Ariel Waldman

There’s a saying along the lines of  “the amount someone spends talking about themselves is inversely proportional to how interesting they are”. Beyond first dates and keynote presentations, this opinion directly affects social network services.

Users drop off at an accelerated rate from accessing/signing up for a new site to actually using it. Even if the sign-up process is super slick and the site is easy to use and helpful with telling users how to get started, more often than not companies forget one significant thing:

If the first impression is a ghost town until the user interacts with the service more (e.g. adds friends, follows feeds, etc.) – that will be their impression of your service and most likely their last login to it.

For Pownce, a social network I was a community manager for, this was a known weakness. I don’t have the data to show the drop-off rate from users who signed up for Pownce, but as with any social network, there’s always a large divide between active users and total users – and keeping the divide as small as possible plays a large role in the longevity of a site.

(original screenshot via Chris Messina)

Comparatively, when users sign up for Flickr, they’re shown the activity that is being created by other users on the site immediately:

(original screenshot via Chris Messina)

Additionally, Flickr always shows content other users are contributing on their service on your personal dashboard, regardless if you’ve added friends or uploaded photos of your own. In this way, Flickr is communicating that they have a live and constantly active ecosystem to participate in – making the user feel less uncertain about adding to that activity and interacting with the site.

The recommendation being – don’t use emptiness as a motivation for users to interact more with your site, even if you have super friendly instructions. Displaying example content not only shows that your site isn’t dead inside, it shows users what’s interesting without saying it.

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Side note: I’ve been looking for other blog posts or links to data that discuss the ratio of sign-ups to returning users. My insight on this topic has mainly come from discussions with various social network developers. If you know of any links I should check out, please leave a link in the comments!

(img via George Ruiz)

I arrived home from SXSW at 10am, after staying up with friends until 5am, when I needed to leave for the airport. Still in the day’s clothes and make-up, I promptly collapsed for a 6 hour nap.

People:
SXSW was fabulous as always, but different for me from the first time I went a couple years ago. As many people re-tweeted from me, I always explain SXSW to people new to it that it is like having the entire internet in person, and it’s just as weird and overwhelming as you would imagine. While that factor hasn’t changed, the “meeting new people” aspect of it has.

When I first went to SXSW in 2007, I knew absolutely no one there, and was being asked how I seemed to know everyone there by the end of it. A lot of SXSW veterans say to not hang out with people you already know, that you’re “doing it wrong” by not meeting new people. On my 3rd year here, I don’t know if I agree entirely. It comes off wrong, but in talking with a friend, we agreed that we feel like the people we’ve come to know are the best of the best (with new people coming in through trusted connections). Hallway conversations this year seemed to be littered with the “what do you do” questions. I got rather tired of even entertaining these questions and took after Cal Henderson’s approach of just answering with “I write email”. I will admit one negative to staying with a group of friends while out and about is that I realize it makes me difficult to approach.

SXSW, for me, has transitioned from meeting new people, to spending quality time with people I already know and I would argue that it’s just as valuable. I did make two new friends that I absolutely adore this year: Amber Case (a cyborg anthropologist – SO much cooler sounding than digital anthropologist!) and Matt Biddulph (Dopplr’s CTO and camera geek). The geekery I shared with both of them was delightful – alas, neither live in San Francisco. On a brief side note, it was fun sharing a suite with Miss Violet Blue, with occasional drop-ins from Natalie and Karen.

Panels:
• “Back Off Man, I’m A Scientist: User Generated Discovery” was wonderful as one of the only science-related panels offered this year. The discussion circled around how unprofessional science is the best way to protect its objectivity and how Spacehack projects like Galaxy Zoo are leading the way in exploration and discovery for both the public and the professional science industry.
• “Make it So (Sexy): Lustful Design in Mainstream Science Fiction” was the type of panel I love – the kind that does not have enough time to zip past every single cool thing you should be aware of, whether or not you can keep up. The panel featured a ton of science fiction movies that displayed different types of sex/technology hybrids. This was great mind candy to consume for my Engadget column: Movie Gadget Friday.
• “New Threats to New Media: Fair Use On Trial” was the best participatory format for a panel I had encountered. In summary, the moderator would show a video to the audience and ask if they thought it should be fair use of a series of songs or movie clips, etc. based on how they felt. The moderator would then turn over to two panelists who had opposing views on if the video should be considered fair use or not. The moderator would then turn back to the audience and ask if anyone had changed their mind based on hearing the arguments – then pick someone from the crowd who had changed their mind and gave them 30 seconds to explain why. This not only had everyone paying attention, but also served as critical thinking, as I became curious about why I felt some examples were fair use and others weren’t.

