Matt Haughey, founder of Metafilter, on the importance of participating in your own community:

“Be the best member of your site. Lead by example by participating as much as you can in your own community. This is a good way to attract other well-intentioned members of your site and also reminds everyone a real person is behind it all and building the best community they can for everyone. Speak honestly and be supportive of other members. When I think of all the communities I’m a part of, the ones I love are the ones I see the creators using everyday.”

This directly relates to the idea of Give people something to copy, as you’re showing your community a great role model for participation. It also highlights a growing problem I’ve seen with start-ups who are trying to build communities. In many cases the entrepreneur isn’t the type of person who belongs in the very community they’re building. Perhaps they’re an MBA who wants to start the next user-uploaded video site. If they don’t do video, they’re another degree of separation away from their audience.

Each degree of separation from your audience makes it harder to cope with designing for them…

Continue Reading: Why founders should be part of their community

On Wednesday, May 2, users of the site Digg.com, a social news site, did something remarkable in the history of the Social Web. What they did was seize editorial control of the site: what content appeared on the home page of Digg, for the first time, was truly decided by its users.

If you aren’t familiar with the details, here is a quick recap. ReadWriteWeb also had a nice timeline of events.

There are two ways you can look at this incident whereby Diggers overwhelmed the site by repeatedly (up to two per second) digging stories containing an HD-DVD crack code.

One is as described by Mike Arrington of Techcrunch: Digg Surrenders to Mob. Simply using the word “Mob” makes for great press. We gravitate to mobs because we know they’re messing with the Man. They’re anti-authority, they’re doing what they’re not supposed to, they’re pissed and fighting for their rights. We think of the French or Russian or American Revolution, and we like it.

But maybe, just maybe, mobs aren’t that bad. Terry Heaton had an insightful observation: “What I find most fascinating here is the automatic assumption that chaos is evil. This is a purely modernist perspective, but life itself proves it to be false.” He argues that the so-called Mob was more like the site at its finest…that a Mob is nothing more than democracy at high speed. I tend to agree with this.

The other way to look at the situation is as I described it: Digg Surrenders to Community. The difference is in those two words: Mob and Community. Now, I wasn’t being as calculated as Mike was being, I’m sure, but when realizing the stark contrast afterward it occurred to me that you either acknowledge the voice of the people on Digg as a group, or you do not. You either view them as a passionate Community, or you view them as a anarchic Mob.

Continue Reading: Live by the Digg, Die by the Digg

Quick blogging tip: When someone writes an incredibly flattering post about you, don’t immediately link to the flattering post. Why?

Because many times when someone does this, the link can actually be hurtful because it’s not a real link to quality content. The author, the flattered one, often pretends they’re really writing about the rest of the post and not the part about themselves. But they’re really writing to point out that someone likes them.

I’m not immune to this. I’ve done it too. But its completely obvious. In some cases, someone will actually point to someone else’s post and not mention that there is a part of the post about them…pretending to ignore it. That is so weird though, when you go read the post and wonder…does the person think I’m an idiot?

Instead, wait until that person writes something really cool, and then link to that.

Continue Reading: Give people something to copy

MySpace profile pic prevents woman from getting her teaching degree, showing how powerful online profiles are

A story at CNN.com describes how 27 year-old Stacy Snyder was denied a teaching degree because she posted a photo of herself on her MySpace account that the school said “promoted underage drinking”.

The photo, which shows her drinking from a cup with a pirate’s hat on has the caption “drunken pirate” underneath. The picture was taken at a 2005 Halloween Party.

This story highlights several important points about profiles and pictures…

Continue Reading: Woman Denied Degree because of MySpace Profile Pic

For those of you not cross-subscribed, I recently wrote a piece on Brain Sparks (aka the UIEblog) that answers a pretty simple, yet under-addressed question:

Why invest in social features on your web site?

Here’s the quick version of why to invest in social features:

1. Amplify Customer Opinion
2. Data, Data, and more Data
3. Reduce Support Costs
4. Engender Trust

I think that social features are bigger than many people view them. They are a long-term strategy that takes lots of resources. You can’t simply bolt on a feature here or there (well, unless it’s article sharing or something super simple like that) and expect to realize the benefits of making a richer social experience for your users.

In addition, I’m seeing more and more evidence of a wave of companies getting into the social action. This is encouraging, and if you’re doing so please feel free to describe what you’re doing in the comments or drop me a line. I’ll be continuing to aggregate and regurgitate what I hear so we can all share what we know with each other.

Here’s the link: Why invest in social features on your web site?

Continue Reading: Why invest in Social Features?

Tim Berners-Lee, in Weaving the Web:

“The web is more a social creation than a technical one. I designed it for a social effect—to help people work together—and not as a technical toy. The ultimate goal of the Web is to support and improve our weblike existence in the world. We clump into families, associations, and companies. We develop trust across the miles and distrust around the corner. What we believe, endorse, agree with, and depend on is representable and, increasingly, represented on the Web. We all have to ensure that the society we build with the Web is of the sort we intend.”

This touches on several important issues:

1. Technology is an enabler, not the end goal
2. The Web is built to augment our social behavior, not define it
3. We can represent our social lives online, even ambiguous things like our beliefs
4. We have a responsibility to make the Web a good place to be

Every time I read Tim’s words, I am reinvigorated and am glad to be part of this thing they call the Web.

Continue Reading: The Web is a Social Creation

In The Evolution of Cooperation, written in 1984!, Robert Axelrod suggests there are three necessary conditions for people to cooperate with each other.

Continue Reading: 3 Necessary Conditions for Human Cooperation

The Digg community taking down it’s own site.

Continue Reading: Digg Surrenders to Community

A new PEW report strongly suggests that teens are pretty savvy about their online privacy.

Continue Reading: PEW Report: Teens Getting Smart about Online Privacy

Can we trust Google long-term with our data?

Continue Reading: Google and the Trust Issue