Shirky’s Law and why (most) social software fails – Michael Nielsen

Shirky’s Law states that the social software most likely to succeed has “a brutally simple mental model … that’s shared by all users”. If you use social software like Flickr or Digg, you know what this means. You can give friends a simple and compelling explanation of these sites in seconds: “it’s a website that lets you upload photos so your friends can also see them”; “it’s a community website that lets you suggest interesting sites; the users vote on submissions to determine what’s most interesting”. Of course, for each Flickr or Digg there are hundreds of failed social sites. The great majority either fail to obey Shirky’s Law, or else are knockoffs that do little not already done by an existing site. To understand why Shirky’s Law is important, let’s look at a site where it’s violated. The site is Nature Network, one of the dozens of social networking sites aspiring to be “Facebook for scientists”. Like other social networks, Nature Network lets you connect to other users. When yo

Shirky’s Law states that the social software most likely to succeed has “a brutally simple mental model … that’s shared by all users”. If you use social software like Flickr or Digg, you know what this means. You can give friends a simple and compelling explanation of these sites in seconds: “it’s a website that lets you upload photos so your friends can also see them”; “it’s a community website that lets you suggest interesting sites; the users vote on submissions to determine what’s most interesting”. Of course, for each Flickr or Digg there are hundreds of failed social sites. The great maj