
Notes from Del.icio.us founder Joshua Schachter - wbornor
http://simon.incutio.com/notes/2006/summit/schachter.txt
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dougw
I really liked the comment on giving some service away before account
creation. In my experience, one of the largest hurdles to user adoption is
getting something useful from the site. If a user is able to see the value of
the service *before* putting something into it, they are more likely to
understand the offering and accepting the reward for 5 minutes worth of forms.
There are so many services competing for users attention and everyone of them
are fighting for their niche. You have to put something on the table to gain
the initial interest to keep the user on a site long enough to make it past
the click of the back button. I could not agree more with this point.

This recent story relates: http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=824

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trevelyan
Anyone know what he means by the "No threading etc." comment in: 'It's a tool.
The community can grow elsewhere. No threading etc. "del.icio.us sux" is an
awful experience I'd rather user's didn't have.'

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byrneseyeview
I think he means that threaded comments encourage flamewars, since they let
you respond to responses, instead of to the original article.

When reddit added comments, I think that was one of the complaints. But Digg's
awful "@userX..." kludge demonstrates that people will flame no matter what,
but if comments are unthreaded, they'll just flame more clumsily and less
avoidably.

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xinroman
I've had this discussion several times with one of the early developers of
del.icio.us. It is by far one of my favorite web tools, and I think one of the
most useful things about it is the way that it encourages a sort of
conversation between its users (ie, someone can send a bookmrak to me, which
of itself, begins a sort of dialogue between us, or can write a description in
the notes taht I know is intended for me). What I find disappointing sometimes
is that when this happens there is no way for me respond to them directly
about the link (you can send messages to another user, but then you lose a lot
of the context). The most obvious answer would be to allow me to comment on
other users' bookmarks or "send" them a message back about the bookmark they
sent me. The explanation I keep getting when I say this is that they didn't
want to distract users or muddy the purpose of the app by turning it into
another blogging tool. Ultimately, I think they made the right choice not to
add this feature. It keeps it clean and useful while still allowing for self
expression within the core of the application. I would probably like Digg a
lot more if I weren't so damned distracted by all of the threaded comments
that follow each post, most of which are completely useless.

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danielha
I think a community feature is valuable to many sites if it isn't a tacked-on
afterthought that eventually becomes a burden for the users.

Whatever the site may offer, it's *usually* a plus for a user to be able to
interact with other users. It becomes a burden when it's centered around a
social community that no one seems to use. It's difficult to manage your
contacts from so many of your different online identities.

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danielha
Oh, and I just wanted to add: This "article" is one of the best things I've
read all day. It was so helpful that I made enough mental notes while reading
that I had to transfer them to paper.

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phil
I think these are notes from a conference talk he gave. There are lots of
others so I posted the link, see:

http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=833

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akkartik
"It's a tool. The community can grow elsewhere." Agree or disagree? Is
creating community a concern any web startup can afford to ignore?

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danw
It depends a lot on the site. Theres far too many sites that just add
community features when its not needed. My friends are on facebook and
twitter, they dont need to be anywhere else.

So judge it based on your app. Is the hassle of adding your friends to the
site going to be far smaller than the benefit?

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xinroman
"Is the hassle of adding your friends to the site going to be far smaller than
the benefit?"

Good point. If it's more useful to you to have more of your friends on the
site then you will try to recruit them. But if it's still not vauable at all
to them, then they will just think you are sending them junkmail. I think the
most thriving online communities are the ones that grow organically. History
shows us, it doesn't matter what the tool is, if people can use it to
communicate with one another, they will find a way.

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newtux
Great notes from a smart man. Del.icio.us has been one of my all time favorite
sites because of its ease of use and simplicity.

