mytopia is no utopia

Going through techcrunch.com today I stumbled across their post on mytopia.com, an online social gaming community which works across the major social networks. It doesn't matter if your friend is on Bebo and you're only on Facebook, the two of you can play. It looked interesting, I like the screenshots that they showed, and techcrunch boasted about it. Plus, it had sudoku. Score!

So I went to the site to create an account. I even got my sister to try it out too since she happened to be home for the weekend, in the same room as me, and on a 'puter. Now, during account creation you can create your own avatar. Ok, so I know that this is day 1 of beta testing, but honestly, if the experience of creating an avatar was any indication of how the rest of my user experience was going to be (and it was), I should have stopped right then. You get to choose 7 different aspects of the avatar. I had issues with mytopia's avatars because well, they all looked like guys! The 7 different aspects were lined up across the top from left to right. So logically (most) people will select their background first (because it's the most left), and then they'll choose they're body (because that's what is next). So even though the next characteristics had more feminine options, I was stuck trying to pick a masculine body. There were like 2 girl looking options versus 36+ guy looking options. And just when I reluctantly selected a black tshirt as the body I hear "Heeeey! They all look like dudes! I don't want to be a dude!" My sister was disappointed too. Good to know I wasn't alone.

Once my account was created (my avatar ended up with a black shirt, mickey mouse ears, and an emo haircut. sweet!), I logged in. Then music, reminiscent of the old school mario games, started. It was fun listening to it for a few seconds, then I had to hit my mute button on my laptop because I couldn't find a mute button on mytopia to click on. Lame. (Update: I found the mute button. So that was my bad and I take back that "Lame") So I'm in mytopia, the layout looks cool. It looks like map of a town, where I can click on places like Casino, Card Room, and Bar. But what the heck do I do? Where do I go? What, no welcome? I mean, I know I can figure things out on my own, but what about people who need some hand holding? Some direction? "Uhhhh, what am I supposed to do now?? Where did you go?!?" My sister was lost too.

So, I thought I'd first vist the Town Hall. There's a "Who's Online" option? Cool, I wanted to take a look at everyone else. I take a look and see some cool avatars. One has a cowboy hat, cool shades, and a beard. It looked pretty creative so I looked at that avatar's screenname. It was mine. What?!? Mytopia had overwritten the avatar settings I chose! I yell over to my sister to see if she can find herself in this section. She exclaims in an upsetting voice "Heeeey! That's not me. I thought I could make my own person!" Uber lame. Avatar identification (I think) is kind of a big thing. To give users the option of creating one and then "taking it away" by assigning them something different is so not cool.

Then to top it all off, both of us go to Settings to correct our avatars, hit "Save" and then... "code: unknownerror". Alright, this is starting to get really annoying. At this point my sister just quits. I want to as well, but I feel like if I could just play one game of sudoku this wouldn't have been such a waste. So I click on the "Sudoku" link. It asks me to login... again. Annoying. Are you kidding me? I type in my credentials and then it takes me to the mytopia homepage. I can't even play sudoku. This is beyond lame.

I click back to techcrunch and start reading the comments. There's a mix, but it looks like I wasn't the only one experiencing problems. I don't know if I'll ever go back. I really liked the graphics and the concept, but NOTHING worked for me. As for my sister, she is the college student who spends countless hours on the 'puter every week. She's not highly technical (not a "geek") but she's open to new things and loves spending time chatting and doing crossword puzzles online. And she's an active member in Facebook. I don't know who mytopia's target group is, but I'm thinking that she fits into it. I asked her if she would ever go back to that site. And among her MANY reason's for "no" I can sum them all up in her first one - "it's not fun."

Oh, mytopia. Techcrunch had some faith in you and this is a beta version. But still, I mean... I expected a bit more. I think if you work out your bugs, maybe take a few lessons from Kim's Community Building on the Web (which will greatly improve your user experience) you might be ok. And perhaps, I might just go back (I really did dig the graphics and concept). But probably not anytime soon.

Code is Law Tidbits And Thoughts

Internet technology makes it harder for people to lie and cheat. Ok, so that sounds a bit harsh. How about - Internet technology can hold people more accountable for their actions. There's no grey area in code - just black or white. For example, when an manager unjustly calls out an employee for not turning in a planning document on time, the employee can quickly point to the emails that contained the document with a date and time stamp which says that not only did they beat the deadline, they also sent follow up emails that were unanswered.

I used to work for a software company that created online software that loan officers used to pull a mortgage applicant's credit. For those of you who may not know, when applying for a mortgage, your credit history and score are MAJOR factors. One no-no that brings down your fica credit score is if your credit is pulled too many times. It was not uncommon for loan officers to claim that they had only pulled someone's credit once. I'm not quite sure they knew that code doesn't lie and the logs could should exactly how many time they had pulled credit, which bureaus, what time, etc - EVERYTHING.

