Slashdot Mirror
Filtering RSS Through Your Social Web
museumpeace writes "Cory Lok assesses the methods, competition and prospects of Rojo, a venture-funded startup RSS aggregator. The brief article is interesting to me because it tries to explain how this and similar uses of a social network harnessed by web search techniques can perform relevance-tuning that will save me from drowning in the tidal wave of blogged newsbits that I find so addicting. They are using a viral marketing approach of spreading membership by invitations from existing members."
They are using a viral marketing approach of spreading membership by invitations from existing members.
I wouldn't call that "viral", it's controlled growth very much like gmail. These people want inclusion, the membership is not being forced on them.
Trolling is a art,
I would respectfully disagree with that. It's both controlled growth AND a form of viral marketing; I don't think half as many people would have checked out Gmail if they wouldn't have been excluded from doing so. As long as this Rojo thing is even faintly interesting, people will be talking about it and the exclusionary membership will simply serve to whet the interests of those who are (however temporarily) excluded. Granted, a lot of those people will probably check it out and never go back again - but then, a lot of people I know have done that with Gmail as well.
:-)
It's a bit like setting up a giant bag-o-toys on a playground and telling kids that they can only dip their hand in the bag if some other kid invites them. Something about human nature makes you want to participate dammit! You don't want to be the only one left out, even if the toys suck.
Just my $0.02
picpix image polls. create - share - vote. fun!
I've tried out a number of social networking sites and I've wondered: how many people actually are visiting the site a month after they sign up? In my experience (and that of my friends), we would sign up, play around with whatever gimmick that site had and then forget about it. Maybe something like this that provides what could be a pretty useful service might be something that could keep us coming back.
The problem with these compound (e.g. RSS + social networking) technologies is that it's quite a task to develop one great technology, let alone two great technologies that work seamlessly together. IMHO, Rojo is in a tough spot because their differentiator, namely RSS aggregation, is a walk in the park compared to developing a robust social network.
As the article notes at the end, Rojo's best gamble is to provide RSS services for already established social networking companies before Friendster et. al. figure out that adding friend-weighted RSS feeds really isn't that hard.
If an item is perceived as "cool", limiting supply can increase demand. By not allowing everybody to sign up at once, they are obviously limiting supply.
;-)
This method also turns its current members into sales reps for the company. People with accounts are viewed as being part of "in" crowd, and gives them reason to share the product with others. (They'll feel cool.) Seriously, I know people who were just "okay" on GMail, but were very excited about handing out invitations.
It gives geeks like us the feeling we missed out on in high school... of being cool and part of the "in" crowd.