{"id":398,"date":"2008-05-15T22:55:16","date_gmt":"2008-05-16T02:55:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelnielsen.org\/blog\/?p=398"},"modified":"2008-05-21T08:42:30","modified_gmt":"2008-05-21T12:42:30","slug":"social-software-and-simplicity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelnielsen.org\/blog\/social-software-and-simplicity\/","title":{"rendered":"Social software and simplicity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Great interview with Clay Shirky<\/a> in the Wall Street Journal. Shirky makes a particularly interesting comment about social software:<\/p>\n

\nIt\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s almost universally the case with social software that the software that launches with the fewest features is the stuff that takes off. The shift is from thinking about the computer as a box to thinking of the computer as a door, and nobody wants a door with 37 handles. Twitter has six features, and it launched with only one. A brutally simple mental model of the software that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s shared by all users turns out to be a better predictor of adoption and value than a completely crazy collection of features that ends up being slightly different for every user.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Empirically, Shirky seems to be right. Email, Facebook, Usenet, Twitter, wikis, Blogger, Flickr, Friendster, del.icio.us – all were incredibly simple when they launched. They certainly had a “brutally simple mental model of the software that’s shared by all users”. <\/p>\n

But I’m not sure I believe this is true, and I certainly don’t know why it’s true, if it is. <\/p>\n

Maybe a partial explanation is that having a simple shared mental model makes network effects much more powerful. When we think about social software as a user, we don’t just think about the software, we also think about the network of other users, and it’s important to be confident that we have a shared understanding with those other users. If we’re not confident of that shared understanding, we won’t connect, and the value of the software will diminish.<\/p>\n

Update:<\/b> In comments, Clay Shirky replies:<\/p>\n

\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153If we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not confident of that shared understanding, we won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t connect, and the value of the software will diminish.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think this is a partial explanation. I think this is *the* explanation. Given the competition all social software has, a simple and shared mental model is essential to elevating the eventual leaders over the competition.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Great interview with Clay Shirky in the Wall Street Journal. Shirky makes a particularly interesting comment about social software: It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s almost universally the case with social software that the software that launches with the fewest features is the stuff that takes off. The shift is from thinking about the computer as a box to thinking… Continue reading Social software and simplicity<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelnielsen.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelnielsen.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelnielsen.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelnielsen.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelnielsen.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelnielsen.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelnielsen.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelnielsen.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelnielsen.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}