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Notes from Del.icio.us founder Joshua Schachter

simon.incutio.com

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Re: Notes from Del.icio.us founder Joshua Schachter

#4

Post by danw »

akkartik wrote: post #3

"It's a tool. The community can grow elsewhere." Agree or disagree? Is creating community a concern any web startup can afford to ignore?

It depends a lot on the site. Theres far too many sites that just add community features when its not needed. My friends are on facebook and twitter, they dont need to be anywhere else.

So judge it based on your app. Is the hassle of adding your friends to the site going to be far smaller than the benefit?

Re: Notes from Del.icio.us founder Joshua Schachter

#5

Post by jwecker »

akkartik wrote: post #3

"It's a tool. The community can grow elsewhere." Agree or disagree? Is creating community a concern any web startup can afford to ignore?

If it is an excellent tool by itself, then it has a much better chance of acceptance. That is, if you yourself can't stop using it regardless of who else is using it, it is a stronger product. del.icio.us is like that- I started using it because it was a nice central place to store bookmarks regardless of who else was using it. It was only later that I started noticing how many others were bookmarking and even started using it as a search engine. Flickr- same thing. Youtube & myspace- still kind of the same- say I was the first user of youtube, I may still like it so that I can put my videos in one place and shoot off an email to my buddies to go have a look. The point is the tool better be compelling without a community or you'll never be able to grow a community. Even here the content coming from one poster is compelling (enough) even before a dozen users started commenting and posting, etc. Focus on the tool. I couldn't agree more.

Re: Notes from Del.icio.us founder Joshua Schachter

#6

Post by byrneseyeview »

akkartik wrote: post #3

"It's a tool. The community can grow elsewhere." Agree or disagree? Is creating community a concern any web startup can afford to ignore?

Community is vastly overrated, since the easiest way to appeal to a larger group of people is to be comfortably generic. The best tools for a community because they're versatile and extensible, so the community provides value. If that isn't the case for the startup, there isn't a case for community.

Re: Notes from Del.icio.us founder Joshua Schachter

#7

Post by danielha »

I think a community feature is valuable to many sites if it isn't a tacked-on afterthought that eventually becomes a burden for the users.

Whatever the site may offer, it's *usually* a plus for a user to be able to interact with other users. It becomes a burden when it's centered around a social community that no one seems to use. It's difficult to manage your contacts from so many of your different online identities.

Re: Notes from Del.icio.us founder Joshua Schachter

#8

Post by danielha »

danielha wrote: post #7

I think a community feature is valuable to many sites if it isn't a tacked-on afterthought that eventually becomes a burden for the users. Whatever the site may offer, it's *usually* a plus for a user to be able to interact with other users. It becomes a burden when it's centered around a social community that no one seems to use. It's difficult to manage your contacts from so many of your different online identities…

Oh, and I just wanted to add: This "article" is one of the best things I've read all day. It was so helpful that I made enough mental notes while reading that I had to transfer them to paper.

Re: Notes from Del.icio.us founder Joshua Schachter

#10

Post by dougw »

I really liked the comment on giving some service away before account creation. In my experience, one of the largest hurdles to user adoption is getting something useful from the site. If a user is able to see the value of the service *before* putting something into it, they are more likely to understand the offering and accepting the reward for 5 minutes worth of forms. There are so many services competing for users attention and everyone of them are fighting for their niche. You have to put something on the table to gain the initial interest to keep the user on a site long enough to make it past the click of the back button. I could not agree more with this point.

This recent story relates: http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=824

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