Yesterday we launched a new version of 9rules that we like to call ‘Ali‘ (sidenote: We started using codenames for all the new versions of 9rules starting with Version 4, Phoenix, and trust me it makes things easier from a historical perspective). This version does a lot of things differently than previous versions of 9rules and adds quite a bit of new functionality. What I wanted to discuss in this entry was one of the new features of the site that we named my.9rules.
If you actually read what I write you will notice that I called my.9rules a “feature” of 9rules instead of trying to describe it as a full-blown social network, when in fact it does basically everything that other social networks do. However, there were two things that we kept in mind when working on my.9rules:
- We didn’t like how current social networks handled us.
- We wanted to actually make a social network have meaning if we were going to attach it to the 9rules brand.
Last week I asked the question of “What don’t they do well?” and I had Ali in mind when I was writing it. For me, most social networks try to sell me on too much stuff that I don’t need. I already have sites that I write on so I don’t need a blogging option. I use Flickr for sharing online photos so I don’t need another place to do that. del.icio.us handles my links and last.fm watches my music. So as you can see I really don’t need another platform to handle this data, but it would be nice to have a place outside of my sites for others to see what I am getting into.
That is the approach we took with my.9rules. We live in an open data world now. We have so many accounts setup in so many different places that it is hard to understand why some sites believe they have to give you another way to store data. In all honesty we probably couldn’t do photo-sharing better than Flickr or bookmarking better than del.icio.us so why even bother? The point shouldn’t be to lock people in so they are forced to use your site, the point is to offer them a compelling solution so that they want to use your site.
Another issue I have with social networks is they aren’t very social. Usually you get to leave a comment or send a message and that’s it. Maybe you get to be a voyeur into someone’s life, but most places simply offer a one-to-one conversation mechansim. At 9rules, we have Notes where great discussions take place yet there was no way to really get to know the people who you were having these conversations with. In a nutshell we had the “social” without the relationships and created my.9rules to fill that void.
So now you can get to know about the people you are having conversations with through their blogs, photos, links and music. This isn’t about aimlessly adding friends just to see your number go up. This is about actually building relationships with people that share the same interests as you and this is only the beginning.
I’m not an old school business/marketing person so I’m sure someone out there can help me out with this one. In this world of digital media why in the hell would people create press releases and push them on their own blogs? Does that make any sense when the purpose of the blog is to communicate with your audience and add a level of interactivity never seen before?
Press Releases kill any need for conversation due to how formal they are. Now I can see them being released through the traditional methods because some news outlets still depend on them, but besides that there is no excuse for releasing them to your readers. Quotes from executives and other such garbage take you backwards as a company and show that you really can’t escape the old world mold that people have categorized you under.
They sound so callous. So cold. So robotic. So planned. Seriously, someone help me out and tell me the purpose for them. I am going insane over here.
To play off the Technorati entry, let us pretend that you are the CEO of Digg (and no it isn’t Kevin Rose) and you are trying to stop the spamming/gaming issue that everyone is well aware of on Digg. What do you do? First let’s look at the problems and see if their solution matches any of them.
For one reason or another people like Digg. I enjoy it for the random great link I will find that makes my day. Some enjoy it because they can get on the frontpage and get a nice boost in traffic. Others like to see their names on the Top Digg Users list because it gives them a sense of accomplishment. Finally a small band of geeks love it just so they can see who will have the funniest comment in the entries.
These things are possible because you created an open system with the only rule being that you need X amount of Diggs to make the homepage. Your community thrived on this openness, yet in a society with no rules, chaos is bound to ensue sooner or later. That is what you are left with now. A community with no rules except for the ones the top people have put into place. Now you figure you want to gain your community back because some things aren’t right.
People are getting paid to push stories onto the frontpage and in a free market society that was never expected, right? People were expected to act rationally and just have fun pushing the best of the best through to the top. People would act civilized and leave insightful comments that made you think. You would have Slashdot quality news without the need for editors. The Wisdom of Crowds would kick in…
And guess what? The Wisdom of Crowds phenomenon did kick in. The geek masses love Linux, Apple, Google, Anime and Nintendo. Geeks also have a need to feel superior to their peers so they will want their stories getting pushed onto the frontpage even if it is a duplicate. Many site owners are driven by the need for that traffic fix so again and again they are going to submit trash articles. Everyone wants to be the cool, funny guy at the lunch table so the comments are going to turn into a comedy club. And hell, if you can make a little extra cash to use your power that you earned to get stuff on the frontpage then why not go for it?
Reading everything that is written can you spot the problems with Digg? Take a second to think about it and if you are one of the Digg fanboys do you really think there is a problem with a site that you continue to go back to and participating in? It fulfills so many “wants” of a Geek that the problem isn’t how to control them, the problem is getting people to understand that the system works perfectly for the way it was setup and the crowd it caters to.
