5 ms·
Shirky’s Law and why (most) social software fails
- elai 18y agoWho here thought shirky's was shrinky's for a second
- 13ren 18y agosimple, useful, and original. It’s easy to come up with a task which is useful and original - just combine existing ideas in a new way, perhaps with some minor twists. But finding something that’s also simple is hard. Interesting a single task that can’t be reduced or explained in terms of existing tasks. Simple things are often primitive (non-compound) in this way, but I doubt it's a requirement.
- aditya 18y agoI'm getting a little tired of this age old spin about how hackers can't make good and simple products. They can and they do, look at all of YC... Atleast hackers can push products out, biz people can't even do that!
- breck 18y agoAnother reason is that exponential growth on social networks works both ways. One user who stops using a network decreases the value for everyone else, which makes other users more likely to stop, etc.