Web Strategy Micksup

jjprojects overload

Originally uploaded by bigmick

We have friends that can keep us enthralled with stories for hours. We have other friends who a few coffees each year is enough to stay pals. And we have people we bump into occasionally who add spice to our lives.

In Social Applications, the ebb and flow of our relationships happens in a much more direct and rapid way than with our off-line relationships. Similarly that peer-to-peer applications have an exponential multiplier effect, so do ‘friend finder’ and Social Browsing. Instead of meeting one or two new people a week (if you’re a social butterfly) you can find and be added by new friends by the bucket load each day.

And once they are added that’s not the end of it. Now they are ‘in the tent’. They can message you, email you and dump their life in your feed or right on your desktop. There is a series risk of social overload.

For people running social apps (like me) this is great. Lots of fast growth.

For the customers, this can be a pain in the arse or complete hell on earth.

Thankfully, most good apps let us control the volume. Email me or not. Give me less from this person and more from that one. The problem is that the volume knob is sometimes hard to find and the average customer doesn’t know how to use it. Facebook tries to do it for you by algorithimsing the social graph. e.g. “Well, you know Tim and Mandy and they both just joined this group so that means you’re more likely to like the group so we’ll tell you about it.” But it doesn’t always work.

Control of the volume is also helped by apps like Twitter being open and allowing other people to write new ways to control them. My Snitter app lets me decide what I see and when. I only get updates every 30 minutes which let’s me get my work done and still browse my Tweets.

But it’s a very personal thing. I started following JJProjects who is a prolific Twitterer. He has over 10,000 Tweets to his name, which would suggest he’s a bit of a Twitterholic, but he also has 900+ followers so he is not a B0T. However, it was a bit much for me, and too many private conversations so one hour after I started following him, I stopped following him. And I told him about it since we’re all geek crew. No hard feelings. It’s the the way the social graph evolves.

Dekrazee1 on the other hand is a friend of mine, and whilst she does Twitter a lot, it’s interesting enough that I enjoy it.

Lessons learned:

1. Make sure your social app includes as many volume down options as volume up.
2. Write API’s so people can mash you into the machine they want.
3. Delve into the social pool, you can always wade to shore.
4. It’s my social stream, and I control the flow.

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