Find Me a Cuter Dog

Becky got her "holiday present" early this year, and no it's not a chewed up ball on the end of a cat toy. She got a Nikon D50 DSLR and a pretty kick-ass lens to take pictures at shows.

Community Building in the Age of Facebook - Day 1

Today I attended the Web Community Forum's "Community Building in the Age of Facebook" conference here in Seattle. It featured panels and presentations by the rock stars of Facebook thought-leadership - it was well worth the $500 admission.

What struck me though was what I perceived as an myopic love of all things Facebook:
* The beacon feature recently was just poorly executed.
* There is no short term competition for Facebook.
* The worst thing about Facebook is their messaging features.

From my perspective, Facebook has done a lot of things right, and they potentially represent a good opportunity to raise awareness for Livemocha, but I approach their enthusiasm with a bit more skepticism.

When you're a hammer, everything's a nail...
... I've heard RIM CEO Jim Balsillie say this a couple of times and it seems to apply. It was a foregone conclusion that start ups should make Facebook a huge part of their product strategy (ie don't have a stand-alone destination site) and that advertising seemed to be the obvious place to monetize. I suppose it's unrealistic to expect people who have seen success on Facebook to talk you out of working with Facebook.

.... but what if Google makes good on their promise?
Google's Open Social announcement allows developers to write an application "once" and potentially share data between different "container sites" (Hi5, Bebo, Orkut, MySpace, and more). Of course this is currently an empty promise because OpenSocial won't be ready, I hear, until early next year.

If they execute well, OpenSocial:
* Has more users
* Inherently allows application developers to hedge their bets by developing simultaneously for multiple sites (rather than just Facebook).
* Allows "niche" social networks to better target and address user needs.

The Fragmentation of Social Networks
The last point is important because the Facebook folks seem to think that you'll only ever need one social network and everything that an application developer could ever need to do, can be done within Facebook; a sort of technology manifest destiny. However, fragmentation historically seen in other "applications" seems to refute this (unless you think, for whatever reason, the "social networking application" is unique). You see the creation of niche's along (at least) 2 vectors: features and demographics.
* Features: Webmail providers offer features and look-n-feel attractive to their specific segment. Think about the differences between Gmail (message threads) and Hotmail (traditional folders).
* Demographics: Take dating sites as an example. Sure, you can slice people's profile data any way you like, but niche's such as Jdate.com and Gay.com formed around incumbent Match.com.

What's my point?

My hypothesis is:
* Facebook *is* a great opportunity for developers to raise awareness of their brands and maybe monetize a little. A walled-garden like Facebook is attractive when technology and markets are immature because it provides a stable "pseudo-standard" for developers and business to work with.
* Over time, though, with openness, you'll see a fragmentation in social networks to address niches that address either feature-specific (eg language-learning specific features :) or demographic-specific user needs.

Applying Social Design Concepts

I have so many pent up topics for blogs - waiting for Livemocha to launch was killing me.

Shirish wrote a good market opportunity and vision statement for Livemocha but, where I've taken an interest, are in many of the social design philosophies underlying "web 2.0" applications.

1. A social network is a feature NOT a business. Unless there is a very well-defined "niche" being served, a Facebook-clone social network seems only doomed to fail and, even when a niche is identified, the gravity that the strong incumbents have, coupled with the low cost of entry and "open nature" of the Facebook API, it seems that any niche could quickly be addressed on existing networks.

Philosophically, we built a social network because it reinforces the value proposition rather than BEING the value proposition. Afterall, what's a more social activity than having conversations (regardless of language)?

2. Make it useful for me first. Josh Porter over at Bokardo says, "Personal Value Precedes Network Value" and I believe it. Livemocha provides very tangible value to beginner language learners by providing initial seed content in the form of self-study exercises. This is something that "competitive" services are lacking. This was a great move - we've seen a tonne of traction with our courses.

Ironically, we've received a bit of flack (being accused of trolling for users) because our registration page contains a language that we don't (yet) have courses for. Our competition, who simply offer language exchanges (ie chat tools + social network) don't have courses but have a similar drop down. It's interesting how offering courses changed the frame of reference.

