
Virality is all about making your users look awesome in front of their friends - joelg87
http://blog.hellohenrik.com/?p=1870
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ryanelkins
I'm interested in how this applies with another one of the author's posts -
about the rise of Behavior Generated Content
(<http://blog.hellohenrik.com/?p=268>). It seems like there should be a good
idea in combining the two (and in fact, I'm working on something that does
that).

I don't know if it's about pure shallowness or vanity as much as people simply
enjoy a little attention now and again (some more than others). It relates to
the Maya Angelou quote: "I've learned that people will forget what you said,
people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made
them feel." It's a great concept to start incorporating into our applications
- how are we making people feel by using our applications?

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enki
upvote, the title alone is pretty spot on.

reminds me of jwz's "How will this software get my users laid"
(<http://www.jwz.org/doc/groupware.html>)

~~~
karzeem
I'm reminded of a tip I heard once. If you want to get phenomenal service in a
restaurant, when your waiter's at the table loudly compliment him/her just as
the manager walks by.

People respond really well to anything that will make them more popular. (I
mean, they go after things that will make them money largely because money is
a proxy for social capital.)

~~~
patio11
In regards to that last line: someone wrote recently "Japanese companies
figure paying people is inefficient since most people will just buy things to
increase their social status, so they award social status directly", and when
I read that I reached Enlightenment. It is so true its almost painful to think
about.

~~~
karzeem
Indeed. I'm increasingly struck by how much of what people do is driven by the
desire to be liked/loved.

So do Japanese workers get a much bigger percentage of their income in non-
cash forms?

~~~
patio11
Well, let's see: the boss' desk is made of some expensive wood, mine is
plastic. That's just skimming the surface, though. There is a board six feet
from my desk which lists every name of regular employees for the two groups
closest to us on the org chart, with a plastic marker indicating whether
they're in or out of the office. The arrangement of names on that board is
important: last time it got shuffled the lady in charge of it literally
solicited the opinions of two senior team members as to whether it would be
more appropriate to swap CoworkerX and I or not. That's superficial, though,
too.

To really get a feel for it you'd have to go to the office and watch who talks
to who and how (Japanese has multiple different levels for polite language).
For example, I work very closely with M-san. M-san is freakishly talented and
a good company man -- everyone treats him with more respect than you would
have predicted for his age. Except for S-san, our crusty old network admin,
who is the 10x engineer to M-san's 10x engineering -- his form of address for
M-san is close to "You, boy, I have homework for you". He puts his bare feet
on the table when talking to the boss, and gets away with it. On the other
hand, we have, say, a particular engineer my age who is not very seasoned yet,
who gets talked down to by OLs younger than him.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
I love Japan, but pretty much nothing about that kind of working environment
sounds attractive.

~~~
patio11
Aside from the long hours, low pay, soul-crushing monotony, enterprise Java,
cultural issues, and debugging code written in Bangalore by people working
from a design document translated by Babelfish, it has been a wonderful
experience.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Why have you put up with it this long?

~~~
patio11
A couple reasons, some of which are personal. One major one reason I'm
comfortable talking about is I feel that I owe 3 people who took a chance
hiring me. They have been scrupulously fair in all their dealings with me,
treated me well, and tolerated those parts of me that are not the perfect
salaryman. I promised them 2 ~ 3 years, and they've done nothing to make me
consider breaking that.

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FluidDjango
Short-term, yes. But, God-willing, there will a short life to such bling. Or
must we update H L Mencken's "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the
_taste_ of the American public" by inserting:

_vanity_

_shallowness_

Perhaps content is _not_ really king. But it's not a passing fad.

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balding_n_tired
hard not misread virality as virility...

