building an expressive community

love your post Jake! i definitely agree with the user-creativity-centric interface. the trick is how to mix both. i love the simplicity and focus of Tumblr. it doesn't have obvious social networking features (by design) because its focus is on creating a “scrapbook.” it's lightweight, hence it can easily be integrated into any social networking site – a sign of an on-going evolution of personal publishing.

social networks (like Zaadz, Facebook, or Myspace) could easily integrate Tumblr into user profiles. of course, the complexity of this approach is the issue of requiring users to create another account on another service, not to mention the feasibility (and business) issues of depending on another service.

so another option is to look at what Tumblr is doing right and learn from it. personally, i'd like to have an iGoogle-like page where i can add widgets that keep tracks of my activity and my friends activity. but the central widget will have easy accesss to user-creativity. like you said: “favor content creation over lots of widgets or lots of design customization.”

btw, here's my Tumblelog.

http://c4chaos.tumblr.com/

it only took me minutes to put it together and it would feeding off contents from my main personal blog from now on :)

~C

Great blog, Jake thank you.

expression, your creativity, - your creations - become the focus, and the connecting power of the network fades into the background.

Yes.. for me 'building an expressive community' means interaction of expression, engagement – creativity that is alive and about connection between others – I have found so often that 'creativity' is not a solitary process. Even with writing fiction - I need the support and encouragement and feedback of other people.

I feel Zaadz/Gaia does a beautiful job of encouraging interaction ( via shout outs/pods etc) - can there be more? I'd love to be able to find members comments to threads - or even a 'whats hot' thread (ie something the member has contributed many times too, or gotten a lot of seeds for).

Give their creativity the same importance as their network of friends.

Favour content creation over lots of widgets or lots of design customization..

Yes!

Thanks again for all that you do here,

Love,
Sandra

Sandra said: “I feel Zaadz/Gaia does a beautiful job of encouraging interaction ( via shout outs/pods etc) - can there be more? I'd love to be able to find members comments to threads - or even a 'whats hot' thread (ie something the member has contributed many times too, or gotten a lot of seeds for).”

this is what the activity stream is trying to address. try going to your friends activity stream:
http://sandrajensen.zaadz.com/activity/friends
(note: only you can access your friends activity stream)
that's one way of discovering insightful contents from your friends.
as for the 'what's hot' and Seed System, it's already in our queue of things to implement.

having said that, we need to do a better job of putting everything together with a simpler and more robust interface :)

~C

Cool stuff, Jake -

I think you've achieved part of this with zPro, with the ability to highlight the best parts of what you've expressed on Z, right on your page.  To allow one to project an image outward - rather than just showing the latest things added (which is the mode for standard profiles).

And to expand on your expression–connection dichotomy, I wrote a bit about a third aspect, call it 'hunger', on C4's post.

P.S.  I love the tumblr UI, too

Good Morning Jake,

I am soo excited your thinking in this mode of cultivating a space to offer the more expressive to share their favor content creation. I love Tumblr offering the hex color choices. (see gondaba.com)

Jennifer

I can't wait for the UI of this site to:

a) make sense
b) become simplified
c) find its focus

I feel that Zaadz UI is a great hinderance to the expansion and organization of the site, and that it should be as intuitive and enlightened as the community aims to be. UI = God.


One more thing, I would like to see the ability to 'EMBED' things in blog posts become central. I should be able to embed any other aspect of the whole, simply, into a post. This includes:

- audio
- video
- images
- quotes
- books
- flash applications/movies
- quotes from other blogs on zaadz


I would like to see comments become more than just comments. I would like comments to become more like blog posts. Right now they are very linear. BLOG, COMMENT COMMENT COMMENT. I don't believe we should have to be loyal to one blogger. I think that comments should be designed to become more like blog posts all of their own, and a different kind of non-linear access to them be emphasized. 

For instance, if I wanted to see all of Jane Doe's comments, knowing that she blogs very little, has no zPro and no interest in either, but the comments she leaves on what other people present are absolutely phenomenal. Why should her non-linear participation in the community be de-emphasized when it is perhaps more than equal in contribution? I think 'activity' verges on this discovery, but it can go so much further.

THINK OBJECT ORIENTED. You're coding that way hopefully already, it is a beautiful philosophy to stick to.

I think ComeBack sounds like a system that would work, and it would be an innovation amongst community-oriented websites.

James said: “I feel that Zaadz UI is a great hinderance to the expansion and organization of the site, and that it should be as intuitive and enlightened as the community aims to be. UI = God.”

we agree with you. that's why we're in the process of re-design.

having said that, have you tried other social networks and compared the UI (and features) with Zaadz? i don't mean to brag, but i think people ought to give Zaadz its deserved due. it's one of the decent interface out there, not to mention the number of features. but yeah, i agree with you that we could use a lot of improvements and make stuff easier to find  :)

in the meantime, when you have a question, please stop by the support page and we're all ears :)

“…if I wanted to see all of Jane Doe's comments, knowing that she blogs very little, has no zPro and no interest in either, but the comments she leaves on what other people present are absolutely phenomenal.”

actually you can do this right now, provided that Jane Doe is a friend of yours who had allowed her comment activities to be broadcasted. we value people's privacy on Zaadz that's why we made this feature configurable by members. some people just don't want to be followed by other people :)

see HOW TO: Access the Activity feature

thanks for your feedback, James. keep 'em coming :)

~C

Oh thanks C! great to find the friends activity feature!

Thanks for getting this high-level thinking going. :)

Yes.. the UI is going through some significant changes.. and it's an ever evolving process. Lots more to come! We have an urgent shift happening right now and I'm trying to get as much improvement as possible into the nav in this minute, but as time goes on, we will hopefully have the opportunity for some wonderful large-scale improvements like the fundamental ideas being discussed here.

Good stuff! :)
-jxn