Flickr is currently in the process of redesigning the Groups section of their site. Initial comments by some beta testers have suggested that more emphasis will be placed on photos and less on discussion threads. I’m not a part of this new beta group, but I thought I’d share a list of ways that Flickr could improve Groups anyways. I believe that Groups represent Flickr and Yahoo’s greatest chance at making progress in social — an area increasingly being dominated by Google+, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and other Yahoo social competitors.
Although I have not been as active in Groups over the past year, I’ve literally spent thousands of hours in Flickr Groups and feel like I understand how they work and their dynamics very well.
1. It cannot be overstated. The power of Groups are in the discussion threads. The power of Groups are in the discussion threads. The power of Groups are in the discussion threads. Discussion threads, positioned correctly, can be like crack. They can be terribly addictive. Flickr should be doing everything that they possibly can to push people to the discussion threads in Groups. This is how you turn a casual user into a hardcore top 1% Flickr user. If you can suck someone into the discussion threads you can get 100x the use of Flickr out of them. These are the most valuable members on Flickr. These are the biggest Flickr evangelists. These are the ones who will promote the site more than everyone else. Every design decision around groups should be made with the idea of how can we suck more users into the group discussion threads.
2. Toxic people are like cancer. Toxic people will drive people away from Flickr. Toxic people are the single biggest impediment for Flickr Groups to overcome today. The answer to protecting Flickr members from toxic people is simple. Create a more robust blocking mechanism which allows users to block each other. Online harassment that turns into real life harassment will drive even the most hardcore Flickr Group addict away from social. The best way to prevent this harassment is to allow users the ability to block each other. This seems so basic. Google got this super right a long time ago with Google+.
If I choose to block you then you should be made completely and entirely invisible on the site. Poof. Gone. Vanished. It’s not that you still can’t harass, but it makes it harder to harass someone when you are invisible to them in any profile they create that gains momentum on the site. This would encourage people to behave more civilly towards each other if such a tool existed.
Civility will help social for groups.
3. The goal for Flickr should be to create a page of discussion threads that are irresistible to me — an entire page of threads that I simply can’t help myself but click and converse. Any thread that is not of interest is a waste of space. Allowing me to mute or hide threads will ensure that I will be more social because I will see more opportunities to be social. There is no reason for me to see a thread about baseball that keeps popping to the top if I don’t care about baseball.
Muting threads also helps with trolling.
4. Flickr already has a super powerful tool that they are using in their help forum that they are not using in their Groups. If they’ve already coded it for the help forum it seems like a total non-brainer to simply port it to other Group discussions. This is the button that shows me posts that I’ve posted in. Obviously I care more about the threads that I’ve posted in than the threads that I haven’t.
5. Flickr needs to allow me to subscribe to threads that I’m particularly interested in and aggregate these threads on a single page sorted by recent activity. If you want people to be active in multiple groups (and you do, trust me) you want them to be able to easily follow the conversations that they care about in multiple groups. This does not happen today. Instead you have to go to group by group by group by group to hunt around for the conversations that you care about. Alternatively you can bookmark them all and go back and check them manually over and over and over again. You quickly tire of bookmarks because you are only interested in a Group conversation if there is new activity. Having a page to view subscribed threads could become the most powerful page for social on the web.
6. Flickr can’t fight anonymity at this point. It’s too late. Google and Facebook forced this issue early on by requiring users to use names that they are commonly known by. There would be too much of a revolt if Flickr even tried to institute anything like this. However, they can allow verified profiles. By allowing users to opt in to verified profiles they would give these accounts more credibility. Verification could be done similar to how Google used to do it by having users submit a Government ID or simply enter in a credit card number on a credit card. NOTE: I’m suggesting this be made voluntary and OPT IN. If people want to opt in, why not let them? If someone wants to keep their hackerboy6969 anonymous ID this is fine too.
7. Groups need to be promoted more heavily by Yahoo and Flickr across other sections of the site. Yahoo especially and Yahoo search especially, should be driving traffic to Group discussions. Although Yahoo probably has to talk to the boss (Bing/Microsoft) at this point to try to have any input on the search algorithm, if I were Yahoo I’d try to get multiplier algorithm weightings for public group conversations and general group pages. If someone is searching for information on a new Canon 5D Mark III, by all means, Yahoo should try to route them to a Canon Group on Flickr where they can find discussion about this. It’s relevant and invites them to be more social on a Yahoo property.
8. Group invitations should be super easy. New blood is vital to ensuring Group success. Flickr should make it as easy as possible both to invite other Flickr members to your Groups and also equally important to invite people outside of Flickr to your Groups. A Group invitation section should be made which will invite Facebook friends, people in your address book, etc. to your Group. A few years back Flickr made it actually harder to invite people to Groups. They probably did this due to criticism about people spamming Group invitations. Instead of making Group inviting harder, they should simply allow users to mute these notifications by category.
9. Flickr needs to come out with a super easy way to consume and converse in Group discussion threads on both iPhone and Android.
10. Create a +/@ mentioning system for Groups. If someone +/@ mentions me in a Group (or on a photo page discussion as well), I should receive a notification. This is smart and will invite and encourage me to respond.
Flickr Group discussion threads represent the future for social at Yahoo not just for the photo community that is Flickr. Group discussion threads represent the future for social ideally for millions of other topics. To this end, Flickr Photo Groups should be considered as much a social lab as anything for Yahoo. Thoughtful consideration should be made as to how to push this Group format out to the rest of the social web, inviting people to create and manage groups about everything from knitting to hang gliding. Yes, photos are important. Every Group should have a photography function, but the discussion threads really are the power.
By making Groups more about photos and less about discussions Yahoo squanders this important opportunity.
I also believe that Yahoo should consider hiring some people to live in Groups for a while. They should hire some super smart people who understand psychology and just have them live in Groups. Their entire job should just be to participate in Groups all day long and then thoughtfully consider how to make them more and more social.
Although Yahoo staffers are in some Groups today, I can’t think of any who are particularly hyperactive there. It’s hard to be social in Flickr Groups when you’re so busy writing code all day, but Yahoo does need some talent to really get in there and understand what they have — because today I don’t think they really do and I’m not sure there’s ever any HOPE that senior management at Yahoo will ever truly understand what they have with social in the form of the seedling that is Flickr Groups.
Thomas Hawk Digital Connection