The “Participation Premium”

Robert, a lot of good ideas in this post. There’s just one comment that I have, however.

You compared your subscriber growth on Twitter vs. FriendFeed in your first four months using both services, whereby you had 100 followers on Twitter vs…. well, thousands, I assume, on FriendFeed.

You wrote the following: “It’s amazing how fast FriendFeed is growing, too. Remember, I’ve only been on FriendFeed four months. After being on Twitter four months I only had a few hundred followers. FriendFeed is a very viral community and is changing daily as new people discover it.”

Is it reasonable to assume a correlation between your FriendFeed subscriber growth and FriendFeed’s overall subscriber growth? That’s what you’re implying, and I don’t doubt that FriendFeed is growing very rapidly, but there are 8 other default recommended FriendFeed users, plus a number of other users, so the apparent link between the two growths is a bit uncertain.

There’s no doubt in my mind that a significant portion of your Twitter audience has followed you to FriendFeed, leading to a large number of FriendFeed followers. Also, Twitter really helped lay the groundwork for an application like FriendFeed by popularizing microblogs and lifestreaming/sharing, so the general audience was probably more receptive to FriendFeed today than, say, two years ago.

I’m just nitpicking on a couple of points, I do think your other observations in this article make sense and I’ve seen them work myself.

Why would I follow Mike, when have you to filter and only show me his best?

Wow, what exactly did my post do to warrant being deleted? All I did was point out that one reason why you probably have more followers on FriendFeed is because you frequently mention FriendFeed in your blog posts and TechCrunch does not. As a longtime fan and follower of your blog, i’m disappointed to see that happen. All I did was point out that you have probably created more FriendFeed users merely by frequently posting about FriendFeed and TechCrunch does not so they don’t have as many followers on FriendFeed. Care to comment on why the post was deleted? You can do it privately if you would like.

I have to say I was watching your comment ratio and its scary active.
http://trendrr.com/timeseries/390144

and pieces like this are why those that block Scoble occasionally miss stuff that is ‘right on’. Agree totally with @coachDeb. Important post Robert.

I think the ultimate pitfall of friend feed it it initial learning curve….may users find the features overwhelming as compared to the simple twitter UI. Once FF revamps its fairly intimidating UI, more people will flock to it…until then…it will be us geeks who benefit.

Carl: I didn’t delete your comment. It was caught in moderation, which I turn on for first-time commenters to keep spam down to a dull roar here.

>here’s no way you’re participating the way the rest of us are participating.

I don’t know. How are the rest of you participating? I’m watching thousands of you and I’m keeping up with you in both quality and quantity. But maybe I’m missing something. How are you participating in a way that I’m not?

Nice article Scoble. However you are missing the default factor here. Default is immense power see my article on it (http://startupmeme.com/2007/04/08/startup-advice-default-is-power/). This is how IBM allowed Microsoft to become a desktop monopoly i.e. by bundling its OS by default on IBM PCs. This is how Microsoft destroyed Netscape i.e. by bundling by default on Windows Operating Systems. This is why Google, and no one else, gets the most search traffic from Firefox Searchbar because Google is the default search option over there….

You guys are recommended by default to everyone who signs up for Friendfeed. This makes you guys feel that Friendfeed is growing like a weed, and than suddenly you start talking about it. Which in turn will attract more bloggers to it. So this perception of viral growth over at Friendfeed will eventually lead to real growth over there (Read David Hornik’s article to understand the phenomena of perceived success leading to real success http://ventureblog.com/articles/2004/06/sillywood_part_1.php). So clearly Friendfeed was intelligent enough to carefully handpick some good bloggers as default. This has transformed you guys into their marketing team. And in return you are getting lots of subscribers aka lots of readers and page views. Good for both.

Scoble I have written a long and elaborate comment… I guess it has been caught up in moderation since it had two links in it as well. Hope you that it will pass through your scrutiny sooon

They are two different animals…

http://tinyurl.com/6m6yp6

Oh … and also Techmeme is a game, and Monsieur Arrington knows the rules.

Still doesn’t make him likeable.

Talking TO v Talking WITH….

It sure seems that Twitter set the table for Friendfeed by getting people used to such a service, hooking them, and then becoming so flakey that people looked to Friendfeed to feel the void. What if Friendfeed had arrived before Twitter? Would Twitter even exist or did it take the simplicity of Twitter to turn people on and hook them?

Twitter shouldn’t really be compared to FriendFeed since FriendFeed aggregates your activity from everywhere else and Twitter is basically a Facebook status update. I just gave in and setup my FriendFeed account I had registered months ago and I think I finally get it. I am setting up a new blog today and I thought about using WordPress but settled on MovableType simply because of the integrated FriendFeed comments feature. I figured if WordPress had something similar, you would have it.

I wish I had the time to post 3625 likes!

I follow this list of Friendfeed rooms, do u know?

http://blogoscoped.com/friendfeed/rooms

Hi Robert
i signed up at friendfeed, and it was Scobleized!

Robert- I agree with your participation premium theory.Also, I have also noticed that you have followers without claiming to be a guru.And I feel that is a necessary attribute to have in addition to participation. I would like to call it ‘participation humility’. Not claiming to have all the answers, but rather willing to discuss and listen to different viewpoints. This is what makes your writing and views interesting.

An example of Robert’s ‘paicipation humility’
For Robert’s followers, recently I ran into Robert at the DC bash(hosted by Gary Vaynerchuk) and asked him innocently why he does not use a skin(template) for his blog. Anyone else, with half of Robert’s reputation would have looked at me like I have committed a sin or perhaps arrogantly ignored my comment. Instead, he simply said that he did use a skin. Later I realized that his skin did not load at my workplace due to filters(where I usually read the Scoblelizer). When I logged in from home, I could see the blog template in all its glory.

Great post! I admit, I’m a newbie, and follow you on Twitter and FriendFeed — at least you’re not one of these guys who says “who are these people, I don’t want them following me!” They are not getting it.

Keep up the good work, and setting such a good example!

~H

wow thats a lot of interesting data study. I hope and wish friendfeed continue to grow with out any troubles