The art and science of social software

A site that visibly promotes how many ’friends’ you have turns friends into commodities, creating an economy where you are motivated to make as many friends as you can. That’s not a good idea because the utility of these sites suffer as social networks become too densely populated.

Kevin Fox of Gmail & FriendFeed on User Experience Design (via Rebecca Cottrell)

The more I’ve pondered it, the more I’ve started to feel that the social applications that have had the most utility and long-term staying power for me have been the ones that implement social features in the most lightweight way.

(via buzzandersen)

I agree with Kevin and Buzz's sentiments, but I don't think the blame can soley rest on the applications or their features. If feature X reaches Y saturation then utility drops by Z. The easy way out is to reduce Y by reducing functionality.

While I'm all for simplifying, the baby may be in your bath water.

In the end responsibility lies with ego. It decides you need a big list of friends and everyone that friends/favorites/follows you cares about what you say.

To me, the more interesting and rewarding UX questions revolve around giving ego a helping hand.

How do you create a culture of personal responsibility within your community?

Can the structure of your tools imply and enforce values?

Reducing functionality is one of many components in that structure. It's a logical, binary, and common one. The rest will likely be unique, fuzzy, shifting, and overlapping.

A statement like "visible friends = commodity = bad" only accounts for a small portion of the larger picture. It's all science and no art.

All interfaces for humane interactions need art.

(Originally re-blogged @ sutter.tumblr.com - Moved here for readability)