Sensemaking

Double your userbase with two lines of code and a box of Modafinil

First impressions count.

Users judge a site just within a fraction of a second. Many hit the back button before reading the first line of text. And of the few that decide to stick around for a minute and give you a chance, there's no guarantee they'll ever return.

HCI gives us a good understanding of how users make snap decisions about site design. But how do users decide whether or not to join a community?

According to social psychologists, users judge communities along four dimensions:

1) What is the current benefit of this community to me?
2) What is the expected future benefit of this community?
3) How much do I like the individuals within the group? (Common Bond Theory)
4) How much do I like the group as a whole? (Common Identity Theory)

Because newcomers by definition have no prior experience with the community, their decision to join is based primarily on the expected future benefits of joining. Increasing the expected future benefit is just selling. Good copy, good screencast, good screenshots, etc.

But let's assume you've been reading your Seth Godin so you're already up on the latest marketing techniques. What else can we do?

I recently saw Bob Kraut present a paper on the mediating variables for Usenet participation. The study looked at how getting a reply affected the chance that a poster would return and post again.

For oldtimers who received no replies, 84% posted again. For oldtimers who did receive a reply, 86% posted again. For newcomers who received no replies, 16% posted again.

What's startling though is the effect getting a reply had on newcomers posting their first time. When looking only at newcomers, getting a reply increased their likelihood of posting again from 16% to 26%. That's a 62% increase!

Apparently, getting a reply increases satisfaction in all four dimensions. It increases current benefit, it increases expected future benefit, it creates a common bond with the individuals who posted replies, and it increases identification with the group as a whole.

Now, translating patterns in Usenet posts into practical design advice isn't an exact science. But if I were launching a new website, here's what I'd do. Instead of hiding the Feedback link in the upper right hand corner, I'd place a form right on the main page. A big form. And I'd bend over backwards to get people to use it.

Bugs, ideas, comments, observations, advice, etc. It doesn't matter. Why? Simple.

Because by emailing you, your visitors are giving you permission to send a reply. A reply that, if crafted correctly, could dramatically increase that person's chances of becoming a full-fledged member of the community.

Now, I can't guarantee this will actually double your traffic. But all the research says that people will be more likely to continue to participate in online communities if their early interactions are successful. And what could make one feel more successful than getting a friendly personal letter from the CEO?

And by personal I mean personal. No form letters allowed. Yeah, you might have to stay awake for a week straight. But so what. If it works, it's worth it.

After all, the only cost of trying is two lines of code and a box of Modafinil.

Sources:

Kraut, R., Wang, X., Butler, B., Joyce, E., & Burke, M. (Under review). Building commitment and contribution in online groups through social interaction. Unpublished manuscript.

Ren, Y., Kraut, R. E., & Kiesler, S. (In press). Applying common identity and bond theory to the design of online communities. Organizational Studies. [PDF]

Easier isn't always better

In ancient China kids used to wear shirts that buttoned down the back so that they would be forced to learn to collaborate with others.

The reason we order wine by the bottle is that it's the perfect size for two or three people.

Likewise, tea used to be an object of sociability until the invention of the teabag.

Easier isn't always better.

Sometimes the best thing since a loaf of sliced bread is a loaf of unsliced bread.

Is social networking dead? Nope. We've only just seen the beginning. Here's why

Social networking lacks credibility.

And it's not hard to understand why. Small VC firms receive two or three proposals for new social networking sites every single week. Large VC firms are getting two or three every single day. Most are terrible.

A conversation with a friend sums up the situation well

11:19:57 PM Bobby: social networking is a really tough sell nowadays
11:20:05 PM Bobby: because you hear about amillion ideas for a social networking site
11:20:33 PM Bobby: and ppl are kind of scared of it and theres this stigma associated with it, like "oh god its another social networking site, whoopdedoo, web 2.0."

The problem here is that the vast majority of proposals for new social networking sites fall into two categories:

1) Me-too sites with one or two new features. "We're like Facebook but we let you trade files!"

2) Really niche social networks. "We're like MySpace but for knitters in Canada!"

Rather than discussing these approaches right away, let's first outline the three ways in which social networks can connect people. We can then use this framework both to understand the current state of social networks and also to identify new potential ways to create value. After doing this it should become apparent why the two approaches above are so problematic.

Social networks can connect people in three ways. They can strengthen existing relationships. They can connect friends-of-friends. And they can introduce complete strangers.

Each of these cases requires a completely different approach to sharing information, communicating, collaborating, hanging out, dating, planning, organizing, etc.

So how do the social networks of today fit into this framework?

According to Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook is "a social utility that lets people share information with the people in their world quickly and efficiently." In other words, the core competency of Facebook is strengthening existing relationships through information sharing.

The purpose of MySpace, like Facebook, is also primarily to strengthen existing relationships between friends through information sharing. The main difference between MySpace and Facebook is what bits of information get emphasized. For example, MySpace uses the musical tastes of others to facilitate the discovery of new music.

