I've been on the Internet since around 1st grade and in that time I've been a part of a lot of communities.  What I've noticed is that building a  successful community often means allowing elements into it that you don't like or approve of.  The extent of that depends on how open a community you want but as a general rule the more you want people to freely express themselves the more you have to allow unsavory elements in.

Keep that in mind when reading this excerpt from a post by Ariel Waldman 

In June 2007, I unfortunately found myself on the receiving end of multiple accounts of harassment from a user on Twitter. When the user started using my full name in their harassing tweets, I reported the harassment as a form of cyberbullying to Twitter’s community manager and received a response that let me know they cared about the situation

The harassment continued throughout the course of 2007. Since Twitter and I had an open dialog started, I would periodically report cases of continuing harassment (some of which spread between Flickr and Twitter). Twitter would take no action while Flickr would immediately ban and remove all traces of the harassment.

The story goes on but the gist is that Twitter refused to ban the aforementioned name calling user despite Ms. Waldman's continued pleas for relief. 

I think my first reaction to this was the same as most people's.  Ms. Waldman seems like a nice person, nice people don't deserve to be called names, anyone who calls a nice person names is a bad person, bad people deserve to be banned. 

What's there to debate? 

Well, a lot as it turns out.  The question here isn't "is the person doing the name calling bad?"  I suspect everyone on the Twitter side dislikes this person and wishes they weren't using the service.  The question though is, short of things that are against the law, does Twitter want to become a service that imposes management's values on its users?

Values are not absolute and one person's harassment is another person's "open expression".  I completely understand where Ms. Waldman is coming from and wish she wasn't being subjected to this but again, an open society can be unpleasant. 

Honestly, I have to grudgingly admit I don't consider the quoted name calling harassment.  I don't like it, but since Twitter allows you to block users I think the name caller would have to rise above simple posting to constitute harassment.

If Ms. Waldman blocked the person and they created another account to continue the name calling you might have a case for harassment but as told the story doesn't seem to rise to the harassment level.  I mean, its the Internet, where a lot of people encourage others to hate them while outwardly decrying it to get publicity.

Values are relative

This comes back to what I was trying to say in my opening paragraph.  If you want your service to be an open platform that represents society than you have to permit the elements of society that you don't like.  That includes bad people who call nice people mean names.  I wish this name caller would just go away and leave her alone but I don't think I have the right to make them.  I suspect the people at Twitter feel the same. 

Addendum: For the record, I didn't mention Ms. Waldman's primary claim which is that Twitter should ban the person for violating their Terms of Service agreement which says users won't “abuse, harass, threaten, impersonate or intimidate other Twitter users."  Honestly, with no offense intended, I don't consider this argument to have much merit.  ToS agreements are to protect the company and they are free to enforce them as they please.  Most companies allow violations of their Terms of Service all the time and we all know it. 

Addendum 2: I didn’t realize it when I posted but it turns out the account Ms. Waldman wants shut down is in fact an account in which people can post anonymously.  So it isn’t a person with a twitter account it’s one of many people who use the account to post anonymous messages.  I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether that changes anything but I thought I should put it out there.

Sorry for the flurry of posts today, we were supposed to leave for a camping trip but those going with me had to stay an extra day leaving me nothing to do (I thought about working but can't bring myself to after the record 90 hour work week I just did to make up for all the time away this month)

Anyway, with nothing to do but sit here and waste the day away online I've found a little extra inspiration. 

(I also learned how to juggle though admittedly not well)

For anyone who hasn't heard, Microsoft has a new plan to gain search market share which is to share the wealth.  Basically they will pay you "cash back" every time you use Windows Live Search to find a product and then buy that product.  Here's a quote from Techcrunch that pretty much sums up the situation...

Google’s search dominance is growing, and everything Microsoft has historically thrown at them has done nothing to slow them down. This new approach is both desperate and brilliant. Desperate because Microsoft is giving away most of the search revenue to get market share gains. Brilliant because they have such a small share of search revenue today that they have little to lose, and they are hitting Google hard in their core business.

I also think this is brilliant but for a completely different reason. 

Though I'm not personally a fan of Live Search I know many people who seem to think its as good as Google.  It certainly isn't dramatically worse.  So the question really isn't a technical one at this point.  Google essentially has two things keeping them as the market leader right now. 

