Sunday, March 9th 10:00 am – 11:00 am
Daniel Burka Creative Dir, Digg/Pownce
Emily Chang Co-founder, Ideacodes
Max Kiesler Co-founder, Ideacodes
Joshua Porter Founder, Bokardo Design
Chris Massina Citzen Agency
Todd Seiling Ma.gnolia
In the 3rd phase:
1. user one reader
2. database could save your information (early web apps – banking sites)
3. social web apps – enable communication between the people using the site/software (facebook, flickr, youtube). Over time there will be more and more of these types of interactions on a website.
How do you encourage good behavior?
Tie behavior to identity:
If people can do things w/anonymity they aren’t held responsible to what they do there. Amazon.com is a good example of this since they force their real name. Ebay is another example giving users the ability to make an assessment of a certain seller based on that seller’s history. A user’s behavior is known is tied to their ID.
Give recognition for he things done within those groups:
Digg.com – Top Diggers in Digg gives recognition to the users who submit the most stories to the homepage. On Digg it became a negative thing since users were trying to game the system and get on the list. This works better when the recognition comes from the group vs. the site. It was tough for others to get onto the list.
Threadless.com – Tshirt design voting. Best voted shirts win and then taper off and others get a chance
Show Causation:
Netflix.com – constantly telling you how it works. Encourage you to rate movies since it is good for you and good for Netflix. Pandora is another example of this – they tell you why a rating shows up or why something shows up based on your ratings
Leverage Reciprocity:
When someone provides value to you, you feel somewhat obligated to provide value back to them.
Linkedin.com – professional recommendations: if someone recommends you the changes that you’ll recommend them back are very high. This ties very closely to causation.
Privacy and Community
There is a spectrum of private and public sites Basecame <–> MetaFilter
At either end of the poles you need to determine what is private/public. It is easy on the far ends, but it gets more grey in the middle and you need to be aware of the privacy issues.
Hot points:
What do users really care about (or should they) – their online identity. How much of your name is there? Is your image up? Can you be identified from the profile?
Communication – is it public or private? Is my message going out to one person or the entire community?
Trcking site activity – show was is being tracked, and make sure users are aware of what is being tracked. Beacon from facebook is an example of this poorly done. Going to become a more hot topic in the future – what exactly is being tracked and what is being done with it?
Control is tough in all of this – how to turn these things on and off. A preferences area can easily get unruly. Once you’ve added too many options people don’t understand and you have no control.
How do balance simplicity to complexity and continuing developing the project or site? WordPress is a simple tool, but where does it go as compared with Drupal (everything and the kitchen sink)?
Transparency – This is extremely important. make sure your users know what is going on. Make sure you are clear with your users what you are doing.
Weeding out Worms (ma.gnolia + spam)
- spam is a drag
- spammers heart social software
- out tools for good also are spammers tools for bad
- ugly numbers: 75-80% of new accounts are spam
Methods:
- Once site, many accounts
- Too legit to quit: few legit-looking links
- Joe SEO: getting rich quick
- You can’t fool me: profile aware
- Had enough yet? Importing volume links
It is touch to get around all of this because you don’t want to cut off legit users. It probably won’t disappear for good, but we still need to keep fighting.
What didn’t work:
- No-follow – “ignore the destination of this bookmark”
- Akismet (wordpress) – didn’t work at account level and would send things back and fourth
- Weed-on-sight –
- Recaptcha
What does work:
- Accept that there’s no 100% win
- Gardeners (humans look at accounts before stuff goes public)
- White-list, with a shade of gray
About Gardeners:
- Enabled trusted members to move accounts on and off of
- Not a job, contest of vendetta
- (Eventually) Gardeners will make new Gardeners, using network for good