So if you are the Digg CEO and you think that removing the top Digg users list will solve your problems I don’t think it will. Finding those top users isn’t a difficult task and for a lot of people you have now taken the game away from them. A portion of your audience used Digg for the game of it. For that need to show people they can be at the top. If you want to think that is pathetic or not that’s fine, but that’s how some of these people work because that was their only incentive to use Digg. What incentive have you left them with now?
If I were CEO of Digg I would help foster the passionate community that I created by not pretending I can fix things that aren’t truly broken. If you can’t give people the incentive to make a top 100 list, give them incentive some other way. You can’t take one method away without replacing it with another thinking it will solve a problem because in reality you don’t make the rules anymore. But then again, maybe it really is too late.
One of the next great things on the web seems to be profile aggregators that somehow bring all of your online profiles together so that you don’t get confused as to where you have been. At least I think that is the point of them, however many of the ones that I have looked at seem to be missing one important thing. The social aspect of all the communities that people join.
Sure we may all join too many Social Networks and have accounts at more places than we can remember, but I’m pretty sure we don’t forget the places that get the job done for us. If you have an account on MySpace, Facebook and Digg are you going to invite people to view your people aggregated profile or look for them at each of those services? Profile aggregators attempt to fix a the problem of making our lives simpler, but these Social Networks aren’t making our lives harder.
So what problem should they be solving?
Well first if you have no idea what I am referring to when I say “profile aggregators”, Frank Gruber has an excellent roundup of a number of them out there. Now that we got that out the way let’s look at problems that we could be solving.
Actually this is as far as I can take things because I honestly don’t know a huge problem that social networks. I don’t have people asking me for all of my identities across them and I don’t find myself needing a spot to see what stuff I have been up to on these sites. Honestly though last year I thought that the idea was brilliant because initially it makes sense. Bring all your identities together, but all that does is try to take away the uniqueness of each one.
If your problem is you don’t have enough time for 3 different social networks then the solution isn’t to use a profile aggregator, but to simply stop using 3 different social networks. Maybe these sites think that they can become a better social network than the social networks you love and use and if that’s the case they need to start all over again.
The irony though of adding any social aspects to these kinds of sites is that essentially you are creating another identity that you have to keep track of. So its great that you pulled all of your social information onto one page and now you can use just one site to keep track of all your identities, but then you are just creating another identity so do you need another site to control that one?
There is a space for these kinds of sites though and it will be interesting to see who comes out on top. However, when there are at least ten of them already there isn’t really any point to using one of them. For now though I think it is best you focus on creating a social experience that does things better than what is currently out there.
What the hell do you do now? If you were awake yesterday I’m sure you heard about Technorati’s latest “feature” dubbed WTF (Where’s the fire). Has anyone found any review that is a glowing endorsement of this product? Everything I’ve read has the same tone of utter confusion as to why this was even released. To clarify what it is, let’s see what the CEO himself has to say about it.
When you see a top search with an orange flame next to it, it means at least one person from the community has written their view as to why that topic is hot - right now. The community is also invited to either write their own explanation or vote on the WTFs they view as most helpful. Based on a combination of number of votes and timeliness, the top WTFs by search topic appear on the top of the results page.
Whaaaa?
For one, anytime I ask people if they use Technorati they usually (and by usually I mean over 90% of the time) say they just use it to see who has linked back to them. Very few people use the search feature as it is because Technorati isn’t really known for their stability. So what’s the best thing you could do in this situation? If you though that improving the stability of your site (which is down as of this writing) or giving you better results was the answer you would be wrong. The correct answer is to create a social feature that allows you to control the search results of a given topic.
Considering how few people will use this (yes I’m making a bold prediction here, I know) it will be pretty easy to game this system. But is it even worth it? What benefit do you get out of WTF? What’s the ROI for your time invested? Seriously if I spend my time writing up a quality explanation as to why the blogosphere is searching for “Paris Hilton nude” what benefit do I get for making it up to the top?
And I know I’m never nice to Technorati on this site and believe me I really wish I had something positive to say about them one day, but they failed twice here so I guess you can say they actually did kill two birds with one stone. One they created something that I’m not seeing anyone says has any value and two they do a horrible job of explaining it. Let’s add to the fact it doesn’t fix the number one complaint that people have with the service and that it has a 50/50 chance of working for you.
It is great to see that they are trying to build some community features into their site, but I don’t think this was the best way to do it. The service just comes off as gimmicky. If you are sitting down and thinking about creating a competitor to Technorati and you ask the question “What don’t they do well” you will have a clear cut answer sitting right in front of you. So if you are the Technorati CEO what do you do?