And similarly, the purpose LinkedIn is to connect friends-of-friends for the purpose of networking.

Each of these sites facilitates only a tiny fraction of possible human interaction. Which is why creating "Facebook but with emoticons!" or "MySpace but for for the Amish!" is so silly. Facebook and MySpace already do a great job in their respective niches, and it would be very difficult to unseat them. And since there is so much potential in the yet unexplored possibility space, it makes no sense to even try.

There is a lesson here for venture capitalists as well. Sure, the vast majority of pitches for new social networking sites may be terrible. But that doesn't mean the possibilities for creating value have been exhausted. The next two guys to show up on your doorstep just might be a little less dumb than you think.

Social Arbitrage: The New New Path to Abnormal Returns

Jeff Bezos was not a dissatisfied customer.

He didn't start Amazon because he could never find what he was looking for. It wasn't because of poor staff recommendations. Nor did he just plain hate leaving the house.

Bezos wanted to take over online retailing, and he used the skills he gained as a quant trader to do it. He looked at the top twenty retail products sold via catalogue, and figured out why each product worked or didn't work. He looked at storage space, shipping costs, turnaround time, market demand, etc.

Amazon sold books not because Bezos was dissatisfied with the qualitative experience of bookstores, but because his analysis identified books as an arbitrage opportunity.

And it worked. And others noticed, and the programmer/quant combination became the backbone of the dotcom revolution.

But that opportunity is gone. It's been arbitraged out. Whereas ten years ago there was widespread temporary economic disequilibrium ready to be exploited, we've now reached a state of balance. It's not that rigorous quant analysis isn't important anymore; it's just as important now as ever. It's just that supply has caught up with demand, and so being a brilliant programmer and mathematical thinker is no longer enough to guarantee retirement by age 25.

So what's next? Social arbitrage.

Back in 1995 the biggest websites were all tools: Amazon, eBay, Yahoo!, Hotmail, etc. As tools, these websites did something for the user or enabled them to do something. The way to get rich was to build the tool that did the most stuff for the most people.

Today, all the good tools already been taken. That's why the hottest web startups today are not tools, but spaces: MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Digg, Reddit, Squidoo, etc. If eBay is a single paintbrush, then MySpace is more like an art studio: a nice place to hang out with friends while working on similar projects and sharing a common toolset.

And in order of importance, what each tool does is less important than the social interaction that goes on around them.

Don't believe me? Remember oFoto and Shutterfly and Webshots? Remember what happened to all these sites? Flickr.

As tools, all of these predecessors worked as well or better than Flickr. (Remember Flickr's early flash uploader?). Flickr's innovation was to transform photos from an object of art into an object of sociability, and to transform photosharing from a set of tools into a community.

So, what does it all mean? To quote Howard Rheingold, "The 'killer app' of tomorrow won't be software or hardware devices, but the social practices they make possible." In the past, the key to creating the next blockbuster was having the best understanding of how people used technology. Today's big hits are coming not from those who have the best understanding of how people actively use technology, but rather from those who have the best understanding of how design decisions tacitly shape  social interactions between users.

For example, understanding the effect that Reddit's karma system has on the quality of discussion.  Using social psychology to motivate user contribution to online communities.Grokking the difference between the bond between a user and the group and the bond between multiple users, and being able to make intelligent design decisions accordingly.

We've reached the point where there is a growing body of academic research into online communities, but very little of it is making its way back into practice. That's partially understandable, since much of it is tentative or inconclusive. But what this early research is telling us is that, by and large, human behavior is human behavior. That is, the Internet is at best only a mediating variable, and a fairly predictable one at that. What this means is that we can apply to the ideas of traditional sociology, organization behavior, psychology, educational theory, etc. to online community design.

That's right, I said it: design.

By understanding the Internet's role as a mediating variable in social interaction, we can apply the knowledge of traditional social science to actively designing online communities. They don't teach courses on this in college. You can't buy a book on it on Amazon. But by combining the research with a little intuition and some good old fashioned mucking around, we can go a long way.

Look around and you'll see a lot of mistakes being made. And mostly it's the same mistakes being made over and over again. It's as if we're in another bubble.

During the first dotcom bubble, we had lots of startups run by MBAs that were getting trounced by the competition run by hackers. Today, the dotcoms run by guys who only hack are going to be trounced by the startups that also understand social systems.

Call it a temporary economic disequilibrium. Or, if you will, an arbitrage opportunity.

***

Consider this my "Hello, world!" post. Expect to see more on this topic in the future. And if you can't figure out what sensemaking means then don't bother subscribing to the RSS feed; you probably won't get it anyway.

Dinner-and-a-Movie Theory: Why Reddit Gets it Backwards

The reason the traditional first date used to be dinner and a movie was because the movie gives you something to talk about during dinner. The value of the movie is not only the quality of the movie itself, but also its ability to give you something to talk about.

