I read a very interesting book earlier in the year. It's called Here Comes Everybody and it's by Clay Shirky. Buy or borrow it. It's great.
One of the ideas it put forward is that success in the world of Web 2.0 is driven by repeated failure. Here's a quote that sums it up nicely:
"...the market expresses its judgment not in cash but in expenditure of energy. Failure is free, high quality research, offering direct evidence of what works and what doesn't. Groups that people want to join are sorted from groups that people don't want to join every day."
If you're trying to 'create' social networks that sounds pretty depressing - and it looks even more depressing when you see the Power Law Graph that this phenomenon creates (if you want to know about the maths then you probably need the book).
But, as Shirky points out, the fact that so many people are trying means that spectacular successes will inevitably result. Wikipedia for example.
So I guess the message here is 'prepare for failure but keep trying'.
With this in mind, I built an Open Fundraising Forum last night. It took an hour and a half and I think it works pretty well considering. You could do the same thing for your supporters or just for your friends using the free software and hosting you find on Yuku.
I will now, in all probability, have to watch the digital equivalent of tumbleweed blow across my creation. But I might not - especially if you go there and post a comment. And even if I do, what the hell? I tried. And there are plenty more things worth trying.
James
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Interesting thoughts - if you want to understand more about the maths of this, try the book Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. All about how incredibly unlikely things are actually more influential than things we can predict.
How you can tell which network is going to work?
The cool thing about preparing for failure these days, is that there are so many different channels to explore (and frankly SHOULD be explored) when trying to achieve a single aim.
The key, as you say, is to just do it. Don't spend too long talking about it, just get something out there and see what happens.
That's the spirit.
Who gives a f*ck but doens't Wieden & Kennedy say 'fail harder'.
Anyhow, it's important to give people as many ways to engage as possible.
Six million ways to engage. Choose one.
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