(via bradleyallen) If it looks like a leaderboard, and quacks like a leaderboard… Even sites that don’t display overt leaderboards may veer too closely into the ‘comparative statistics’ realm. Consider Twitter, and its prominent display of community members’ stats. The problem may not lie with the existence of the stats but—perhaps—in the prominence of their display. They give Twitter the appearance of a community that values popularity and the sheer size of your social network. Is it any wonder, then, that a whole host of community-created leaderboards have sprung up to automate just such comparisons? Twitterholic, Twitterank, Favrd and a whole host of others are the natural extension of this value-by-numbers approach. (via Building Web 2.0 Reputation Systems: The Blog: Leaderboards Considered Harmful) I’ve been thinking a lot about this sort of thing lately as I realize how much more fun Twitter was when I had fewer followers (and from the looks of things lately, I’m definitely not alone in this sentiment). Now, despite my best efforts, I worry I’m becoming overly sensitive to gains and losses in my following, and I find myself wanting to delete pretty much everything I say immediately after saying it. It’s gotten so bad that I’ve even considered writing a Greasemonkey-type script to hide any sign of who is and isn’t following me on the Twitter site. I was a big fan of Neil Postman’s “Amusing Ourselves to Death” in my college days, and lately I’ve been thinking a lot about how Postman would apply the same critical thinking he did about television to social software. Where Postman, like McLuhan before him, said that television is a medium that turns everything it touches into entertainment, it’s become apparent to me that social software is a medium turns all communication into a self-representation game whose ultimate goal is popularity. It doesn’t matter whether you’re posting photos, keeping track of website links, writing an essay, or any of the other things people do with social software: in the end the instant feedback of the community combined with your innate desire to be accepted can’t help but shape your actions. As with television, this can be both a good thing and a bad thing (it has both driven a democratization of creativity and given rise to monstrous, egotistical wastes of bandwitdh like Scoble, Arrington and their acolytes). I think the negative effects can never completely be mitigated, but hopefully thoughtful social software designers will start to consider exactly what sorts of behavior their software is encouraging and discouraging.

(via bradleyallen)

If it looks like a leaderboard, and quacks like a leaderboard… Even sites that don’t display overt leaderboards may veer too closely into the ‘comparative statistics’ realm. Consider Twitter, and its prominent display of community members’ stats. The problem may not lie with the existence of the stats but—perhaps—in the prominence of their display. They give Twitter the appearance of a community that values popularity and the sheer size of your social network. Is it any wonder, then, that a whole host of community-created leaderboards have sprung up to automate just such comparisons? Twitterholic, Twitterank, Favrd and a whole host of others are the natural extension of this value-by-numbers approach. (via Building Web 2.0 Reputation Systems: The Blog: Leaderboards Considered Harmful)

I’ve been thinking a lot about this sort of thing lately as I realize how much more fun Twitter was when I had fewer followers (and from the looks of things lately, I’m definitely not alone in this sentiment). Now, despite my best efforts, I worry I’m becoming overly sensitive to gains and losses in my following, and I find myself wanting to delete pretty much everything I say immediately after saying it. It’s gotten so bad that I’ve even considered writing a Greasemonkey-type script to hide any sign of who is and isn’t following me on the Twitter site.

I was a big fan of Neil Postman’s “Amusing Ourselves to Death” in my college days, and lately I’ve been thinking a lot about how Postman would apply the same critical thinking he did about television to social software. Where Postman, like McLuhan before him, said that television is a medium that turns everything it touches into entertainment, it’s become apparent to me that social software is a medium turns all communication into a self-representation game whose ultimate goal is popularity. It doesn’t matter whether you’re posting photos, keeping track of website links, writing an essay, or any of the other things people do with social software: in the end the instant feedback of the community combined with your innate desire to be accepted can’t help but shape your actions.

As with television, this can be both a good thing and a bad thing (it has both driven a democratization of creativity and given rise to monstrous, egotistical wastes of bandwitdh like Scoble, Arrington and their acolytes). I think the negative effects can never completely be mitigated, but hopefully thoughtful social software designers will start to consider exactly what sorts of behavior their software is encouraging and discouraging.