March 11, 2008

• Welcome Wagon

  So when I first heard about the Welcome Wagon, I thought it was a great idea and I’ve been playing with it all this time. It’s one of those great concepts that really makes Xanga stand out amongst online communities. Unfortunately I think it also has some problems and I’ve been thinking about them a lot. I’ve got too many thoughts on it in fact to fit into a comment so I guess I’ll just blog about
  it.

  The main thing that’s turning me off from it right now is
  that it doesn’t interact well with the starting and returning user blurbs.  The idea of meeting new people through the
  Welcome Wagon and earning more points in the process sounds really cool. But
  that’s the thing because of the way the blurbs are everywhere it doesn’t feel
  like I’m meeting new people at all. It feels like I’m interacting with a bunch
  of automatons. My attention span isn’t that great. There’s only so many times I
  can give an empty “hi” before I get bored.

  Another problem with the Welcome Wagon ironically also
  results in that feeling of being surrounded by a bunch of machines.  That is the point bonuses being applied in
  conjunction with the ability to purchase premium accounts for users seems to
  have resulted in some users spamming the welcome wagon with the same redundant
  message over and over again on everyone’s blog. 
  Maybe they think they’re being nice and all, but that’s not cool.  I honestly would not feel particularly
  welcomed at all to join a community and receive a bunch of form letter messages
  saying “hi”. One or two is ok, but I’d get bored rather quickly.

   Here’s how I think it
  is best to address these issues.

  By default the “blurb” post should not be added to the
  welcome wagon.  Rather there should be a
  checkbox that you explicitly have to select in order to add a post to the
  welcome wagon. It should include a link to an explanation of what the welcome
  wagon is  This way users can ensure that
  they are actually presenting content that they would like to illicit response
  from the community on when they are added to the welcome wagon. I think fairly
  frequently that won’t be their “welcome blurb” post. Instead they might want to
  come back a little later and write up a nice little introduction to themselves
  maybe after they’ve gotten their theme and their layout just right and know
  exactly what they want to say and can present the face they want to present to
  the world.

  And users should have this option to add their first few
  posts to the welcome wagon, Not just their first one of course.  Sometimes people don’t get to the content
  they want to share right away. Sometimes it takes a little while for people to
  build up the courage to start interacting with the community. And some people
  just really don’t want the exposure of the welcome wagon. This would give them
  the ability to opt out just by leaving that check box blank on all of their
  first few posts.

  This shouldn’t be time dependent by the way. It shouldn’t
  matter if they make their first welcome wagon post a week or even a year after
  they sign up.  Rather it should just be
  say something like only your first three or five posts can be added to the
  welcome wagon whatever they might be. And you can add all three too. People
  will feel more welcomed if they get responses to more than just one of their blog
  posts.

  Defaulting posts to *not* being put on the welcome wagon has
  the added benefit of causing *fake* users to not show up by default. That is,
  if someone creates a new blog just to test out a theme or to play around with
  some sort of module or something, they don’t end up wasting space on the
  welcome wagon which exists for real new and returning users to actually
  communicate with the community.

  Interesting blog entries are great conversation starters,
  but there’s another obvious one that could be integrated into the welcome wagon
  as well. Profile edits!.  When users
  first sign up, the first time they edit their profile, putting in their
  interests and whatnot, is a *great* opportunity for people to reach out to them
  and say hi.  Rather than just “hi”, you
  might see someone put down that they love this movie or that movie that is also
  your favorite so you go in and tell them that! And hopefully that will lead to
  new members entering into meaningful interactions with existing members that
  build a deeper sense of community. To that end, the first time you edit your
  profile you should also get an option as to whether you want your profile edit
  to show up on the Welcome Wagon!

  The other issue, with the spammed impersonal “welcome”
  messages that I was seeing people post, can easily be fixed just by having a
  visible point cap on how many messages you can post to the welcome wagon and
  get bonus points for. After people reach their cap, they’ll have no incentive
  to continue to spam. If they continue to spam, the points gained could and
  should drop to zero and there should be a visible message telling them that
  they aren’t earning any more points. Maybe in big red letters or something J  Actually maybe that’s already been fixed, I
  haven’t seen any spam on there recently.