3. Invert the participation pyramid. I first saw this pyramid in the Globe and Mail on my way to Vancouver, BC. I never cut anything out of the paper, but thought this research by Forrester summed up our (every site that relies on user generated content) problem nicely. Basically, it says that the majority of people on social networks just consume the content that the minority make (think wikipedia).


Lee LeFever over at CommonCraft had some great advice in his blog "Your Community is a Party Waiting to Happen":

Your party needs multiple ways to participate...Consider how small modes of participation can be a gateway to deeper contributions.

Livemocha recognized early that users will have two forms of anxiety: 1. People have the social computing participation anxiety as described by Lee and Forrester, and 2. In the context of language learning, there's plenty of research to show that a learner's second language acquisition success is sometimes limited by the learner's embarrassment in speaking their new language.

To minimize this anxiety, we offered numerous ways for community participation. From least participation to most: rating submissions and tips, leaving submissions and tips in native language, completing asynchronous exercises in your new language, full-on conversations (aided), full on conversations (un-aided).

At our launch last week at DEMOFall, we had strong interest and people seemed to get past the "just another social network" that we feared they might get stuck on. Our growth has been steady - the first 1000 users came a lot faster than I expected :). Having done our research up front, applying some of these principles seems to have paid off.

It's alive - Livemocha has launched!

As you know, we’ve been operating Livemocha under a “cloak of secrecy” since the Spring. We’ve all been working like crazy and, for me personally, it has been an incredible experience.

Well, the time has come and we’ve finally launched Livemocha, and the reception thus far has been incredible. We’ve had mentions in: Mashable, Cnet/ Webware, the Seattle P-I, and VentureBeat. … over 300 blog entries on blogsearch.google.com and we were the #1 "upcoming" on del.icio.us.

The main event was Monday when Shirish and I gave our demo at the DemoFall conference in San Diego. Here’s the video – don’t laugh at my accent.

Please sign up – would love everyone’s feedback. Go here to sign up: www.livemocha.com.

Social Design - What I've Learned So Far (Part 1)

In the move to the "Internet space" at LiveMocha, it became clear, almost immediately, that many of the rules of Product Management at RIM don't apply. The most notable differences: we have no customers, we're building a product from scratch, and we have little budget for promotion. The core product, though not solely a social network, will be successful only if the social networking feature (yes, I consider it a feature) is successful; we're up against strong incumbents in the industry who have brand strength, are dominant in traditional channels, and are delivering products that mesh well with customer expectations. If we're going to be disruptive, our implementation of the idea of web 2.0 has to be rock-solid: an engaged and passionate community participating only because of their free-will interest in the subject matter.

Coming from mobile, especially coming from a service provider that's intermediated by the carrier, you often lose site of your end user. You prioritize bugs and build features based on the squeakiest of wheels and forget that, at the end of the day, there's a real user eventually putting down $300 and $30/ mo for your product. So, I had to invest quite a bit of time researching community and relearn how to build products for users, not channels.

There are 4 stand-out thought-leaders that have really shaped my perspective on social design:

Josh Porter @ bokardo.com. His series of blog-posts, Common Pitfalls of Building Social Web Applications and How to Avoid Them, is incredible - I won't rehash it all here - you need to read it. Here are the key "common pitfalls (he had 11, these are the 5 I've focused on):

1. Underestimating the "cold start problem" - A site that derives value from the community, needs a community to have any value - obvious, yes. The question from the beginning for LiveMocha is: how will we initially seed the site so new members find LiveMocha.com valuable? We have several strategies - I'll discuss this in future posts - but suffice it to say, there's irony in going from Anti-SPAM Product Manager at RIM to SPAM Product Manager at LiveMocha. I'm being somewhat spurious, but one technique we're employing is targeting "mavens" on similar social sites ("mavens" is a term from "The Tipping Point" and was a tactic used, unsuccessfully, by AOL/Netscape to compete with Digg).
   
2. Focusing on too many things. This is really just Product Management 101, but it's important to note (1) As Product Managers we have a "vision", but often it may be too complex to clearly articulate to users all at once. (2) That many social sites are being built at the direction of the developers themselves so, when left to their own devices, the UI, particularly the navigation, ends up looking like an airplane cockpit rather than something simple like Apple's FrontRow
   
3. An over-focus on social value. Social networking is a "feature", not a product. If you're only building a social network, then you're competing with MySpace (bought for $770M) or Facebook (being self-valued at $10B). Good luck to you. You better have a really passionate niche.
   
