“
ease of use is wrong. Ease of use is the wrong way to look at the situation, because you’ve got the Necker cube flipped in the wrong direction. The user of social software is the group, not the individual.
my favorite pattern is from MetaFilter, which is: When we start seeing effects of scale, we shut off the new user page. “Someone mentions us in the press and how great we are? Bye!” That’s a way of raising the bar, that’s creating a threshold of participation. And anyone who bookmarks that page and says “You know, I really want to be in there; maybe I’ll go back later,” that’s the kind of user MeFi wants to have.
” —Clay Shirky