This is why newspapers lose when they prevent readers from commenting on their articles. The reason most people read the paper is that it gives them social currency with others. The value of the paper is directly proportional to its ability to serve as an object of sociability. Make the experience more social and the value goes up, less social and the value goes down.

Which is why Reddit has it all backwards.

The idea of content aggregators like Reddit is that they link to the best stories on the web. These stories are then supposed to serve as objects of sociability that generate interesting discussion. And I think most of us will agree that what makes one aggregator good and another bad is as much about the quality of the discussion as it is about the quality of the stories themselves. So far so good.

The problem here lies with the greater fuckwad theory. That is, once a content aggregator reaches a certain number of eyeballs there becomes an irresistible temptation to cause a little high-visibility mischief. Or a lot of high-visibility mischief. And so the quality of discussion seems to be capped at a certain fixed signal-to-noise ratio. If formatted the same, on some days you'd be hard pressed to tell whether you were reading the comments on Reddit or YouTube.

So the point of the content is to create interesting discussion. But as a site's popularity increases, the probability of having an intelligent discussion approaches zero.

How can we solve this?

Traditionally, the output of social systems is thought to be a combination of the intrinsic qualities of the people there and the systemic forces that drive their interaction. With content aggregators, these two factors are responsible for both the content that makes the front page and the quality of the discussion. The problem here is that the factors required to choose good content may be different from those required to produce good discussion. And what's more, the factors that encourage insightful content are almost certainly different the factors that encourage informative, interesting, and funny content.

Because of this it seems likely that there either there is no single set of people and systemic forces that will produce both a wide range of quality content and quality discussions, or else if there is then it will be prohibitively hard to find.¹

So why not cut out the middleman? Instead of of linking to interesting content, why not link directly to interesting discussions?

Think of all the benefits:

A) Being generous, there are maybe ten or fifteen articles and blog posts a day that are genuinely insightful. Each of these articles creates dozens if not hundreds of discussions. Instead of trying to find the perfect blend of people and systemic forces to create a new discussion from scratch for each article, why don't we simply link to interesting discussions that are already happening across the web?

B) Linking to discussions is an excellent means of finding quality content. Interesting discussions almost always have an interesting source, whereas content that seems interesting may in fact produce only vapid discussion. This is especially true in a world where the stories that top the content-aggregators are mostly chosen by twelve year old boys. When I was twelve just about every online discussion thread seemed insightful simply because when you've only been literate and online a handful of years, every idea seems new and fresh.

C) When using a content-aggregator to create discussions, you are always talking with the same limited group of people. This rapidly leads to a stagnation of ideas and users outgrowing the virtual discourse group. When aggregating discussions from around the web this problem would be greatly reduced.

D) There are certain classic pages that pop up on content-aggregators every few months, which most net natives are more than sick of seeing by now. There are also most likely several thousand classic discussion threads, but since no one has ever made a discussion aggregator before the majority of them would seem completely fresh.

E) Linking to a seven-year-old article is lame because it's out of date. Linking to a seven-year-old discussion is just as interesting now as it was back then, if not more interesting because of it's added historical interest.

I'm not claiming that there is no value to traditional content-aggregators, in fact they can be quite useful. However, since the value of the discussion is as great or greater than the value of the content, it makes sense to at the very least try aggregating discussions in addition to aggregating content, if only to see what happens.

[1] The exception is with certain niche aggregators like where you have a relatively small number of like-minded people.

When Better is Worse -- Thoughts on the Facebook Redesign

There is much to like about the new Facebook. It's much cleaner and has a more consistent information architecture that will give it room for future growth and innovation. Not to mention, it just plain looks better.

The bad news is that it feels fragmented. It's so easy to access information that it no longer feels like a community. The old site design was really focused on making it easy to find out what your friends were up to. There was basically one set of information that everyone in the group was looking it. In the new version, the additional information coming in is so great that it means everyone is now looking at a different set of info. This means that the newsfeed and recent changes are no longer an object of sociability. That is, because each person will be exploring different parts of the site there is less in common to talk about.

I think the new redesign may actually be a case of "better is worse" for this reason. Instead of having the feel of a unified stream of news to keep up to date with, the new site now feels like an encyclopedia to flip through when there's nothing better to do. Simply put, there's no longer the urgency to check it multiple times a day.

From Wired: "Joi Ito, founder of Neoteny, a venture firm, and former chair of Infoseek Japan, has joined a group of technologists advising Dean ... I contact him to ask if he thinks there's a difference between an emergent leader and an old-fashioned political opportunist. What does it take to lead a smart mob? Ito e-mails back an odd metaphor: "You're not a leader, you're a place. You're like a park or a garden. If it's comfortable and cool, people are attracted. Deanspace is not really about Dean. It's about us."

Facebook now feels less like a space and more like a resource. Less like a community, more like a product.

Less special, more average.