  I have some other thoughts too.  For one thing I can’t imagine anything more
  depressing than if I were a new member and I went through a lot of trouble to
  make an interesting first post and added it to the welcome wagon in the hopes
  that I’d get replies and finding that I don’t get any anyway! To see lots of
  other welcomes users being commented on, but for some reason people don’t find
  my post interesting enough? If I’m the kind of person who wants that form of
  interaction, it would suck hard.  That
  might be the kind of thing that would make me quit Xanga.

  Maybe to address this, the points bonus given out should
  grow over time based on how long it has been that an entry has been in the
  welcome wagon and the number of comments or lack thereof.   That is
  the longer it takes for you to get comments the bigger the incentive for new
  users to give you a comment.  At  the same time the welcome wagon should
  prioritize low comment entries that have been around for a long time so that
  they show up first making it more likely for them to spark comments.

  The Welcome Wagon system as it is or with my suggested
  changes makes a great incentive for existing users to start interacting with
  new users, but what about the other side of the equation?  Surely Xanga should also consider creating
  greater incentives for new users to interact with the Xanga community! By that
  I mean, incentives for them to create interesting blog entries and add them to
  the welcome wagon, to reply to messages posted on their welcome wagon blog, and
  of course to browse around to other people’s blogs and start reading and
  commenting!

  I have a few ideas for that too.  First, maybe once a week, there should be one
  post of the Welcome Wagon posts chosen as a Featured Weblog.  This should be very explicit and should stand
  out amongst the other featured content. It’s sort of like a featured N00B award!
  This would give people a lot of interest in making interesting first posts and
  adding them to the welcome wagon.  And
  always having that Featured N00B weblog visible on the home page would keep the
  community aware of the existing of the Welcome Wagon and spur continued
  interest in it.

  Next I think that new and returning users should have a sort
  of super charged point bonus period during which EVERYTHING they do earns them
  bonus points. And this should be very visible too. Like a banner on the top of
  the page or something that says they are “supercharged” or some such adjective.
  And when they click on that to figure out what it means they should see a page
  that explains to them what the point system is, what they can do with it (such
  as buy premium), and why it is in their best interest to start going around commenting
  on people’s blogs *right now* because they only stay super charged for a
  limited period of time.

  During your supercharge period things that don’t usually
  earn you points should earn you points too. I’m not entirely sure the exact
  nature of what gives you points  but
  certainly things like filling out your profile, making blog posts and pulse
  posts, posting pictures, friending people, subscribing to blogs, getting subscriptions to your blog, recruiting new
  people to join xanga, and replying to comments should all give you points
  during the supercharged period even if they ordinarily wouldn’t.

  The supercharge bonus should stack with the bonus provided
  for commenting on new and returning user blogs. So to maximize one’s point
  gains, one should post a lot of comments on other new users blogs. And hence
  both systems help perpetuate one another.

  Of course to prevent abuse, the total number of supercharged
  points should be capped too. Otherwise I could see someone writing a script
  that just creates a bunch of new xanga accounts and spams all over the place to
  amass points enough to buy many premium accounts.

  OK, that’s all my thoughts on the Welcome Wagon for now.  Just one more thing though. If this is
  successful, I think it’d be a really good idea to start thinking about finding
  ways to expand the concept for the rest of us! 
  I mean there are a lot of Xangans who bemoan daily how few comments they
  get on their blog. If someone hasn’t gotten a lot of comments and *wants* to be
  more involved in the community, a little help from Xanga in doing that would
  not go unappreciated I think. I’m not sure exactly how that would work, but it’s
  definitely something to think about.

  Anyway, I really like the idea of the Welcome Wagon and I
  hope that it works out well.

  • 11:54 pm
  • 2 Comments