SocialStartups.com

Revenge of the User: Lessons from Creator/User Battles

This is a transcript of a 2004 talk given by the delightfully lucid danah boyd regarding the difference between what the creators of online social networks think they are creating and what actually evolves.

One of her points is that people (in the real world) interact with other people in their social network within a well-defined context or focus. Your one group of friends like jazz, your other group of friends like snowboarding, and a third group might be co-workers. How you interact with these different groups tends to be distinct and it is critical to control the flow of information amongst these groups. Online social networks destroy that. Everyone in your network can see everyone else, everyone in one group can see the profiles of those in another group… and apply their conclusions upon you - guilt by association.

Here’s an idea - create a social network with very specific privacy options. Allow people to apply group tags to their friends, then specific which pieces of information are visible to which groups. Don’t want your students reading that you like to get wasted on weekends? Only share that with your friends tagged “drinking buddies”.

Prediction: Granular privacy is going to be important in 2007.

Friends, friendsters, and top 8: Writing community into being on social network sites

Great paper by the (quasi) famous danah boyd on the difference between being friends and being (MySpace) Friends.

In Geeking with Greg: Ruthless enough for a startup? Greg says:

There seem to be some dismal lessons in these stories. It appears the ideal startup will give away something that used to cost money for free (preferably copyright material and porn), use other people’s content and resources, appeal to the baser human instincts (especially vanity and sex), and spam massive e-mail lists at launch.

He uses Skype, YouTube, Facebook, HotOrNot and MySpace as examples.

I think there is something to this - give away something that used to cost money and do it using other people’s content and resources. Brilliant! The second half (appealing to vanity/sex and spam) is just about getting traffic.

P2P television is the next thing that fits this bill, in my opinion. Provide cable TV for free, using other people’s machines to distribute it.

Wow, never going back now. I used the Google Personalized home page forever (or, since it launched), but now that I’ve got so many blogs to keep up with, it was time to give Google Reader a chance. And you know what? Keyboard shortcuts are severely underrated. You just don’t know how great they are until you try it. Makes reading so much faster.

Will It Blend? | Presented By Blendtec

I love these videos. Viral marketing made fun. Plus, host it on YouTube for free!