Tinkering in the Open

There’s something a little awkward about tinkering with social networks and communities out in the open. Building Grasshoppers as a group that attempts to source people’s skills and abilities and help people be useful has been interesting. At this count, I have 900 members on Facebook. We have 123 members moved over to Ning. Without much effort, people are finding their way over to Ning.

For the record: we moved because of RSS making the data easier to be consumed in the larger stream (you can read Grasshoppers on your RSS reader of choice), and because the TOS at Facebook reads a little scary (read this post by Legal Andrew, who is smarter than me about this stuff).

Robert Scoble felt used. Perhaps he felt a “bait and switch.” And I feel bad that anyone would think my goal was to siphon people from one social network to another. The networks have nothing to do with it. It’s a tool. The GOAL is to be helpful. Will we be less helpful on Ning? No. Will we be less helpful on Facebook. No. But my assessment, after seeing how the group did what it did was that having RSS and being able to move our data out to wherever we want it is cool.

Others are feeling social network fatigue. THIS, I quite understand. I chose not to go along to Pownce. Great app. Does lots of things. I’m just not playing. Ditto 8Apps. Ditto Jaiku. Ditto lots of things. I’m done. In fact, I might’ve blogged a few weeks back that I’m sticking to Facebook and Twitter. Well, I guess I’ve bent that into FB, Twitter, and Ning.

Where My Head Is

I’m trying something here. I’m trying to see if all these smart, useful, interesting, skilled, clever people I call my “friends” on all these various software platforms want to DO something and be helpful. As much fun as I’ve had learning the answer to “What are you doing?” over and over, I thought it might be neat to offer up some kind of way to be helpful. And I don’t want to save the world. I don’t have huge aspirations. In fact, one of the goals of a network like the one I’m hoping to create is that I become just another piece of the puzzle, NOT in any way the central facilitator.

Have you been helpful? Have you found anything in this that makes sense? Do you see where this experiment MIGHT go? Or is this just a big pile of monkey meat? Is this nothing? Is it just a digital scratchpad?

Trying something different or new is a great opportunity to see how people will respond. Because “me too” comes easy. We can all just follow. But trying something new, trying anything, trying to build is a whole different gig, right? Not better. Different.

I’m anxious for your thoughts.