My Name is Kate

One Smart Way to Keep Your Social Network Spam-free (or at least spam-low)

This blog (and most of my blogs, really) run on Typepad. Typepad has a "social networking" aspect to it - it allows people to "follow" you. In the last couple of months they ran into a massive spam follow problem seemingly as part of their free microblog service. They have now put in some functionality for Tyepapd users to take control of who they want following them which is great, if not a little late in coming.

I was thinking about how this all could be prevented in the first place and I came across this piece of functionality on Goodreads (my social network of choice for books and reading) - the Challenge Question. So simple, yet so effective.

This is what it looks like in your profile settings:

And this is how it appears when you make a friend request:

 

Now, LinkedIn does something like this when you ask to make a network connection. But it pre-populates with standard "We should connect on LinkedIn" which 97.6% of the people who send me a request don't bother to edit. So I like GoodRead's approach where they give you an example Challenge Question, but leave you to actually fill it in.

For an additional level of security (in case you are reading classified documents and then posting about it on a social network), you can also specify a one-word Challenge Answer. When you activate this option, it looks like this:

I really like how the example prompts change as this Challenge and Response is intended to be much more personal.

This kind of functionality would really help with spam reduction but would also create stronger "weak ties" that are key to maintaining online social network relationships. What would really be great is if this data were then stored and visible in your view of your friend's profile on that particular social network (so, when Ben (the example above) looks at my profile on Goodreads, he would see how I answered his challenge question). That would go a long way towards maintaining those weak ties.

I look my friends on Facebook and while I have made a half-hearted attempt to organize them into lists (conference buddy, Squidoo lensmaster, person I met at a Tweetup once who is best friends with at least 5 of my friends), it's ineffective and there are still several people who I am just not 100% sure who they are.

LinkedIn in does something very smart in that they allow you to add notes and tags to an individual's profile.

But again, it is after the fact. Prompt me for this information when I accept/make a connection request.

I don't use services like Sales Force, or any real contact management system, but I imagine that they have similar kinds of note/tag mechanisms. 

Has anyone seen other social network spam filters/meta info collecting like the above that they particularly like? Or, do you have any tips on how you organize your friends/contacts on the various services? This kind of meta content around our online social lives seems to be a cruicial component that isn't widely available yet, but should be.

Client Plug: Osmosus.com - New Sustainability Community Website Launches

Last week I was pleased to be part of the launch of a new website: Osmosus.com.  Osmosus is a social network where people can interact on their journey to sustainability.

A couple of cool things about Osmosus:

• Personal "Green Space" where you can state your "green creed", blog,  track events and connect with others.
• There is an intricate carbon footprint calculator where you can put in your current lifestyle which will calculate your carbon emissions.  You can then model a number of different scenarios for reducing them.
• Osmosus has a news centre which collects enviro and sustainability-related news into one place.

For the launch, Osmosus has partnered with the Fruit Tree Planting Foundation.  For every new member, they are donating $1 (up to $10,000) towards planting a new orchard in a metropolitan area.

Social Media Activities for Launch

I thought I'd capture what we did here for launch - for those of you who have similar situations coming up.

Personal Message to Beta Testers: we had a small group of folks who helped us test various aspects of Osmosus prior to launch.  We sent out a note to them a few days prior, letting them know what was happening and trying to keep them in the loop about development and communication activities.  This kind of personal touch is important.  Your early adopters and beta testers are so valuable and their perspective becomes even more so over the long-haul.  You want folks who were there in the beginning.  Hunch.com just launched (congrats!) and one of the things that they are doing on user profiles is giving early members a special badge to commemorate their early contributions.  Great community fostering, IMHO.

~

Blog: Doran (the founder of Osmosus) started a blog to keep folks up to date on what's happening at Osmosus, particularly from a development perspective.  As we go forward, I hope we can evolve this into more of a team effort (similar to what happens over at FreshBooks' blog - possibly my fav web product blog, though MOO's blog is a close second) as well as a place where we can showcase the great ideas and activities of community members (one of the reasons I love MOO's blog - they do this so well!!)

Product Development Words of Wisdom

Todd Sieling, Product Manager for Ma.gnolia and all around smart-guy, published a gem on his blog today.  Discussing "Less is More" in context of the Playstation3 and the Wii, Todd states ...

It’s never the specific technologies that make great products. Instead, it’s the careful selection and combination of those technologies into a coherent experience that wins people over.

Amen.

I would only add that it is what fires the imagination in people and enables them to do more than they thought possible that makes a great product experience.