A VC - Latest Comments in Thinking About Groups

Re: Thinking About Groups

Ethan Bauley — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 19:49:42 -0000

Bijan and I traded some thoughts on this the other day...I like the idea of creating something new that combines community + market to make some kind of "distributed product design" thing happen.

(I've been flirting with Erik Von Hippel's "Democratizing Innovation" book lately: http://web.mit.edu/evhippel... )

Or something like Disqus that abstracts the convo (e.g. why can't I post to GearSlutz.com via email or Twitter?)

I agree with the idea that the big social nets are in a good position to start this...our "profiles" should just be a "home base" for all the communities we're a part of (with explicit and implicit networks on top).

Clearly, as you describe, the best, simplest strategy is to deliver a great bit of value and then be a kind of "pipe" that everyone else needs to plug into.

Flows, not stocks, of data, right? ;-)

Re: Thinking About Groups

Andy — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 13:14:50 -0000

Great post and comments.

Currently, "Groups" as a term, is too large of a category to describe a single class of solutions. When you think about "groups" they can range from virtual-only groups, to real world groups -- from small groups (like an individual family) to 10's of thousands spread across the world with a common interest in fly fishing -- from official clubs/associations with membership fees to a group of your basketball buddies. While shopping and chore lists may be the killer app for a family, it doesn't apply well to an association who's biggest problem is collecting fees/ attracting new members, or a sports team who wants to manage a roster and have a phone tree, or to a virtual group that would like to blog to each other about their common interests.

Over time, there will likely be significant segmentation with different needs (and different market dynamics). Some markets can support a more tailored solution (because they are willing to pay, have an attractive audience to advertisers, etc.). Even if you slice up "families" or "sports teams" these are themselves huge audiences.

At Qlubb (http://www.qlubb.com) where I work, we're focusing on trusted, real-world groups as they have some distinct needs that services like yahoogroups don't provide for very well. We've focused on application first and while we've built much of the infrastructure, this may be an area of commoditization. With a few standards thrown into the mix, the market may end up with a common infrastructure layer/provider for group features that are useful across most groups. We're not holding our breath for it though.

Re: Thinking About Groups

sssrinivasan — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 13:05:59 -0000

In today's context, Social Networks lead to Conversations. The opposite approach is more relevant, i.e. Conversations lead to Networks - my address book only gets populated with relevant connections with whom I have active conversations. In other words, dont even think about Groups, but think more about everyone having a personal listserv - managing all of our multi-threaded, multi-party conversations. Each conversation owner acts as the authentication agent for members of that conversation, e.g. validating participant email-id's.

The trick to doing ALL of our conversations in one shared environment is that this space needs to manage all facets of our identity - because without a clear identity there is no follow through networking.

Re: Thinking About Groups

fredwilson — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 11:24:07 -0000

I just watched Being There the other night

³in the spring the flowers will bloom²

LOL

Re: Thinking About Groups

mrclark411 — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 10:15:57 -0000

Perhaps.

But it could be as simple as Google creating an API for Google Groups.

Re: Thinking About Groups

Jay Parkhill — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 09:07:46 -0000

I'm not completely sure. We've had partial success using a forum for "deep" discussions that not everyone needs to be involved in- they start with someone posting a note to the list saying "go here for discussion of ___". It helps reduce the email traffic, though a lot of people never visit the forum unless prompted.

The forum still has so many folders and subfolders that it's a pain to check for new content. I keep thinking that Friendfeed would do a great job as a replacement if it did this:

1) Post full content of original entries + blog imports and photo feeds (grou.ps really shines here)
2) Allow comment discussion around the entries like FF does currently. Ideally blog comments would tie back to the source as well (using Disqus?)
3) Make the most-commented items sticky so they stay at/near the top. Most content goes up, gets read and floats downstream. It's a fraction that generates significant conversation

That's what this user would like to do with Chris O'Donnell's API, at least. I'd still like to see a better way to sort messages so they go only to the relevant people, but something like this would vastly improve on the forum experience and help cut down the email traffic at the same time.

Re: Thinking About Groups

fredwilson — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 06:23:05 -0000

Thanks for your comments. Very informative and helpful

Re: Thinking About Groups

fredwilson — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 06:17:08 -0000

;)

Re: Thinking About Groups

Gregg Smith — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 00:49:49 -0000

Jay-
What is the alternative to getting 50 emails/day or reading the updates/communications on the ning.com site? I'm struggling with this too.

Re: Thinking About Groups

kenberger — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 20:37:22 -0000

"Determine a basic need -> Create a service that satisfies it in the simplest way possible -> Open it up"

This reminds me of the best lecture I heard at an HBS alum event.

It was Tom Siebel on stage and he was asked to give the secret formula to business success. He returned the one-liner:
"Find a need that's under-served. Deliver it better than anyone else."
(of course he didn't mention opening it up, or anything else for that matter).

It was so simple yet people raved about it as so brilliant, that it made him resemble Peter Sellers in "Being There".

Re: Thinking About Groups

kenberger — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 20:28:18 -0000

Sounds like you're describing a semantic web concept called "FOAF" (literally friend of a friend), and many including Tim Berners-Lee have been espousing it for a very long time.

The big social networks including the ones you mention have considered it for ages, but it's super tough to implement and keep secure for a number of reasons.

Re: Thinking About Groups

Jim Storer — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 14:55:26 -0000

Was going to mention Ning, but it looks like the crowd has already taken care of that. While I wish there was more portability with Facebook, the groups in there are ok too. As an industry we need to continue to push toward data portability so that groups don't become islands... it's serendipitous interactions that make social media special.

