Shanti’s Dispatches

That’s what Evan Williams said at the Future of Web Apps Summit last week in SF.

He was even going to go so far as to make it into a poster and hang it on the wall. Personally, I prefer this one from dispair.com:

p.s. sorry for not liveblogging the event more, like I said I would. luckily there are plenty of other sites out there w/ coverage.

Talking vs. Typing

I think that’s one of the things I like about working from home most of the time. You tend to spend a lot more time coding, than talking / debating and working out features.

Personally, I think it’s more productive to code 2-3 hours on something, trying out (in live code) as many different things as possible, than say, and hour or two of debate on the subject.

At least 50% of the time, it seems like you end up getting it wrong anyway, no matter how long you debated.

Of course, there’s always the danger of rogue coders going off the reservation and implementing stuff that is totally crazy or will never be used in live production. I think that’s OK — much like Google’s 20% time.

Gernally, programmers (or maybe it’s just my particular sensibility) would rather see things getting done, than endless debates, with no real forward progress. Hearing stories about Microsoft and their endless meetings and Powerpoint presentations, it sounds like they’ve fallen into the trap of Talking, Not Typing.

Astute readers will note the ironicalness of me blogging this instead of actually coding something right now. Ahem.

Tom Coates

- works for Yahoo
- rapid prototyping group in London
- MySpace: “eye-bleedingly horrible”
- alphabet & writing, the invention of money

Social Software
- an individual should get value from their contributions
- these contributions should provide value to their peers as well

Two types of social software
Consensus & Polyphony

Consensus: Digg & Wikipedia

Believes Polyphonic works much better:
Flickr, Hollywood Stock Exchange, last.fm

Only motivations in life:
- get laid & please jesus

Community motives
- anticipated reciprocity
- reputation
- sense of efficacy
- identification with a group

Random people edit wikipedia w/o ego boost or $$$

When people contribute to a group effort, they overestimate their total contribution (% wise) to the success of the whole.

Why people contribute to open source:
#1. Learning to code
#2. Gaining reputation
#3. Scratching an itch
#4. Contributing to the commons
#5. Sticking it to M$

Sharing without really knowing it
Sharing for personal use
Sharing with friends
Sharing with interest communities
Self-expression / showing off
Altruism / for the good of the world

Be wary of clumsy incentives like:
- money, points & competition

Types of people who engage in MUDs / MMORPGs
diamonds, spades, hearts, clubs

How to open up social value:
- expose every axis of data you can
- give people a place to represent themselves
- allow them to associate, connect and form relationships with one another

Be wary of creating a monoculture:
- digg and delicious/popular

Not all your users need to participate to generate social value

Where’s the money?
- attention and advertising
- premium accounts

Rise of aggregate data?
- proprietary data sources own a space
- they license their data initially selectively
- increasingly fluid and commodified services emerge with flat rate-card data provisions