Building Sites Around Social Objects (Live from Web 2.0)
This morning at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, Jyri Engeström, co-founder of Jaiku and now Google employee, spoke about building sites around social objects. What this means is that the social sites we visit today are not just friend networks - they're also built around objects that connect people with shared interests. These social objects could be anything from a photo on flickr to a video on YouTube or a track on Last.fm. This concept may not be new information to some of you - Jyri has been talking "social objects" for years now. What is interesting, though, is how well this information has held up over time.
During his presentation, Jyri talked about his five key principles for building sites around social objects. They are:
- Define Your Object: This is the easy part, but perhaps most important. The social object will be the center of your network. On eBay, it's whatever item you're selling or buying. On Amazon, it's a product. On Flickr, it's a photo and so on.
- Define Your Verbs: This means what do you want people to do with your social object. Do you want them to comment? Rate it? Share it? Watch it? Etc. Make sure whatever action they should take is clear and highly visible on the site.
- Make the Objects Shareable: This is almost a no-brainer, but you would be surprised how many sites have not made it easy (or even possible!) to share the object which their site is centered around.
- Turn Invitations into Gifts: Want your friends to join you on the network? Don't just spam them with an invite, send them something of value. Jyri mentioned how a purchase of a Skype headset years ago also included a set for a friend. Also, PayPal had originally offered a small amount of money posted to the account of your friends who signed up for the service.
- Charge the Publishers, Not the Spectators: On any network, there are those who are creating and those who are passively consuming the content. You shouldn't charge the latter, only the former. The people who are actively using the service and are getting value from it in some way are the ones who would be willing to pay for additional features or, in some cases, just to use the service itself.
An interesting parallel to #5 is the online news industry. Today, many publishers are tossing around ideas about charging for their online content. This actually goes against his final key principal, which may be why some of those ventures won't be as successful as the publishers hope.
Although Jyri Engestrom has not published the slideshow that he used during the presentation, the one embedded below has many of the exact same slides, including the five principles. However, you may be surprised to learn that this one was uploaded to Slideshare two years ago. Even though, it seems the subject matter is still as relevant today as it was back then.
Do you agree that these principles have held up over time? Or does this list need to be modified or changed in some way?
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Spot on. Those points still sound like wisdom to me.
this is like "DUH" IMO... social networking and tweeter are features. it's like having a bidness model; it's real; the "Share common interest." What gets me is that it's 2009 and this is like enlightening to the digerati; which, seem not to know much.
INHO.
This presentation from two years ago is still very relevant. The 5 key principles mentioned give me another way of thinking about architecting social media sites (look at slide #40: quick check list).
Two years ago the move towards microblogging was just starting; the view shown on slide #72 (blogging vs. microblogging) was at that time a good prediction of the future (i.e. microblogging with Twitter today).
This is very logical and very informative, like Fabrice said SPOT ON !
çok teşekkürler, iyi çalışmalar...
Jyri coined the terms "Social Object" in 2005, akshully:
http://www.zengestrom.com/blog/2005/04/why_some_social.html
Also,
Jyri's father, Yrjö Engeström, wrote the book 'Perspectives on Activity Theory'.
You could charge the spectators too if there was a service that brought value that they demanded.
Free is the way into the future and it is here to stay, what and how we tailor around making money either by clicks or any other means is what we need to be innovative about. At the end of the day the business models also have to change along with the new hit because any new hit that has really took off had some or most of it for free.
a small amount of money posted to the account of your friends who signed up for the service.
Hasn't Jyri been giving this same exact talk for years? Not that it's not good or anything, but uh?
The idea of social objects is older than 2005 and not original to Jyri as he himself acknowledges. The best writing on social objects can be found here (unfortunately the paper is missing some pages on google books):
http://books.google.com/books?id=RfaVpJBB5lgC&pg=PP1&dq=Karin+Knorr+Cetina#PPA175,M1
Social objects are not just objects like pictures or videos. They are internal articulations that allow for further exploration. The objects themselves are worthless, it's the value attached to the internal articulations of the objects that matters as well as the value of being able to do further exploration.
This describes Flickr or YouTube much better than just in terms of objects. It also puts Jyri's five points in a more meaningful context. People leave comments on pictures and videos because of the internal articulations that occur, not because of the objects themselves.
Steven
bilgi için thanks.
The mentioned how a purchase of a Skype headset years ago also included a set for a friend. Also, PayPal had originally offered a small amount of money posted to the account...
small amount of money posted to the account.
I would add another one:
6. Make it addictive - by allowing users to create something, something that can evolve and possibly be admired by others - that what makes people frequent users