Cupcakes:
I can’t begin to thank Sugar Mama’s Bakeshop (a local Austin cupcakery you should check out when in the area!) enough for sponsoring my SXSW “flashcake” experiment. I was inspired by Gary Vaynerchuk’s random wine parties last year and wanted to try it with cupcakes by tweeting out random locations to get free cupcakes (first come, first serve). Needless to say, it was a huge success, everyone *loved* Sugar Mama’s cupcakes, and my friends Natalie, Karen and Micah helped with optimizing the cupcake strategy (we even partnered with Mighty Leaf tea at one point, which was a great combo!).

• A video of one of the “flashcake” mobs was captured by Clintus.
• Reuters mentioned the phenomenon
• CNET says I was making all the out-of-work geeks smiling
• Wired dropped in a brief mention

353 days, 11 hours, 7 minutes and 10 seconds until SXSW 2010!

No, not a reference to my female cycle as I’m sure the rumormongers had hoped! I’m 3.5 months late on figuring out my new year’s resolution.

In my previous personal post, I stated that I wasn’t sure what 2009 was going to be for me yet. I think it has taken a few months to crystalize around the concept of vulnerability.

It started with the realization that I am a lot less shy than I used to be just a couple of years ago, and how silly I was for being shy over small stuff. I began to embrace being vulnerable within my dating life, from telling someone I used to have a crush on them to Twittering about someone I met that I thought was cute to asking a guy why he went on a date with someone else and not me. All things I used to be absolutely terrified of doing. While I anticipated feeling incredibly embarassed, the process of pushing past my threshold became surprisingly addictive and gave me a huge wave of relief. I suppose it goes in step with all the rainbows and unicorns that are supposed to appear when consultants tell brands about the benefits of being “open”.

In the exploration of vulnerability, however, I’ve discovered that it’s much more difficult to be vulnerable when it comes to work – this is an observation in other people as much as it is myself. As said at SXSW by Ben Brown, the difference between self-employed and unemployed is in your head – but that doesn’t make it any less difficult to announce to people your paycheck status when you’re trying to say, “no, really, I need more things on my plate”. And with me, I know I have trolls and stalkers who are just licking their fangs at the delight of this vulnerability (but of course, they’re also the ones who are the first to attack me every time I experience any recognition/success).

And while a low-to-no paycheck status might be great for creativity, “unemployment” can be like being sick: you have all the time in the world to do whatever you want to do, but like being sick, it’s difficult to focus past the cloud of needing to take care of yourself. This isn’t really a complaint, so much as my personal description of what it’s been like to be on the low-to-no status for a few months. I suppose this makes my other resolution to be to keep producing lots of stuff and putting it out there in the face of this financial “fog”. Good thing I have a shit ton of awesome ideas and people around me

(photo of Natalie Villalobos and I at SXSW 2008 via Tantek)

With many creator-types unemployed or between clients, trendhunters expect a new sprouting of startups, echoing the creation of web 2.0 companies from the post-dot-com unemployed. I don’t believe that will happen in the same way. Peoples’ piggy banks are squealing and while web 2.0 companies got started with minimal money, most individuals now don’t even have enough to take the startup step forward.

Rather, I am witnessing a high tide of what I’m dubbing “pico projects” (terminology partially influenced by the recent launch of Picocool). Small projects developed by an individual with input from nearby friends as a makeshift advisory council, with little to no concern for monetization (at least at launch), just the desire to see an idea through to fruition.

Within my immediate circle, the launches of pico projects such as Huffduffer, Baconfile, Picocool and (my own) Spacehack are examples of this new wave. Projects that are more than single-serving sites, but less than a pitched business plan or even what Jason Calacanis has dubbed the $5-10k “microstartup“.

My friend and sometimes advisor to Spacehack, Ben Ward, points out that the shift from startup to pico project is not only due to a downturn (as some of these pico projects are more mini moonlighting outside of day jobs), but to the pervasiveness of tools readily available today as compared to just a few years ago. As a non-developer, this rings clear – my project in its current state uses about the limits of what I can “hack” together on my own without dependency on a developer. But this is also true for developers, as frameworks like Django have more easily allowed for the development of endeavors like Baconfile.