4. No business plan other than to grow. Fortunately, very early on, we know the path we want go down. The reason LiveMocha is a such a great business, is because we have a plan for monetization. Of course, we may find it's more difficult than we think, but at least we have a plan.
   
5. Not appointing a full time community manager. What's a Community Manager? That was my question, so I spent a bit more time researching "Community Management". Anyone who has done Product Management knows that Product Managers have historically had difficulty articulating their value; especially in large, non-technical, companies. I think for the most part, Product Management is now a well understood practice. Community Managers are the new Product Managers insofar as the discipline is new and the value is often misunderstood.
   

I'll discuss Community Management in my next post - stay tuned!

Your friends are making you fat (and good tennis players)

People that know me, know that when I'm losing a debate, I often just falsely quote the New England Journal of Medicine. This was a technique that my father told me about that a friend of his in college used and I thought it was great. So, I assure you, my reference to the NEJoM in this post is legitimate.

There has been plenty of press these days on the so-called real-life phenomenon of the "social network". The New England Journal of Medicine published a report, The Spread of Obesity in a Large Social Network over 32 Years which found:

Discernible clusters of obese persons were present in the network at all time points, and the clusters extended to three degrees of separation. These clusters did not appear to be solely attributable to the selective formation of social ties among obese persons. A person's chances of becoming obese increased by 57% if he or she had a friend who became obese in a given interval.

I'm not a doctor or researcher, but does this report not surprise anyone but me? Replace obesity with anything: Star Trek fan, tennis player, alcoholic - isn't it an obvious conclusion that people with certain interests/ hobbies/ habits surround themselves with people like them? It's not much of a tennis game without other players, afterall. In defense of the research (admittedly, not that it needs my defense), and despite what the mainstream press has reported, the report does say that social ties aren't "solely attributable" to people's obesity.

I do find 2 things interesting about this research: (1) It reinforces the concept of "social proof", (2) It reinforces the concept of personal "self interest".

Social Proof
According to wikipedia, social proof is:

"...a psychological phenomenon that occurs in ambiguous social situations when people are unable to determine the appropriate mode of behavior. Making the assumption that surrounding people possess more knowledge about the situation, they will deem the behavior of others as appropriate or better informed."

I recently finished reading a a book, "Influence: Science and Practice" by Ray Cialdini, in which Cialdini describes such observations as a man in a business suit being more likely to be followed jaywalking than a person in informal clothes. Again, it seems obvious to me that the NEJoM's results could have been predicted by this well-known principle.

This principle can be applied to social design to ensure people inherently/ unconsciously behave in your community in the way you desire:

1. Establishment of a Community Manager to police misbehavior, and encourage positive behavior. Ensuring "positive" behavior occurs more often than "negative" means other users will observe, and emulate, the positive behavior.
   
2. Design features and UI such that positive behavior (or, to generalize, the behavior you wan to reinforce) is demonstrated to all users.
   

Self Interest
Bokardo.com had a post entitled, The Del.icio.us Lesson, in which he describes that social sites still need to adhere to the principle that: Personal Value Precedes Network Value. In other words, a social site must first offer individuals personal value (however it is measured) before we ask them to contribute to the site. YouTube, as another example, offered free video storage before it was entertaining for 3rd parties.

On my way to work last week, on the Seattle Transit, a woman handed me a Seattle PI newspaper (I had originally only asked for the Fry's flier, but I guess she took my original request as a request for her entire paper) in which Guest Columnist John Barnett wrote an article, on the heals of the NEJoM report, entitled Use your friends for weight loss. His closing paragraph was the most interesting:

Don't expect help [to lose weight] from family and friends. They don't want to lose their image of you, just the way they have known you.

Implicit in this statement, and not touched on in the NEJoM report, is that your family and friends passively prevent your weight loss. Further, your weight loss is your battle and so your motivation has to come from within.

In the context of social design, even if you, as a Product Manager, understand that you need to offer users personal value, you need to further find those intrinsic motivators that will spur your community to go on to contribute as if they were the only ones using your site. The question I'm asking myself: "What problem do I need solved that requires me to contribute to a site that, either partially, or in it's entirety, would be valuable to others?"