
Guy #3 - ciscoriordan
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/06/guy-3.html
======
mahmud
Squinting too hard to find wisdom where none exist, aren't we?

That movement formed because the spectators could see and observe each other.
As the first few individuals joined in to participate, it gave social proof
and acceptance to the act.

:-)

Yes, if you're looking for insight into the growth of _online_ movements, let
me just leave you with this: online, only the _vocal_ participants and
spectators are visible. One detractor can negate a thousand, happy silent
participants.

P.S. Godin's take on it is orthogonal to the interpretation of the video in
the earlier mention of it here. The first time, it was about the growth of
social networks; everyone was a participant in Guy #1's "network". Godin calls
out "Guy #3" and frames him not as a participant in a social network, but as
competitor to the founder, Guy #1. (this could really get meta, but I hope
someone is getting what I am saying.)

~~~
fiaz
Godin was probably drawing an allusion to Guy#3 being the "tipping point" of
people to join.

As far as detractors...somebody could have just as easily poked fun at Guy#1
(mock dancing, throw a soft object at him, etc.), thus invalidating his own
self-absorbed ecstasy, and probably making it more difficult for the observers
to be converted into participants (not to mention detracting from the overall
mood of the purpose of the festival).

I think a more reasonable explanation for how participation precipitated would
be to look at it from the perspective of influence and the time for that
influence to propagate throughout the crowd. Guy#1 takes a few minutes to
influence Guy#2 to join. The two dancing together takes less time to influence
Guy#3, and then the three of them take VERY little time to attract a small
group, and then the whole festival jumps in...

I think that there is some value in calculating the time it takes for the
group to go from one participant to many participants to see if there is an
exponential growth rate taking place.

That might take the effort out of squinting too hard.

;)

~~~
froo
_I think that there is some value in calculating the time it takes for the
group to go from one participant to many participants to see if there is an
exponential growth rate taking place._

It's midnight and well, I decided to do just this at 5 second intervals and
then count the number of people dancing (and also flocking too the party, ie
in the frame), just to get a rough idea.

    
    
      0 seconds   - 1
      5 seconds   - 1
      10 seconds  - 1
      15 seconds  - 1
      20 seconds  - 2
      25 seconds  - 2
      30 seconds  - 2
      35 seconds  - 2
      40 seconds  - 2
      45 seconds  - 2
      50 seconds  - 2
      55 seconds  - 3
      60 seconds  - 3
      65 seconds  - 3
      70 seconds  - 3
      75 seconds  - 7
      80 seconds  - 11
      85 seconds  - 17
      90 seconds  - 21
      95 seconds  - 26
      100 seconds - 35
      105 seconds - 46
      110 seconds - 59
    

At this point, it became too difficult to count the number of people joining
it every frame, but the data seems to indicate exponential growth.

(I'm also assuming Guy #1 was dancing for some time on his own before the
person with the camera decided to film it, so this would show the exponential
growth more)

~~~
ulvund
[http://www.computing.dcu.ie/~humphrys/Notes/Neural/Bitmaps/s...](http://www.computing.dcu.ie/~humphrys/Notes/Neural/Bitmaps/sigmoid.linear.2.far.gif)

------
ii
I'd say it was _a girl_ who moved closer to the dancing guys just after guy #3
showed up.

~~~
Jem
I thought so too at first, but if you look closely it looks like they have a
beard? (1:03)

------
jnorthrop
There is an implicit message in there -- love what you do -- that I didn't see
mentioned here (or in the earlier post of this
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=644796>). That guy is not dancing to
attract a crowd, he is having a great time and others wanted to join in.

~~~
axod
I think the other message may be that once the crowds start flocking over,
something has been lost. The majority of the crowd is there just to copy other
people... Lots of parallels to online communities + keeping the magic.

------
Tichy
I'd argue it was guy #4 and guy #5 because they came together and therefore
were officially not weirdos.

~~~
froo
I'd argue guy #2.

Once you add the second guy in, it becomes social.

When you add in guy #3, that's when the exponential growth happens and you
achieve virality, but without guy #2 it would just be guy #1 still doing his
own thing.

If we were taking this into online traffic terms I would say guy #1 is the
founders, guy #2 is initial traffic that comes from advertising and being
mentioned elsewhere, guy #3 are referrals from guy #2 and is the real organic
growth.

While guy #3's are important for organic growth, its the guy #2's that
validate guy #1. Without guy #2's hanging around, guy #3 wouln't have joined
in.

So guy #2's are really the pivotal point. Like PG would say, find users that
are really passionate about your product.

~~~
froo
Having just seen the longer video
(<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nU7dxkIz1Vs>), definitely guy #2 from the
video Seth linked.

Guys were coming and going, but he was the one that stuck around and with such
passion to get guy #3 to jump in.

Instead of copying/directly interacting with Guy #1, he instead made the idea
of "Dancing on the hill" his own. That's when Guy #3 joins in, because he
makes the dance his own aswell.

Perhaps there's a thought in there, about giving people the freedom to make
something their own.

------
jeroen
See <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=644796>

------
ambition
The entire dance party constituted a tiny minority of the people within
eyesight---there were literally thousands of people on that hill who could see
him. There were a bunch of people _already_ dancing closer to the stage and
all over the hill. The reason anyone started filming him in the first place
was because they were laughing at the funny drunk/high guy.

As jnorthop's theory that "he was not dancing to attract a crowd"... yes he
was. Seth's particular version of the video starts just after he desperately
implores some nearby people to get up and dance with him. Evidence:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Frd0CPYuZgU>

Interpret that ;P

~~~
stcredzero
There's a difference between dancing to be seen, and just wanting to dance
with other people for fun.

------
tezza
Here here[1] !!!

As what Seth would term the No. 1, I have found it hard to find #2 and #3.

People with skills have good jobs and responsibilities. Enticing them to
believe in working for a startup is very difficult.

One key step is they can see themselves being that exciting #2 and #3 and
bring the crowd to start dancing [as such]

\-------

[1] See poll for comment on Raver himself :
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=650958>

------
godDLL
There is a Russian proverb that roughly translates: "Will you please be our
Guy #3?"

> — Третим будешь?

------
davi
I'm once again struck by how poorly the steepness of a grassy hill is conveyed
by 2 dimensional images.

------
aswanson
Something about that video appears staged to me.

------
keltecp11
I think Guy #3 is MORE of a leader thn Guy #1... Guy #1 is absolutely the 'out
of the box' thinker BUT Guy #3 is more rational, sees an opportunity, and is
probably the first to really give 'credibility' to the movement.

Guy #2 is a wannabe.

~~~
TrevorJ
Or maybe they all just wanted to dance and the genuine heartfelt lack of
agenda is what brought about the success? :)

