Social Software is like a Good Bar (by Jeremy Zawodny)

Social Software is like a Good Bar (by Jeremy Zawodny):


In that piece, I found her “bar analogy” for social software to be simple yet compelling:

You could think of it like your favourite bar. The social function is similar. You don’t go there because the beer tastes different than from in the bar next door, but because of the people who are there.

People who aren’t already caught up in an on-line community often fail to understand the allure. They seem to think that the virtual nature of the community somehow structures the interaction in a way that precludes the sort of intangible things we’re used to in face to face communities.

One of the stories I’ll have to tell in more detail after my service at Yahoo is complete (and likely just a footnote in someone’s book) is about the Flickr acquisition.

During one of the final internal “sales pitches” for the purchase, I had finished demonstrating Flickr to some important Yahoo’s that weren’t as familiar with it. One of the technical leaders in the room suggested, politely, that it was a waste of money and that “we could build this in six months.”

I honestly don’t remember if I responded to his assertion in that meeting or not (I think I did), but to me he was wrong and missing the point. Yes, we could have replicated the technology in six months. Heck, we probably would have improved it quite a bit. But we didn’t have the experience to replicate the “feel” of the early Flickr community.

Jeremy and Esther are right on here. Laurie and I have used this visualization for about 15 years in trying to describe our views on how mailing lists should be run and used; it’s not about the list (or its software), and it’s not about the owners (except as the people who set the tone): it’s about the people.

It’s easy to duplicate software. It’s tough to duplicate environments, and impossible to duplicate the people.

The real value of the Flickr deal for Yahoo wasn’t buying the software (as they did with yahoogroups, for instance, to name a piece of Yahoo that always has felt rather lifeless and corporate to me) — it was that they made sure the Flickr group came with it, and kept working on it, and by being willing to KEEP IT FLICKR, not rebrand it yahoophotosharing.

They recognized the community by leaving the name alone, and that’s helped Flickr STAY what they bought.

I’m back to using Flickr again — and the more I use it, the more impressed I am with it. And I note that I use it, despite the fact that I could use .Mac instead (for free). And one of its greatest strengths is that unlike a lot of the “Web 2.0″ stuff people keep babbling about, the Flickr technology is relatively simple, but strongly enabling for people (IMHO, much of “Web 2.0″ these days are a few geeks congratulating each other over “really neat hacks” of marginal usability or usefulness….)

You might also want to read:

  1. Social media at its worst – post-mortem cyber-bullying | Measuring Social Media Social media at its worst – post-mortem cyber-bullying | Measuring Social Media: The problem of cyber-bullying hit me hard last week. As I wrote last...
  2. Apple releases MacBook, MacBook Pro Software Update 1.2 Apple releases MacBook, MacBook Pro Software Update 1.2 – The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW): That’s because Apple just released a software update for the new...
  3. Tom Benjamin’s NHL Weblog: Good Night and Good Luck Tom Benjamin’s NHL Weblog: Good Night and Good Luck: The whopping ticket price increase is, to me, another indicator that a deal to relocate the...
  4. Software spots key players in online communities Software spots key players in online communities – tech – 20 July 2007 – New Scientist Tech: Welser’s group found that the most informative individuals...
  5. some fascinating discussion on the use of persona’s in software design. adaptive path: some fascinating discussion on the use of persona’s in software design. : Solid personas can be incredibly helpful. Several years ago, Schwab redesigned...