Social tools and Bargains - Feb 1

In his chapter on the use of social tools, Shirky addresses several problems I had envisioned in regards to starting any sort of relatively social thing. Everything from a restaurant to a manufacturer must at some point address the issues of adaption, and go through the process of moving from no users to many. The paradox was one notable thing I had seen - how do you go from no users to many users, when users show up because others are already there?

The way he lays out the solution to this, with the Bargain, was one that I had considered, but doubted. Giving people the tools they want to get something done is great, but the issue is when part of that tool is a social environment. Sites like facebook had an easy time of this - by serving a small group in a physically tight-knit location, and giving them a tool that they had longed for but never received, Mark Zuckerberg became the king of campus. The rapid adoption of his site, combined with close physical and social proximity to other campuses meant that there was demand for his extant tool long before it was offered them. It wasn't long before every college had a facebook, and then it was opened to the world.

Something like twitter, though, had a more lopsided adoption path. So far as I can see, it started out with nothing, and then gained some users, and the main tool it offered was being able to update and be updated by numerous people, via text message. After a while, the accessibility and relative anonymity led to organizations, especially television networks, using it to both update and get opinions from users. Suddenly, the amount of coverage that twitter was getting skyrocketed - the word went from some thing people had heard about once, to something people were hearing mentioned a bunch. This meant that more people were joining it, and then connecting with each other, and community was born.