, "who are you going to give the power and influence to?" is the inherent question.
Everybody who is succeeding is successful at "persuading" people. Right now, Facebook is the leader.
CFC: What else do you think should be on the radar of the folks attending Supernova?
BJF: Peace.stanford.edu
should be on their radar. We’re doing a "peace intervention"….with the
new internet tools, you can systematically and scientifically do things
that will result in world peace. We’re doing quantitative studies that
show that Web 2.0 tools can create the antecedents to peace. We’re
trying to develop a process that lets people use new technologies and
are measuring the outcomes of trials.
I think it’s a much more critical issue than global warming.
Climate change has been marketed as an issue, and is developing a
series of business models. Peace ends up being a not-sexy
topic, but we’ll keep doing it, and hopefully the people at Supernova
will step back from the biases that cause people not to care about
peace.
BJ Fogg will be moderating a panel entitled "People: What we know, and what it means" at Supernova 2008, which runs June 16-18 in San Francisco. More Supernova agenda information here.