Jim | @jstorerj

Re: Thinking About Groups

Jay Parkhill — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 14:27:25 -0000

Still thinking about this one. I am a member of 2 groups with big messaging/aggregation problems.

#2 on Chris' list above is the tough nut to crack, IMO. Email gets overwhelming really fast, but forums/platform-based messaging is usually a better way to bury content than to get it out.

grou.ps is one of the best mini-platforms I have seen, and I have been looking around a lot. I still don't understand how the messaging works, though. My bike racing team's yahoo list gets ~50 messages a day. Getting that many emails is bad enough- if I got 50 messages saying "click to visit the site and read your message" I'd shoot myself. That's what Ning does and is the main reason we rejected it for our team's use.

The related point is that not only does each group want something different- so does each group member. Probably most people are happy to interact by email. Others want photo & blog import, Twitter integration, etc. Messaging is so critical because it is the piece that will tie everything together.

Re: Thinking About Groups

Shaun Callahan — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 13:53:54 -0000

Anybody who is listening to "Basketball Jones" is OK in my book. Understand you are out of the office until the end of July. Would love to chat about how we are keeping the group thing simple at CollectiveX.

Re: Thinking About Groups

kidmercury — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 10:57:46 -0000

the real revolution IMO is in a new CMS. i dont even think you need a new CMS, i think you can hack an existing open source one. ning has the right idea, though the fact you cant put it on your servers is a serious drawback. i also think ning may have some trouble developing features as they are too "bundled" in the sense that they are both an infrastructure company and a product development company. IMO this will hinder innovation over the long run, and will create potential cost management problems as inflation spirals out of control here in the US.

though marc is light years ahead of most webpreneurs, so i think he's got the best answer at this point.

Re: Thinking About Groups

fredwilson — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 10:51:09 -0000

That is a fantastic idea

Re: Thinking About Groups

mrclark411 — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 08:41:50 -0000

What's missing from the net in terms of groups is something much more fundamental. We need an infrastructure-like groups service. I create the group on that service then can use that group around the net. For example, I would build a group of friends from my program in college, then as I jump from Facebook to LinkedIn and to new apps, I don't have to continually organize my contacts into groups - because those groups transcend the applications. Other groups? Family, co-workers, small working teams, niche interest groups (political discussions, technical groups...), etc...

Re: Thinking About Groups

Roman — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 01:26:49 -0000

surprised no mention of Ning...

Re: Thinking About Groups

Theron — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 18:24:41 -0000

I would agree that no app will ever serve everyone. That being said what constitutes a large enough audience to justiify a new group/service app? Could the "killer" app in this space be a software/web 2.0 program that incorporates the three functions listed above in your post;

"A customizable site to call their own, even if it just has information as to what the group does and how to sign up.
A way to communicate internally, via a one-way or two-way listserv, depending on the group.
A way to do RSVPs for events."

That would then allows users to customize to their groups preferences. An example of what I am thinking about is Wix; as it has the capabilities to allow users to build a website very easily and customize to their unique preferences. The trick then is to get compatibility with all the social networking sites, which is a huge hurdle.

-Theron

Re: Thinking About Groups

Gabe — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 16:44:34 -0000

Interesting how nobody (rightly, i believe) mentioned any of the open-source programs (e.g., Drupal, Joomla, DotNetNuke) that have community features. While they may be useful for pushing out content from a publisher (brochureware), they generally do a horrid job of fomenting active communities.

It will be very interesting to see how grou.ps develops - whether all the variations built upon the base will be modular, mutually elegant, and stable - or ugly, incompatible, and unstable when someone tries to graft elements from different iterations into a new group.

Re: Thinking About Groups

Stephen G — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 15:53:08 -0000

Twitter + GroupTweet = simple group communications, history of messages

Re: Thinking About Groups

trush — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 14:53:13 -0000

I agree with the point that every "group" is different. Some groups want to be open to everyone, some groups want to be private. Some groups will grow over time, some will stay the same size but with renewing membership, and some will consist of the same 5 people. Some will dissolve after a week and some will go on for years. You get the idea.

With Convos, we're trying to challenge the way people think about using an online group to organize people. We're using a Flex-based interface that looks and feels like a desktop app instead of a social network. For us, groups can be a fast way of adding a little structure to any activity or organization and we think the experience should include powerful client for interacting with all of your groups (whether you lead 10 or particpate in 2). Then, I agree, open it up and allow groups to be created from anywhere with information to flowing in and out.

I'll agree we don't need another traditional online groups service. However, as long as people continue to interact with groups of people in real life, there's always room for innovating the group dynamic on the web.

Re: Thinking About Groups

Jevon — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 14:17:05 -0000

I think there is a reason that USENET, and now Google Groups has been such a successful platform for groups. I think that because they focus on the content/conversations so directly, that users are able to get a lot of value out of them.

I find a lot of Ning sites, for example, are set up to make sure you know that you can do X things with the Y features that the group has enable. That causes a lot of friction for me on the way to the real meat, which is what my fellow group members have posted.

So much enterprise software does this now as well. Putting everything ahead of the conversation.

Re: Thinking About Groups

greenskeptic — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 14:13:34 -0000

My trouble with belonging to so many group sites or microblogging sites in the age of Twitter failures, is that I want a way to aggregate messages/updates from those groups (like Friend Feed does), but still be able to view them in a disaggregated way (like Google Reader does).

That seems a tad complicated for the keep it simple mantra, but does it have to be?

Re: Thinking About Groups

joelheadley — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 13:49:06 -0000

Interesting. I would have thought that, if there are no 'perfect' solutions satisfying the market, one would think investing in a new and interesting approach would be worthwhile. Iterations by current programs may not be able to satisfy their current user base while innovating at the same time.