In mentioning this slight shift, Jeremy Keith pointed me to £5 App, a meetup for individual or two creators to showcase simple software that they decided to just go ahead and execute. I particularly enjoy this line from the meetup description:

“The discussion will range from technical (what tools/languages were used during development) to business (building communities, spreading the word, costs and rewards).”

…calling attention to the fact that these projects care more about building communities than how to talk to angel investors.

What are some pico projects you’ve come across or built in the last few months? I’ll link any I find to be interesting from the comments at the bottom of this post.

Other interesting pico projects:
• Not in the comments, but Jeremy Keith pointed me to Readernaut
• Josh McKenty, a colleague from NASA, reminded me of the TinyApps project
• Emily Chang introduced me to 4am Project
• Blaine Cook recently created TinyArchive

(the title, a reference to XFN. the picture, a reference from 2007 to my excitement to move to San Francisco.)

I’ve been debating for a while writing a post that is more personal. I don’t typically like blogging about myself, as evidence through my writing at Shake Well Before Use, and most of my personal life can be obtained through Twitter already. I always think “no one cares” to read about me – there’s so much far more exciting stuff out there to be consuming! However, I love reading my friends’ blogs and the idea that they have someone that enjoys reading their more introspective moments in hopes of gleaning some insight.

2008 was an interesting year. Interesting sounds so terribly boring. By “interesting”, there were ups and downs, some of which were captured on this site.  In work, there were a lot of great, new, rewarding experiences that I truly cherished and hope to continue. I’ve now worked in multiple industries: advertising, technology, science, government, and I could be an arse and stretch it to culinary with CupcakeCamp . But, by the end of the year, I felt like I was having empty nest syndrome – NASA CoLab went into hibernation from being a program, Pownce shut down and Yahoo! Brickhouse, where I often coworked, was figuratively demolished.

In dating, it was a year of biting the bullet and putting myself out there – both ways. I walked out of one situation, realizing I valued my independence and all the things I wanted to accomplish more than anything. I walked in to another situation, and for once lifted both of my feet off the ground.

Outside of income-related activities, there has always been my personal work. In years past, blogging took up most of my time (at my peak, I was posting 6 times a day). In 2008, I unintentionally transitioned from blogging to creating projects like Spacehack and CupcakeCamp. I can’t explain the amount of positive energy that is generated by being part of something that generates so many passionate people. Dare I say that it is no longer about the content or the context – it is about the community.

While I miss blogging as often (and I’m seriously considering starting a community management column), I realize that this is in step with why I moved to San Francisco in the first place. I wanted to be around people who actually created things rather than just talked about what everyone else was creating. I also realized that my move to SF was very much following in my mother’s footsteps. After watching Milk (a very emotional movie to watch after Prop 8 passing) and conversing with my mother about what it was like to live through that time in San Francisco, she told me that the first time she walked down Telegraph Avenue, she felt she had finally found home.

I don’t know what 2009 will be for me just yet. I’m filled with so much energy to release right now, so that’s exciting at the very least. December was a personally painful month that I’ve now let pass through me (like a storm, as one of my dear friends put it). All I can (and care to) concentrate on now is what I’m here to do and the people who need to hear what I have to say.

Spacehack launched to the public today! I’m really excited to produce a resource that myself and others felt was lacking in the online space community.

Spacehack is a directory of ways to participate in space exploration, interact + connect with the space community and encourage citizen science.

A huge thank you goes out to all my former coworkers at NASA who continue to support me in my outer space endeavors – these ideas come to fruition from a community more so than any individual.

I hope to see Spacehack continue to grow and be a valuable source of information for anyone who wants to get involved in space exploration but doesn’t know where to start.

When I started CupcakeCamp back in May of this year, I had no idea it would be as popular as it was (we had about 300 people and 500+ cupcakes attend!). It was such a rewarding experience to see people from all different industries smiling and sharing cupcakes and meeting new people (what easier way for people to meet than to start a conversation about cupcakes!?).

At nearly every event I went to, people asked me to bring it back, so I’m very happy to oblige and be throwing CupcakeCamp2 this December.  RSVP yourself here and register to bring cupcakes here.

Equally exciting, I received an email from Open Source Cupcakes who will be throwing the first ever CupcakeCamp East! I’m ecstatic that in less than 6 months of the first CupcakeCamp that it has already spread across the nation.

Can’t wait! As always, if you have questions about CupcakeCamp or need help organizing your own, feel free to ping me.

