Social Computing: Implied social contract

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I believe that there is an implied social contract with the purveyors of social computing platforms - they improve our lives for free, and in return, we use their products and add value for their current/future shareholders. This is a mutually beneficial arrangement - they are not doing us a favour by providing the tools in a world where there are many alternatives, and we are not doing them a favour by using their tool over all others. We help one another to the advantage of both parties.

It sucks when the platforms don't keep up their end of the bargain.

Maybe I'm having a bad morning - it's early, I'm tired, and yes, even a little hung over. But after the WordPress 2.5 fiasco, I'm feeling a little burnt by anything free that doesn't work.

Owing to multiple "hey, check this out!" notices from friends, this morning I'm trying diigo and Woopra.

diigo
diigo is a direct competitor with del.icio.us and mag.nolia in the social bookmarking space.

Social bookmarking works like this: you find cool things, you pass them to your friends/colleagues, they assess them for worth, pass them on to people they know, and so on. Everybody loves it, everybody uses it, and the developers retire to Fiji on a yacht at age 22 after a successful IPO.

That's how it works in theory. del.icio.us burnt their bridges with me a long time ago because it was something that I had to go out of my way to use - not their fault, but not easily usable - so I went back to email for "hey, check this out" dissemination of interesting URLs.

diigo looked different - more blogger friendly - so I gave it a go. I went to the create account screen and noted that I could login using my OpenID credentials - which I did. OpenID then asked me to fill in additional profile information because diigo had asked for it - preferred name, profile photo, location and so on. I did this and granted diigo permanent use of this additional information.

When I got back to diigo from OpenID, none of my profile information was there. It only took me a minute to re-add it, but why ask for it then ask for it again? No big deal, sure, but not a good way to start a relationship.

Woopra
Woopra is a blog stats program - it will tell you who has visited your blog, and what's happening right now.

Lorelle on WordPress gave it a pretty good wrap:

Woopra is a live statistics program. It tells you what is happening on your blog right now, this very second. When he showed it the crowd at WordCamp Dallas, I logged onto his blog, and there on the screen, the audience saw my name pop up in Woopra. The cookie created when I commented on his blog passed on my site information, information I had already provided freely when I left a comment. Those who have not commented or registered are just shown as anonymous visitors.

It features counts of how many are on your blog at that moment, which adjusted as we watched the screen and other audience members jumped on board. We all watched the number go from 48 to over 60 and kept growing as more and more signed on.

I thought that with all the friend recommendations and this glowing recommendation from Lorelle that it was certainly good enough for me. So I grabbed an account and tried to add a couple of my blogs. Instead of live statistics, what I mostly saw was this:

That's the Woopra password screen. It's where I ended up 6 times just now when trying to add three blogs and change my profile. I got booted when clicking on the add a website toolbar menu option, adding blog details, and clicking on the My profile toolbar menu option.

To add insult to injury, once I'd added the blogs, I was told that approval would take up to 7 days.

I won't hold my breath :)

So what could they have done better?
Some basic software engineering could have helped in both cases (and WordPress too, no doubt). Testing is universal - it happens before or after release. You always test, one way or another. Guess which is more efficient in the long run?

Additionally, responsiveness to user issues is a good thing. To be fair, I only raised these issues with the diigo and Woopra folks this morning. The WordPress crew are certainly notable for their lack of response to user-generated issues - there is a pattern of abuse being directed toward anyone who raises issues around WordPress 2.5. The New Marketing concept, if it has any basis in fact at all, would dictate that responsiveness is the number 1 positive act that any organisation can produce - sadly, the social computing world is struggling under the illusion that they are in the software business (not the service business).

What are the implications of the platform makers breaking the implied social contract?
People are less trusting of vendors now - they are more willing to vote with their feet now than at any time in history. If Ford makes a bad car, people stop buying Fords and look for alternatives.

The world is full of social bookmarking applications, blog statistics mechanisms, and yes WordPress, even blogging platforms. My guess is that the early adopters will adopt every new thing anyway, but the rest of us are looking for a real relationship - a platform that we can trust, and recommend to our friends without feeling foolish for having done so.

Posted by AndrewBoyd on April 04, 2008 | Permalink
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