SocialStartups.com

First, read this.

The Opaque Value Problem (or, Why do people use Twitter?)

Thanks. This is important, and most people over the age of 25 don’t understand this. (Uh oh, I’m not bringing up the age question again, am I?)

Let’s start from a simple statement.

How compelling you find content is directly proportional to how relevant it is to you. The more relevant to you, the more you care.

OK, how about one more simple statment.

The people in your social network are relevant to you compared to those who are outside your social network. For more on that, read this.

Let’s mash the last two statements together.

Given that your social network is relevant to you, content generated from your social network is going to be compelling to you. The more content generated from your social network you get, the better.

It’s going to be boring nonsense to everyone else. So what.

Sites need to realize that if they want customers to visit at least once a day, there needs to be a lot of content available for consumption generated from their social network. This is what Facebook does. This is what Twitter does.

How well does your site integrate with my life?

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.