

Social news rumors - Yahoo buzz to launch tomorrow - GIMAD
http://fvrit.com/archive/2008/02/25/social-news-rumors---yahoo-buzz-to-launch-tomorrow.aspx

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fiaz
better technology != community killer

They could add all the bells and whistles they want, but coining something as
a "community killer" (or "Digg killer" in this case) is laughable at best.

The only way Digg can be killed is if a community shows up that is in some way
culturally hip. For example, if some celebrities were to band together and
unexpectedly show how hard-core geeky/nerdy they can be, I'm certain it would
be more of a Digg killer because they immediately will be pulling attention
away for the right reason (what geek wouldn't love to associate themselves
with Keanu Reeves if the real-life Neo turns out to be a automata theory
junkie!?!?!). Communal value is immediately created around such an individual
in the same way Kevin Rose is the focal point for Digg (I'd be hard pressed to
be convinced otherwise of Kevin Rose's celebrity status).

A concrete example is del.icio.us. Yahoo! ended up purchasing del.icio.us even
though, one may argue, Yahoo!'s service was technologically superior (tell me
otherwise and I'll merely point to the fact that del.icio.us, prior to
acquisition and for a period of time afterwards, suffered frequent outages the
likes of which would cause heads to roll at Yahoo!). It's true that
availability might be classified as different than "feature-set", but my
counter argument would be that the reliability of ANY application contributes
to the user experience in either a positive or a negative way the same way the
color selection might impact the overall user experience. The community
wouldn't leave del.icio.us for a reason, and so it didn't matter what
technology ANYBODY (Google included) would build to try and move the critical
mass away.

From where did del.icio.us originate? From the mind of an overworked quant
jock working for a market maker in Manhattan; Joshua Schachter even got turned
down for a job at Google, and I suppose it is up for debate that tagging has
revolutionized (ala Clay Shirky) the way we interact with the amount of
information we sift through on the internet, but it has definitely changed
things in a rather dramatic way. The reason why I mention this last fact is
because there is something to be said for hiring people that are not
"optimized" enough on their resume because sometimes ideas that formulate from
nowhere turn into revolutionary concepts. Similarly, I have very little faith
in groups of engineers who can create technologically superior platforms to
understand (on average mind you) the cultural/social aspect of WHY certain
cultural phenomenon grow in the first place anymore than I would expect TV
show writers to understand inductive reasoning/logic and how it relates to
creating quality software.

I would place my money on a geek/nerd who spends his spare time playing with
Legos to come up with the next big community than anything that would come
from the minds of one of the big internet giants because chances are the geek
is more in tune with a trend that is likely to catch on with his friends and
then grow virally as opposed to engineered, advertising-driven attempts to
create online culture. But I wouldn't at all say that such a community would
be a "Digg killer" because the reasons for assembly are different, at a
different time, and for the sake of a different user experience. And this type
of user experience has NOTHING to do with how windows might expand or hide the
way they do on OSX vs. Windows.

Social software operates on different principles of competition than does
software that helps people achieve something. To illustrate further, you don't
hear people in the entertainment industry make statements such as, "Is
'Heroes' Going To Be the 'Lost' Killer?" - of course not!

Social groups are very nebulous and they assemble for reasons completely
different than why somebody might choose a web browser, operating system, or
any other piece of software that involves achieving how we interact with
computers. Social software is about interacting with others and, MOST
IMPORTANTLY, the quality of that interaction.

