{ Friday, May 26, 2006 }
I'm just getting caught up on my blogs, but while I was away Tara wrote a great post about the fringe vs #1. She talks about how Flickr has a much smaller number of registered users than My Space, Yahoo Photos and Photobucket, but how that's a good place to be. It reminded me of Kathy's Zone of Mediocrity. It's great if people love you or hate you, but if they feel eh about you, you're screwed, or, she suspects, eventually will be.
But I think there is another reason the services she's referring to are different in terms of registered users. They have different social structures and value propositions.
Predominantly Social Systems. MySpace and Facebook are examples of services that enable communication and socializing. You can surf them, but surfing them isn't really the point. You don't really do the Facebook or MySpace thing unless you have friends, are a member, engage in banter and have connections. Thus they have high #s of registered users, but the metric that really measures the health of the service are how many of those people are connected to other people, the network graph. While we don't know those numbers, the connections have to be huge, based on the rapidity of the viral growth of both.
Rich Content Systems Sites such as Flickr, YouTube and Wikipedia (and to some extent blogs) have a core set of users that create a great deal of value for a large number of people who don't need to add anything to the system to get something out of it. It's important for those members to be connected to each other and create a healthy community -- the sociality is definitely part of the ecosystem -- but you can come and surf Flickr or YouTube every day and never take a photo or record a video. On these sites, registered users aren't the bulk of the users. The bulk of the users are the non-logged-in viewers, surfers, searchers. It's the pyramid that Bradley posted on his blog: frequently on these systems you see that 1-10% of people are creators, while 100% of people are consumers. On services like Flickr, YouTube and Wikipedia, the registered user numbers are smaller because the creators are registered, and the consumers, the audience, is not logged in. Page views can tell the other half of the story where the registered users don't. And a big part of these kinds of services is making sure that the good content rises to the top, or what you want is discoverable.
Person to Person Systems Yahoo Photos has a high number of registered users, but is more centered around one to one, or one to a few sharing rather than a kind of publisher model. Its page views, therefore, are not as significant a number, since you don't have the pyramid effect mentioned above, and its network graph isn't significant since its not a service optimized for communication -- registered users are the most telling metric here.
Another service Tara metioned, Photobucket, is more of a utility, not a destination site in itself, and not a social system. It is selling storage and hosting, and therefore everyone who uses it has to be registered -- registered users are the big metric here too.
Make no mistake, user numbers are *always* significant -- but they tell different stories for different services.
LINK | 1:46 AM | TB
Interesting! Yet, I do not think that Bradley or you are describing social ecosystems. I think that you are onto something more powerful and, for your business, more useful.
You are describing attention ecosystems. More specifically, you are describing the connections between different functional levels of those systems. Just as ecosystems can be sorted into "trophic" levels (who eats whom), you have sorted the "rich content" (flickr, youtube, wikipedia) world(s) into attention levels.
It's primary producers are the attention providers of unregistered users, just like plankton in the ocean or plants on land. The primary consumers who shape and direct the flow of attention, the "synthesizers" in Bradley's model. These are the zooplankton and small fish of the ocean who turn plant material into animal protein. At the top of the "attention" pyramid are the creators. These are the big fish, the eagles, the grizzly bears and other big predators. In the rich content world they are the top content providers.
Your model tracks how attention is generated, shaped, and pulled/pushed to great contributed "content." It follows the same form, and almost unbelievably, the same transfer efficiencies (1-10% transfer between levels) as the natural world. (begging the question: did Bradley use empirical methods to build his pyramid?)
Where this really gets fun is when you create a revenue model out of these relationships. My mind reels at the possibilities.
To make a too-long comment a little longer, the "person to person" systems that you mention are reflections of the social relationships at a single level of your model. I think that your model captures them.
Now I have to go back to my life and stop thinking about this.
j david | May 26, 2006 1:33 PMCaterina,
Nicely put. Between you and Bradley, you guys are doing a terrific job of educating all of us who are trying to learn to stand on your shoulders (borrowing from Newton here).
More, give us more...
Antonio Rodriguez | June 4, 2006 6:49 PMThe users on flickr have an amazing quality to them. Anywhere I wander to on flickr, I find great photos, inspiring me to take more and post more interesting pictures.
To me, flickr is great because virtually all of the users, strangers or acquaintences, all add value to my use of flickr.
On a typical social networking site like facebook, I really only care about the people i'm connected to. Strangers on those tend to just spam the system (On any given day, i get about 10 "friend" requests from strangers on Orkut) and subtract value.
The really impressive part of flickr is its ability to attract and retain the best users on the net.
Andrew S | June 8, 2006 1:18 AMplease please please caterina, can you please post about poetry again sometime??? You have such a good ear.
est | June 9, 2006 6:11 PMHi Cat -
Your fellow StartupSchool speaker Paul Graham gave a great talk on this at RailsConf. Well, he read a great essay. Which is here: The Power of the Marginal.
Personally, I agree with your assessment of where something like Flickr sits in the pantheon of online services, but something does trouble me. Many people I know, not necessarily techheads but generally technically aware, say that they don't "get it". They do not understand the value of tagging, of sharing, etc. So the question remains .. will social technologies like a flickr or YouTube, remain the playground of the techheads, or will aunt Emma down the street also embrace them?
Deepak | July 2, 2006 9:51 AM{ Post a comment }
Very well put, I completely agree.
I think there's more to it though, and it's partly down to developers/designers and and the subtle 'hints' they give on how a site should be used. There's something about Flickr that makes the average user think it's not a place to upload any old crap they found on the Internet.
MySpace goes completely the other way. It allows HTML personalisation, which appleals particularly to kids who want to "show off" , but other than that, doesn't give any real visual cues on what it should be used for. Probably because they don't know themeselves.
I like Flickr, but the one criticism I've always had has been that the interface makes it hard to find a real centre to the community. But the more I use it, the more I think you don't actually need that. There's a gazillion sites where people can go just to chat, but only one place to go if you want to share your best photos.
The great thing is, you don't actually have to tell users how you want the community to develop. Give them the right tools and and interface that makes the "good content rise to the top", and it'll happen on it's own.
I'm sure having that focus and vision is the key. And if you do it right, the community will build itself.
Dom | May 26, 2006 3:25 AM