June 22nd, 2007

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

by Joshua Porter | 31 Comments | shortlink: http://bokardo.com/p/635

John Dvorak, the famous Mac linkbaiter, who let everyone in on his linkbaiting strategy a while back, can’t understand why anyone would care a whit about Twitter:

“I cannot understand why anyone would want to do this, or why anyone would want to read these posts.

In the past, I would just go off on the subject, as I did with blogging and podcasting when they first appeared. Since then, I’ve become a blogger and a podcaster and have been rebuked for my earlier opinions. On the Internet, they never forget.

So I’m thinking that I should be more analytical in a positive way. I say this even though this is one fad I cannot imagine wasting my time on.

At the risk of linking to Dvorak’s piece, this is actually a widely-held view of not only Twitter, but of much of social software in general. It is difficult to understand why others would use social apps…what value is all that chattering?

Indeed, Lance Ulanoff, Dvorak’s colleague at PCMag, writes in a similar vein:

“Twitter’s demise will certainly come before we hit 2011. It’s the perfect example of Internet flash paper, and I suspect it will shine as brightly and briefly as this favorite magician’s gimmick. I’m singling out the site, which revolves entirely around people’s random notes about what they’re doing and thinking at any given moment”

Let’s ignore for a second that these guys make their living by consistently making wrong predictions, and delve deeper into what is actually a very salient point about social software.

Value is Person Specific

The fact that we don’t understand what value others get from social web apps is part of the paradigm of social software. The key is that each person has their own social lives, their own social circle, and thus their own social values. What is important to their social life will almost certainly be unimportant to us because we have our own to worry about.

Think of it this way. Each person has their own social network. Chances are that social network overlaps very little with yours. If, say, that person wanted recommendations for watching a movie, they might turn to their social network, which is made up of their family, friends, and colleagues. They would ask these people, the people they know and trust, what movies they recommend.

Now, would you turn to the same social network for movie recommendations? Of course not. You trust the people you know…your social network, and so any of the chatter from their social network has no value for you. It’s meaningless chatter. Just like most people’s Tweets on Twitter.

The Opaque Value Problem

In a larger sense, this opaque value problem affects most social software. Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, most social software is built around providing personalized, socially-focused conversation. It’s person-centered and as a result is difficult for anybody but that person to really appreciate: the value becomes opaque in this way.

This problem has an interesting affect on design as well. For those designers who refuse to find ways to fight this problem, designing social software is going to be very difficult. They won’t be able to put themselves into a position of someone who wants to keep up to date with their social network, which is something that all of these sites are doing. Instead, they’ll focus on designing things that have an obvious benefit for everyone…which means that they’ll probably have more competition as well. It’s precisely because of the opaque value problem that services like Twitter come out of nowhere…in an unpredictable way…to really catch people’s attention.

Now, there might be a group of people who could have anticipated the rise of Twitter…social psychologists, for example. They might have been able to see that lots of folks do want to know what their social group is up to and like to share their own updates…but for the most part social psychologists aren’t cross-pollinating with designers, with notable exceptions like Duncan Watts going to Yahoo. Moves like this make lots of sense…because social psychologists are trained to bust through the opaque value problem.

However, designers may still succeed even if they can’t break through the opaque value problem if they can design for themselves and then generalize their design for others, but for the most part designers either have compassion or they don’t. If they have compassion, they’ll do good work because they will care to know if their designs succeed. They’ll actually pay attention to whether their design is working for folks and if it’s not they’ll fix it. If they’re not compassionate they won’t do this.

But back to the issue at hand: Why do people use Twitter? That’s actually the wrong question, as it is too general. Let’s modify it from the general to the specific.

Why do you use Twitter?

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Comments

1. leafar 6:43am, Fri 22nd, 2007

Beta testing myself to see what value i can get out of it and get a better idea of what IM*Blog can do in my futur life.
- I’ve tried reporting events.
- I’ve tried asking questions
- I’ve tried being deeply personal (inner feelings / feedbacks i got for that one where really strange)
- I’ve contributed to reviews website (Gootza.com boot twitter.com/gza, brilliant execution)

What i love most is probably the first letter in messages “d” for direct @ for reply
Maybe we could have: i for intimate / w for watching / ? for open question

And again we come back to that micro collaborative filtering problem. Defining the circles. It’s opaque so i am still looking… but I think I ‘m getting closer.

2. Abhijit Nadgouda 7:33am, Fri 22nd, 2007

I find Twitter as multicasting. Sometimes neither broadcasting nor peer-to-peer is suitable. Twitter is inexpensive and one of the better tools to multicast.

3. Ian Wilker 9:04am, Fri 22nd, 2007

I use Twitter:

1. because it gives me an up-to-the-second “state of the vibe” awareness of what the people driving the evolution of the social web are thinking about and doing. As someone who subscribes to about 600 feeds, I find this awareness useful in parceling out my attention — yesterday, for example, a steady stream of tweets about iPhoneDevCamp made it clear to me that I should at least track the event.

