Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Don't Give Your Users Shit Work

zachholman.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 117 posts

Re: Don't Give Your Users Shit Work

#41

Post by dylangs1030 »

aprescott wrote: post #32
ebzlo wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I find the use case relevant, I think ultimately, the point is that a post like that simply does not belong on Facebook. Sure one could argue that you should be able to post whatever you want, but the reason it seems so convoluted and confusing is because you've made it that way. A post like that belongs on a blog. I like to think of a blog a place for people to learn about a specific topic. Facebook is for peo…

What about the case where it isn't a long-form post, but something more casual like a retweet or a link to some website? I can see the blog solution working out there, too (cf. Daring Fireball), but you might not want to have that full setup for more ephemeral (yet interesting) stuff. There also might not be one specific topic. I'm not disagreeing with you, I just wonder if there is a way to use a social network like…

To be honest, even retweets and links to blogs I wouldn't show interest in on Facebook. It's not a matter of a post being too long for me to read on Facebook, or I would. It's a matter of expectation. On Facebook I expect to see a personal opinion about the way politics is being run, not a link to a professional discussion about politics. Both happen, but the second is likely to see much more action on a medium like Twitter.

Re: Don't Give Your Users Shit Work

#42

Post by dos1 »

dylangs1030 wrote: post #35
dos1 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just checked and the wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurosis uses the word "neuroses" as a plural several times. What is the correct way to spell this word if not the way I spelled it? (I'm genuinely curious)

It's "neuroses," it's like crisis and crises.

Right, I know. That's the word I used, and it was marked as spelled incorrectly by someone who replied to my original comment. I was wondering why?

Re: Don't Give Your Users Shit Work

#43

Post by drumdance »

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #14
nchuhoai wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the point he is making is that users shouldnt have to do this work. The circle feature implies that they will automatically will take care of it when in fact it doesnt. It's a lot of manual labor as he elaborates.

So, it's not magic because it can't read my mind, thus it's a bad feature because it takes work to fully, fully utilize? I guess I'm still missing the point. It'd be nice if Google knew my relationship with these people or somehow knew my best friends from my colleagues or tech interests, but that's asking a bit much.

It's a suboptimal feature. Most developers like to write code that gets used a lot (at least I do). If a feature that you hoped will be popular is only used by a tiny subset, then you probably failed.

In Facebook's case, they may have written the initial lists feature as way to show they're "doing something" about privacy, so simply deploying the feature is a win.

But in Google's case, they've made Circles a central feature of their platform and it's coming up short (so far at least).

Re: Don't Give Your Users Shit Work

#44

Post by dylangs1030 »

mightybyte wrote: post #27

Totally disagree. First, if you don't want to categorize, then don't--use one big circle. I actually want to have fine-grained control over who I publish to, and Facebook's auto-discovered groups touted in the article don't do it for me. The whole "Don't embrace the shit work" is not relevant either because you can't judge the value of a product by people who don't use it productively. BTW, Most time spent on Faceboo…

I don't disagree, but then, I'm not sure you can make a good comparison between Google+ and Facebook. One is meant for productivity - Google+ was marketed from the start as a more business-inclined way to interact with people (conferences, setting up meetings, etc.). Facebook isn't really trying to be productive, so perhaps the author shouldn't have used the comparison at all. Facebook is really just about interacting vicariously through the internet, with no rhyme or reason to it.

Re: Don't Give Your Users Shit Work

#45

Post by Timothee »

dylangs1030 wrote: post #40
Timothee wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see what you mean. My personal "solution" is that I typically share personal stuff exclusively on Facebook (non-public posts) and what is more "technical" (comments or questions on tech, products, etc.) on Twitter. (and HN) For example, I didn't announce the birth of my daughter on Twitter, because I've known the people who follow me in mostly professional settings. Some of those might be friends too, but if they a…

I think that's the easiest solution. Twitter and Facebook have two different atmospheres - you don't get 20,000 followers because you have 20,000 friends, but because you have 20,000 people interested in your role as a professional authority and your posts about product trends, etc. Similarly, Facebook isn't tailored to disseminating a lot of information to a lot of people quickly and consistently - the number of peo…

Though, in my case, I'm still working on establishing my professional authority on Twitter… :) As a matter of fact my number of Facebook friends and Twitter followers are dangerously close.

Re: Don't Give Your Users Shit Work

#47

Post by scott_s »

dos1 wrote: post #12

For one, I don't really feel like the expletive in the title helped his cause at all. A better title would have been "Facebook suggests groupings of your friends for you!" I also thought his example was contrived. I mean, is there anyone who's so worried about their social networks that they will hem and haw over whether someone is a coworker or drinking buddy or whatever? And if there is someone like that, well than…

"Shit work" is a common enough phrase that it seemed appropriate to me.

Re: Don't Give Your Users Shit Work

#48

Post by seigenblues »

I'd really love for a social network to correctly anticipate all the people i'd like to share something with, and to automagically categorize stuff like that. It'd be sweet. But it seems like the worst-case scenario if it gets it wrong could be pretty terrible.

He's absolutely right, though, that a key problem with circles and lists and other shit work is that it's very rarely well integrated into the clients.

(I also want disagree with the claim that "no one wants to do shit work". I believe the entire genre of MMORPGs -- even, dare i say, RTS' -- stand as testament against. They also suggest how high peoples tolerance of shit work is if it is well integrated into a client ;)

Re: Don't Give Your Users Shit Work

#49

Post by ctdonath »

steve8918 wrote: post #22

This is similar to the problem that Picasa has. Their facial recognition technology is really cool, but the work that I need to go through is so immensely tedious that I stopped bothering. Having to approve tens of thousands of faces just doesn't work. And then if you move the photo directory, you lose everything.

"immensely tedious"

Aye, there's the rub. IT'S NOT FUN.

Disturbs me that on Netflix I've rated six-hundred-and-fifty-four movies - that's a huge amount of "$#!^ work", yet I did it compulsively and enjoyed it. That's the whole thing about "crowd sourcing", "data mining", etc. - persuade people to WANT to do the work, and they will with little complaint. If your users are viewing it as "$#!^ work", you've done it wrong.

Re: Don't Give Your Users Shit Work

#50

Post by scott_s »

I agree. Something I said a few months ago:

I think most people have relatively clear friend/work boundaries, but even then I encountered a few "Hmmm" moments when putting people in circles. I suspect that most people don't actually want to group the people in their social network - it can take a surprising amount of introspection. Time will tell if that's true.

Post reply on HN