Lately, I’ve been dreadful at updating my blogs with what’s new in my life. What I said in July seems to still hold true a few months later:

“My frequency of blogging has gone down lately. Is it because of the pervasiveness of microblogging? For the most part, no. The answer is that I’m consuming a LOT more information than outputting, which leaves little time to share all the great things I’m learning about at the end of the day.”

The most recent update in my world is that I decided to resign my contract with my employer today (when you work with NASA as a contractor, you’re hired by a separate company that then contracts the work to NASA). Being the first “outside” blogger/social media consultant I know of being brought into NASA, I ran up against policies from my employer that made it impossible for me to do the job NASA hired me to do. My employer’s policies for digital interaction are outdated, exemplified by the apparent prohibition of instant messaging and social networks during work hours. The policies and mindsets are written in such a way that it makes the use of Twitter akin to playing Solitaire at work. As well as being effective communication protocols that actually increase productivity and open collaboration, they are already receiving widespread usage within NASA. Due to the non-negotiable factor of these policies, it is with regret and deep frustration that I leave this role at NASA, as everything I had understood about their desire to be involved in social media filled me with enthusiasm and excitement and I relished the opportunity to bring my expertise to a new field.

I am not the first social media person to run into these types of issues in government services that affect me doing my job. Tara Hunt has a blog post from 2007 on “The Brown Act of 1953: how this positive policy now negatively affects civic collaboration“.

Despite the unfortunate situation, I feel that the space community at large is truly wonderful and full of potential for social media, transparency and collaboration. The end goal of my program at NASA was to make NASA more open so people will begin to utilize NASA’s vast amount of data (98% of everything they do is available publicly, just not well-communicated).

This is also an interesting time to be involved with technology policies and the government. I intend to write a blog post in the coming weeks that goes into more detail on my personal experience over the last few months and analysis of why government maybe isn’t ready for 2.0 just yet (but they’re eager to be).

TechCrunch today posted Barack Obama On Tech Policy. A few quotes to pull out that I find especially relevant to my experience:

• “Create a transparent and connected democracy”
• “We will put government data online in universally accessible formats”
• “To seize this moment, we have to connect all of America to 21st century infrastructure”
• “If we make technological literacy a fundamental part of education, then we can … ensure the next generation of scientists and engineers is being educated right here in America”
• “Together, we harness technology to confront the biggest challenges that America faces, just imagine what we could do!”

For now, I will continue imagining what NASA can do on an informal basis

image via twm1340

Exploring the unknown territory of the space community’s involvement in social networks, I’ve compiled a list of space-related Twitter accounts that are on my radar. From telescopes to planetary explorers, astrobiology to robots, these accounts aim to add some education to your everyday.

At last count, I have 112 space-related Twitter accounts on the list I’ve compiled. I may expand my radar to include social networks beyond Twitter sometime soon. In the meantime, follow a few that interest you!

(I’ve been horrible at keeping up with a blogging routine lately, but that’s a subject for a later post.) I was recently asked over email what I thought could be a potential “Twitter killer” as well as an interesting way Twitter is being used. Thought I’d share my off-the-top-of-my-head response:

Potential Twitter killer:

Lack of community
Twitter as a company has stated in the past that they view themselves as a “communications utility” and not a community. This is an unfortunate and potentially poisonous viewpoint to try and maintain. My guess is that Twitter wanted to view themselves as a utility to further propagate the idea that they want to scale to a huge size. Again, this is unfortunate as Flickr is a prime example of a massive web service that is known for scaling not only their web framework but their community as well. Flickr has proven over time that it can maintain a sense of community at a large scale (remember, they serve about 35,000 photos a *second*) by truly thinking about every user experience despite it sometimes making their heads hurt. Basic psychology shows that people connect more positively and interact more when they share common things with a group. If Twitter gets its wish and there is no longer a sense of community, then what motivation do users have to connect via Twitter than any other utility or service? Twitter works because the people you care about are into it, not because it’s really necessary for your boss to know what you had for lunch on a public webpage.

Interesting way people are using Twitter:

Location Based Interaction and Dating
Typically when people talk about interesting ways Twitter is being used, it’s on this grandiose scale of “look how my business is profiting from being social and spreading awareness”. Ok, that’s already been done, boring. When you live in the same city as others that you have mutual connections with on Twitter, it’s a great platform for spontaneous meetups, dates, and occasionally meeting new people. The new form of dating is almost this passive, cheesy situation like yawning to put your arm around someone during a movie. The first ping involves someone saying something like they’re hungry, the returning pong suggest a location, and before you know it, there’s a rallying ping pong of Twitter replies to make an IRL (in real life) event happen.