WetPaint Gives Their Painters a Clean Canvas
I had a great email conversation with WetPaint’s Michael Bolognino about how they empower their users to be part of the design process. Here’s what I learned.
Chris Brogan: You clearly treat your users like part of the design process. Where did the idea of Super Painters come from, and how did it come to be?
Michael Bolognino: For the last year and a half we’ve been fortunate to have a direct link to our users on Wetpaint Central—our FAQ/Help/News wiki. After reading the endless amounts of their feedback and suggestions, we quickly realized that our users know our product just as well if not potentially better than we do. Reaching out and integrating key users into our design process has proven to be a huge asset—the more help we can get to make better decisions means that we’re hopefully making the best possible product. It was also important that we foster advocacy for our platform by reaching out to our core users and giving them a voice—and keeping them engaged with access to exclusive information and Wetpaint swag.
Is this just for tech software sites? Can you envision a consumer or b2b product having this kind of relationship?
There are already a number of consumer & b2b partners who are using wikis to connect with our users. For example, T-Mobile’s Sidekick Wiki has a wish list where users share ideas for the next generation of the device—or Fox’s Sarah Connor Chronicles Wiki, where in the wake of rumors of its cancellation, super fans have compiled over 200 passionate pleas to the network to keep the show alive for (at least) another season.
People are contributing to the design of a product they obviously enjoy using. How did you encourage this interaction, or did you?
We used a variety of approaches for finding the right mix Super Painters—first we looked in Wetpaint Central to identify the users who had risen up to take an active role providing support—simply because they want to help others, pro bono. Then internally we nominated stand out users that we’ve encountered and collaborated with, and we also took a look at contribution data to seek out our most active painters across the network. The group is made up of an eclectic cross section of 14 users—a super fan of the As the World Turns soap opera, a physiology professor, a teenage developer/fish keeper, a Linguistics PhD student, the list goes on.
If another company were on the fence about inviting their community into the design process, what would you tell them about the experiences you encountered, and how would you counsel them?
I would most definitely encourage them to go for it—the rewards of showing your best users/customers that you are invested in them and actually act on their opinions far outweigh the risk/discomfort of sharing half baked or secret concepts with the outside world. There are three ways that we mitigate this risk—first, we created a private, invite only wiki. Second, we crafted a simple NDA like agreement. Third, we believe that the bond that we make with these users is strengthened by empowering them with exclusive opportunities and information and inviting them inside of the virtual walls of our company.
The results have really knocked our socks off. In just over a month there have been hundreds of contributions (ideas, feedback, comments, suggestions) and we’ve already been able to show them that we mean business making a major revision to our latest release, thanks to their immediate hand raising. (see your original post about Wetpaint)
As I mentioned in my original email, the Super Painters have blown us away with their dedication to bringing feedback to our attention—for example, the day after I launched an idea bank page (it was a clean slate), they had assembled over 70 ideas and suggestions for us. The next day, one of them rearranged the ideas into like categories—and a few days later, they built a new page and system for voting on and prioritizing the list so that we could easily see what was most important to them. Thanks to the Super Painters, we now have a living, breathing, prioritized set of potential enhancements. Pretty unbelievable (and helpful)!
Michael Bolognino works for WetPaint, and spoke to me via email.
Twitter Packs Goes off the Rails Quick
Wow. I don’t think I’ve seen something go from interesting and collaborative to reviled so quickly. Less than 16 hours after its beginnings, there are villagers with pitchforks at the gates of the Twitter Packs project.
First, PACK
The word “pack” was questioned by GeekMommy here. She thought wolves and alpha males.
Meanwhile, I was thinking about geek starter packs, like from Magic: the Gathering.
(by the way, get this: my blog post about a social media starter pack beats Wikipedia for “starter pack” in Google):
Next, Lists
So lists are bad? I guess if someone puts someone else on a list with which they disagree, that could be bad. If I’m on the “boring guy” list, I’ll probably feel sad. But I’m not selecting the groupings. I did ask that people try to be objective on the main page.
One list on there has spooked a few people: Identity. On that list, are races and sexual preferences and religions. I’m not sure about that page, but then, I didn’t put it up. I looked and saw that MOST of the edits for that page were done by j.brotherlove. I don’t know him well, but I’ve heard good things about him. I imagine it was done with good intentions.
Wikis and Community
This has become even more interesting, however. People got angry pretty quick, talking about the clique-ish nature of Twitter, of the lists being a clique, of them being exclusionary.
Think about this: ANYONE has the password, ANYONE can edit the list. (Same with Wikipedia, though there are more people there to patrol). That’s the opposite of exclusionary. Anyone can be part of any list they choose to identify with.
I remember a woman getting upset at PodCamp Pittsburgh. She was mad about the glass ceiling in videoblogging. I couldn’t tell whether or not I should laugh, because in this space, anyone with a camera and the Internet can videoblog. No one’s holding anyone back. That came to me today.
To the plus, people came in and organized the data. They came in and reorganized it. They came in and organized it some more. There have been HUNDREDS of edits. For a while today, the flow of my twitterstream was “Can’t get the lock on the wiki” over and over. I made something like 5 edits total, including doing one for Steve Garfield, who tweeted that he couldn’t get the lock.
So What Went Wrong?
Are lists bad? Is the idea itself bad? Is giving a pile of newcomers a sense of who people are a bad thing?
Believe me when I tell you that I’ve no vested interest in the list working or not working, because the social media experience OUTSIDE it was wayyyyyyyyy more interesting than the list itself could ever be for me at this time. But I’d love your thoughts and ideas. What’s your take?
Twitter Packs- a Way to Share Interests
Twitter is quite a strange beast to understand, but it’s easier if you follow a few people who immediately make sense to you, insofar as your shared interests or geography. To that end, I started a project this morning and immediately turned it over to the universe to build and maintain, called Twitter Packs.
The premise is simple: list areas of interest or locales, and self-select people you know who would be (in your estimation) someone others might follow.
So what do you think? Who or what can you add to Twitter Packs?
