I recently blogged about minimum threshold mechanisms: set a minimum threshold for contribution and exclude anyone from using the system who doesn’t meet that threshold. I recently encountered a great example of a popular social media system using a minimum threshold to encourage contribution: Facebook.
In order to use Facebook, a new user must do three things: 1) sign up for an account, 2) join a network, and 3) contribute a list of her friends (her social network). Users who don’t do all of these don’t receive access to any of the information on Facebook. Notice #3 (and to some extent #2); it includes contributing information to the system that benefits others. Facebook doesn’t have lurkers in the classic sense of someone who doesn’t contribute anything. They decided that it was worthwhile to lose the true lurkers in exchange for the increased contributions. By knowing everyone’s social network, Facebook can offer additional services (like strong privacy controls and better friend suggestions) that they wouldn’t be able to offer if the social network information was less complete. This is a great example of the minimum threshold in action; you gain a little bit of information from everyone at the expense of losing the lurkers. For Facebook, they figured out a “little bit” of information that allows them to really make their system valuable.
If you are skeptical, compare Facebook with Twitter. Twitter does not have a minimum threshold of contribution. There are true lurkers on Twitter; many people read twitter without accounts. These people have never contributed to twitter but still use it. Twitter values these lurkers and as such does not require a minimum contribution like Facebook does.
And sure enough, a number of the predictions of my minimum threshold paper have come true on Facebook. A number of people have chosen to join Facebook, but only contribute the minimum. I’ve seen a number of users who are my “friends” who never contribute pictures or status messages; all they do is contribute their social network information so they can get access to the information of others. Also, as Facebook has gotten larger, more people who would have preferred to lurk have decided to contribute the minimum threshold. Larger systems provide more value, and hence more people are willing to make that minimum contribution in order to join.
The Facebook example also illustrates a useful point for using the minimum threshold mechanism: everyone who remains in the system will have contributed at least the minimum. If the threshold is chosen carefully, the system can take advantage of the knowledge that everyone has contributed this information. On Facebook, all users have to contribute social network information. Facebook is then designed to take advantage of the fact that all Facebook users have provided their social network information to the system; many features such as the privacy controls assume the existence of contributed social network information. This well-chosen threshold enables many useful features.
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