1.  Marketing: This is the obvious one, Google's name is synonymous with web search at this point. 

2.  Familiarity: This is the less obvious point.  My theory here is that even if Microsoft produced dramatically better results people would still think Google is better because they are so familiar with that experience.  Think of the people who still insist the sound quality on Vinyl is better than a CD and you'll start to see what I mean.  Except in this case, unlike Vinyl vs. the CD, Microsoft can never scientifically prove to people that their search is more effective.

These two things are a powerful one/two punch for Google.  They basically mean that people will always go to Google first and will always think Google results are better even if they aren't. 

What Microsoft needs right now is a way to lure Searchers to them and get them to use Microsoft search long enough to grow accustomed to it.  Paying people is as good a way as any to accomplish that. 

I know I just quoted a Dare Obasanjo post a couple days ago but it really is good to see him back and I think the post that inspired this blog entry is one everyone should read.

In the post, entitled "Note to Web 2.0 Companies: Early Adopters are not the Mass Market", he makes the point that the needs of the mainstream usually don't jive with those of the rest of the population.  Here's a quote...

The fact is that early adopters have different problems and needs from regular users. This is especially true when you compare the demographics of the Silicon Valley early adopter crowd which "Web 2.0" startups often try to court with the typical users of social software on the Web.  In the few years I've been working on building Web applications, I've seen a number of technology trends and products that have been heralded as the next big thing by technology pundits which actually never broke into the  mainstream because they don't solve the problems of regular Internet users. Here are some examples

I really enjoyed this post and hope everyone checks it out.  But I wanted to briefly give my own thoughts on this particular point.  Or more accurately, an argument I always hear when making the point he's making.

The argument basically goes like this: Early adopters are enough to sustain a company indefinitely.  So a company should court early adopters because they are the eventual trend setters.  As the mainstream sees how much easier the early adopters life is made by new technology they will, little by little, migrate over.  The point of this being the mainstream will eventually have to accept "Web 2.0" services on their own terms so there's no point is tailoring a service to the mainstream. 

This argument tends to rely on the service scaling down.  So you'll get people who say "sure mainstream users don't track 200 web sites like I do but once they see how easy it is for me to track 200 web sites they'll rush to track their 12 favorite web sites in the same way" 

Two points here: 

First, Early Adopters are Fickle. 

The problem with trying to survive on early adopters until the mainstream catches on is that they fall in love with every new thing.   Robert Scoble had no sooner added all 500 of his friends before he ditched Facebook for Twitter.  That lasted for about a month before he moved on to Friendfeed.  and so on. 

Scoble's one who makes a business out of cultivating his audience so he continues to update the platforms he's essentially abandoned but most early adopters aren't so courteous. 

Early adopters will never sustain a company because you can't appeal to someone who compulsively wants the newest thing.  Your product can only be the newest thing for so long. 

Second, most Web 2.0 products don't actually solve a problem

At the risk of being controversial, most of these "Web 2.0" companies are given a lot of lip service because early adopters love the concept but aren't very useful in the long term.  Does anyone really pay attention to their friend's del.icio.us links?  Maybe occasionally, when they have extra time on their hands and absolutely nothing to do, but mostly not.  If del.icio.us disappeared tomorrow I doubt anyone would be impacted that negatively. 

Blog Search is another example.  Sure vanity searching is nice but hardly necessary.  For most useful searches a standard Google search will serve your purpose much better.  The list goes on and on.  Whether its Friendfeed creating so much noise that it drowns out the useful content or Facebook which claims to keep you in touch with friends but actually just allows you to send them virtual cocktails most Web 2.0 services don't solve a problem at all. 

So unless your world is largely online and you're just looking for more ways to spend time connected these services don't help.  They certainly don't improve a person's life to the extent that a normal person would be envious of. 

My Point

Though it really wasn't the point I started out trying to make I guess my point is to expand on what Mr. Obasanjo said.  Web 2.0 startups don't just need to focus on solving a mass market problem they need to focus on solving a problem in general.  Early adopters will love you just because your new but the mainstream requires a lot more to come on board.   When trying to find that "lot more" usefulness is, as always, a good place to start.

Addendum: Sorry for the double post to anyone who subscribes via RSS.  The link was broken, when I tried to fix it the post disappeared for as yet unknown reasons (and lets be honest, I'm not going to look into is so its really a mystery for the ages)