Larry Lessig's Code is Law reveals that code is god - it decides how things work, who can join, who can't, who has access to everything and who has access to just some things - EVERYTHING. And since code is created by people, if you were the creator of a website (as all the APOC students eventually will be), what kind of god/ruler would you be? Two types that came up in the Social Dynamics class were democratic leaders and benevolent dictators. Originally I voted for democracy. Heck yah I wanted people to have a voice and be able to vote! It's working in the U.S. right now, it sure as well can online! However, I have since changed my vote. In keeping with my natural proclivity for compromise (for profit + non-profit = social entrepreneurship), I now want some type of hybrid.

When creating an online community, it might be best to be a benevolent dictator (having this as your backstage behavior), coupled with a appearance of democracy in the frontstage, and occasionally, when necessary, yielding to democracy (but very very rarely) Yes, that sounds deceptive, but if you take a look at most (ok, that's a big claim) sucessful online communities, they either follow that model, or they are ruled by pure dictatorship.

Let's take a look at Facebook, one of the major social networking sites. You can upload pictures and share them – that's great! You can upload videos, create insightful notes, and even create your very own applications – that's way great! But have you read Facebook's Terms? I hadn't (until now) and didn't previously feel the need to. I felt that since there were so many people on Facebook, Facebook wouldn't try and screw anyone over or do something totally uncool... or would they?

“When you post User Content to the Site, you authorize and direct us to make such copies thereof as we deem necessary in order to facilitate the posting and storage of the User Content on the Site. By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise, on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.”

Hmmmm. I don't know about... you'd really have to trust Facebook to post proprietary content which you want to commercialize.

We could also always look at the Digg.com hexadecimal posting example. Digg, facing the possibility of legal prosecution, took down user content, locked out accounts – basically exercised they godlike power. Until that is, they faced the wrath of their community which was so substantial that they finally gave in and accommodated their user's will.

What I've observed is that high entrance and exit costs along with allowing user's to have a voice, defines a strong community. Entities like facebook, digg, aol, apple, etc. have all thrived by being the “dictators”. So therefore, I think some hybrid of the two should be just as succssful.

Social Entrepreneurship

When I think of venture capital funding, immediately I think of for profit. Venture capitalists invest and in exchange expect monetary measured returns. Therefore, they are highly geared towards for profit. But what about the nonprofit sector? I suppose that the only type of funding nonprofit startups have is through grants and private donations. I haven't experienced any VCs investing in nonprofit organizations (perhaps I'm wrong?). I wondered this, took my question to google, and stumbled across some cool things.

craigslistfoundation.org
Designed for helping people help, they offer a nonprofit “boot camp” to help emerging nonprofit leaders (I really want to go to the one in NY, but if not, then for sure the one in SF in October) and provide online podcasts and notes from those boot camps. They're Project Entry Point does a really good job highlighting the problem areas in the nonprofit sector, primarily having no central gathering place to fulfill their needs (after spending hours in the past googling on nonprofit issues, I can attest to that) and reveals plans to become that hub. If successful (based off of craigslist.com this looks to be promising) this can be the place where nonprofit startups can come to find non traditional funding opportunities.

Social Entrepreneurship

"In the face of this new reality, an increasing number of forward-looking nonprofits are beginning to appreciate the increased revenue, focus and effectiveness that can come from adopting "for profit" business approaches. Increasingly, they are reinventing themselves as social entrepreneurs, combining "the passion of a social mission with an image of business-like discipline, innovation, and determination."
-- From "The Meaning of Social Entrepreneurship" by J. Gregory Dees.

I have plans to start my own nonprofit and to fund it through traditional means like grants and private donations, but this type of hybrid is becoming increasingly attractive. Which brings me to...

Echoing Green
Echoing Green is a VC for social entrepreneurs. However they seem to differ quite starkly in their application and development processes. When viewing Y Combinator and TechStars, the initial application is just a page, no business plan needed or wanted. With Echoing Green, the application consists of short and long essays, a resume, budget, analysis, and references. The tone seems to be much more serious and the competition stiff. And while both Y Combinator and TechStars very clearly explained how much community and consultant support recipients would receive, it wasn't that clear for Echoing Green. Recipients for Echoing Green, however, seemed to receive more seed money (up to $90,000) versus Y Combinator (rarely over $20,000) and TechStars (up to $15,000). And although Echoing Green showcased their fellows more, I got a more supportive vibe from Y Combinator and TechStars. This is probably due to the type of people they are trying to attract and want to have apply.

And the Recap: Worried about VC seed money for your “greater good” idea? No worries, there are “Echoing Greens” out there.