2. because I’ve actually started or deepened a fair number of professional relationships via the service.

3. because I now live in a relative backwater (Asheville, NC) and it helps me feel connected to the energy of the community that’s building the social web. (In New York, there were lots of events and gatherings where I could connect, in meatspace, with people doing similar work; now, I pretty much only get that sense of community when I go to conferences, and I’m only making a couple this year.

3. because I can send out all-points-bulletins when I need an answer to a question, or want feedback on an idea, a site, etc.

Probably more, but that’s enough for now.

4. Adrian 9:41am, Fri 22nd, 2007

Twitter, Facebook, Blogs …. everyone keeps trying to define them and by defining them define their purpose.

Their use varies so widely that it’s an apple to one person and an orange to others. People who hate apples and say “what’s the value” never quite get round to finding out it might be an orange too.

I use twitter to update my facebook status (actually I do it the other way round, because technically it’s not possible yet, but conceptually this is what I do). And my twitters go at the top of my blog. This allows me to do “microblogging” and have my site continually change and be dynamic without overly swamping it with too many blogs for people to catch up on.

My twitters are anything form status’s to musing to short quips. Anything that flits through my head and feels right.

Oh and shouldn’t you comment be,

Let’s ignore for a second that these guys make their living by inspite of consistently making wrong predictions

5. Bud Caddell 1:12pm, Fri 22nd, 2007

I first heard about twitter when reading reactions to this year’s SXSW. A former Austinite, I wanted to try it out — and honestly, I didn’t see the value either, but I’m too young to have a closed mind yet so I tried it out.

I’ve come to understand that ‘value’ in social apps is related to your distance to the app. I didn’t have any of my close friends on twitter yet, so for me it didn’t make much sense and I couldn’t ‘get it’. But for active participators and their networks, this probably is an amazing way to stay in touch.

So it’s like light, or microwaves — but watch how closely you stand to it, especially if you have a pacemaker, or genitals…

6. ~bc 1:16pm, Fri 22nd, 2007

I enjoy Twitter because I think it sparks social interactions that may have otherwise been missed.

7. Josh 2:02pm, Fri 22nd, 2007

Bud, that’s an interesting analogy…

8. Al 2:05pm, Fri 22nd, 2007

First I don’t think social psychologists would be the only ones to see things like Twitter and Facebook emerging. The patterns where present well before these candidates. Think about Open Source where no project would be complete without a web site, CVS/SVN, mail-list and an IRC channel. Also in business popular sites like Ecademy were the Facebook forerunners.

I guess the biggest surprise is how long these took to become more prolific and general beyond the narrow examples I provided here.

Personally the one that amazes me most is Twitter, its simplicity and yet subtle difference vs say IRC/IM makes it so much more valuable socially, I get very frustrated when it barfs as it has done today.

I really like James‘ quote :

“Twitter is like walking to school with your friends and hanging out, while reading blogs is reading their homework”

Nuff said

great blog Joshua
regards
Al

9. Webomatica 2:32pm, Fri 22nd, 2007

I really enjoy using Twitter as a place to shoot out information that is too trivial for the blog. I also find other people using it to share links and ask questions. It’s very open ended. You can use it for whatever you like.

10. jspad 5:45pm, Sat 23rd, 2007

I spend most of my time working at home, with twitter as my virtual watercooler. I can ask questions, eavesdrop on the nearest cube, or vent when I need to. It’s social presence streaming for semi-hermits like me.

11. Bud Caddell 12:45pm, Mon 25th, 2007

Thanks Josh — I’ll have to continue to try it out. I think as the presentation formats grow, so will the adoption. I love leaving the matrix twitter up as my screen saver — http://espion.just-size.jp/files/js/matwitter/matwitter.html

Oh, and check out my blog sometime. I just redesigned. Thanks!

12. Tim 10:41am, Wed 27th, 2007

You hit it on the head Josh.

And in answer to your question, I don’t use twitter, and can barely stand Facebook. But I’ve always been somewhat socially withdrawn, which fits your theory well.

Thanks for the article.

13. Alltaste Directory 5:42am, Fri 29th, 2007

I do not understand twitters popularity! When I first saw it, I thought that is one of the biggest timewasters I ever saw!

14. Deirdré Straughan 7:34am, Fri 29th, 2007

I have 2 fairly distinct sets of friends on Twitter: Italian bloggers, and videobloggers, plus a few random extras. The Italians let me know what’s going on in the Italian blogosphere, events, dinners, etc., as well as their daily lives. The others are just fun to follow. They’re mostly interesting people and mostly have interesting things to say. It’s fun to browse what they’re doing, gives me a sense of people around me even when I’m alone, and sometimes I get useful information from it. Where’s the mystery in that?

15. Bowling 9:07am, Sat 30th, 2007