Trying and trying again.

On social (web) norms and on-boarding

Every social network is its own community with its own norms.  Social norms are often the most daunting aspect of entering a new community.  People like to know what’s expected of them.  When they’re unsure, they’re uncomfortable.  When they’re uncomfortable, they don’t engage.  And when new people don’t engage, a community will eventually die out.

Alleviating such anxiety becomes increasingly important as the social web develops.  Facebook’s recent PR woes are an obvious example of how changing up norms on the fly can unsettle a community, but I want to focus on the period before people enter a community, when they’re hanging around the fringes trying to decide if they want in.  Its a matter of expectations and establishment.  People are willing to establish a place in most any community, but not until they understand its expectations of them.  When people want to belong and the community wants them to join, the parties have to work together to smooth entry.  Outsiders look to insiders for cues on appropriate behavior.  And that (finally) brings me to my point.

I love social media, but the variety of norms surrounding different services isn’t just bewildering, it’s obstructive.  Twitter is open.  Facebook is (or used to be) closed.  Foursquare is closed(ish).  Flickr is open.  Google Buzz is closed.  Tumblr is open.  I think Boxee is open (unless you’re Fred Wilson, who seems uniquely able to approve followers).  I think Last.fm is open.  And so it goes.

So every time a new social service opens its doors, I do the same thing I do when I’m in a new city: I tiptoe around the fringes observing until I figure out what’s okay and what’s not.  This isn’t a hard-and-fast rule.  When I first joined Foursquare, I didn’t know what to do.  I hadn’t used the service (obviously), so I didn’t know how much information users were sharing.  I figured all there was to it was what I saw on Twitter, and it easily let me “friend” people from my Twitter feed, so I decided to apply Twitter norms and friend a bunch of people I didn’t really know outside of Twitter.  Having used the service for a while, I can see that was a violation of community norms, and I probably came off a little creepy.  Oh well.

But that’s not what a startup should want for its users.  If your service depends on building a social network, then part of your job is explaining to those outside the network what it means to be inside the network.  When Foursquare on-boarded me, I would’ve loved to know what the community norms were around friending people, e.g., “Most people only ask people they know personally to be friends on Foursquare”.  Generally, I want to act in accordance with my community.  Just that little note would’ve both alleviated my anxiety about entering the network and saved me the embarrassment of acting out of step with the network’s norms.  Anxiety and embarrassment are two big reasons to avoid or eject a social network.  

Lesson: If you want people to engage in your network, use social nudges during on-boarding to let them know what people in your network are already doing.