Radar Blog

Conversation, qu'est-ce que c'est?
August 6, 2008
John Poisson
Comments (5)

Matt Richtel wrote a cover story in Saturday's New York Times about Slydial, a new service for dialing directly into someone's voicemail, and he touched on a larger trend that's close to home for us: more and more services out there are focused entirely on talking and not at all on conversation.

In the piece, Matt mentions Radar as bucking this trend, and quotes me:

"We're in [a] mode where we're telling everybody everything all the time," Mr. Poisson said, adding. "It becomes about saying things - just blathering on."

I'm an occasional, opportunistic user of both Twitter and Tumblr, and what frustrates me about these two services is that there's ultimately no real facility for response, or for conversation. I speak, and if you're within earshot you might listen. It's as if I'm standing on a balcony talking at passersby.

But you as the passerby have no ability to engage with me, apart from shouting back from your own balcony. You "follow" me or you don't. And while this is no doubt a satisfying proposition for many people (and a reasonable evolution of the blogger ethic of the past five years), I wonder how long this will feel fulfilling.

We've been asked if Radar is "like Twitter with pictures", and while both services come from a similar starting point--namely that desire to share the things that you're doing and seeing and thinking--Radar focuses not just on the act of sharing, but also on engendering conversation around the things you've shared.

This happens in a few ways. First, the conversation in Radar is visually driven, and we've learned that a picture (or video) of what you're doing or seeing or thinking has a lot more engagement value--now, and well into the future--than a short burst of text.

But there's also the notion of audience. Radar was designed to help you share with your close friends. In the balcony analogy, imagine turning back inside and sitting down in your living room with your friends. That's Radar.

And finally, and perhaps most importantly, the whole Radar experience is actively focused on encouraging discussion, whether you're checking Radar on your phone or PC.

The dual Latest Pictures / Latest Comments views do much to accomplish this: at a glance you see what all your friends are doing and talking about. Conversations float to the top and in turn feed upon themselves. There's a history you can trace back and a reason to pick up where you left off.

And there's more: when we introduced whispers last year, engagement rose sharply. Likewise for raising the visibility of who sees and likes the pictures you've shared.

For these reasons, it's not uncommon to see 30 or 40 comments within a few hours on a Radar post visible to less than 100 people. And these comments comprise a bona fide conversation, fully interwoven with references to things happening in the real world, and private jokes, and other Radar posts. In Radar this happens all day long.

In other words, we're not a photo sharing service as much as we're a way to engage in picture-driven group conversation with your friends.

There are in fact other services taking some steps toward conversation, and that's satisfying. Notably, FriendFeed allows comments on tweets and other content, though this raises a new challenge: those comment threads are not really connected to the original content at its source. This fragmentation could become a further stumbling block.

Facebook, too, in their recent redesign, have raised the importance of commenting, if not conversation. They now allow comments on just about anything appearing in the newsfeed. This remains the privilege of desktops users, however, and to our thinking true conversation needs to extend everywhere.

Unfortunately, on both services it's easy enough to leave a comment, but extraordinarily cumbersome to get back to those would-be conversations, so they stall at simply comments.

I don't lament the newsfeed culture we're all creating, but in order for it to last we need more than all of us shouting minutiae at each other from across the way. Without conversation, the base of people actually listening eventually becomes inured to the noise and simply walks away.

Expect to hear more from us about the importance of conversation--both around the things you share privately and those you share publicly--and expect new developments in Radar that continue driving the experience in this direction.

And until then, feel free to chime in here, or wherever you chime from. This is, after all, meant to be a conversation.

Comments

PiddlyD August 12, 2008

The only thing I'd say about this is that I don't yet see how Radar is really any different than Popug or Mobog, outside of the fact that it is more personal and allows you to feel more confident in posting images or videos with personally identifying information in them. I suppose Radar seems a little more upscale and less like a dangerous ghetto of the Internet than either of the above sites.

Perhaps I am just too new - but if there were more ability to personalize my own "page" here at Radar, it would transcend into something of a hybrid between Facebook/MySpace and Mobog/Popug.

John Poisson August 12, 2008

Well if you take a look at both those sites, the vast majority of pictures have little apparent engagement around them. The ones that do have perhaps a comments, but very little perceptible "conversation". That's one of the ways we're different, and for the reasons I outlined.

As for personalization, Radar isn't really page-based. It's an ongoing stream of shared content. In a sense, it's the content (and conversation!) you share that personalizes the experience for your friends.

PiddlyD August 14, 2008

Well, Mobog really became an adult voyeur site - but it didn't start off that way. There was a community there. Most of those users went on to Popug. They have created an "in-group" there of loyal, long term locals, and in that sense, it is more of a meeting-space or social networking site like MySpace.

I like this place, though. I post pictures I would never post to a publically accessible board like Popug, and I'm sharing with people I have real-world bonds with, not just anonymous "friends" from CyberSpace. I think Radar fits a similar but different niche.

How about a feature where your gallery is displayed in a tiled grid, as opposed to a sequential column? More images on the screen at one time.

josh robinson August 26, 2008

I think this is a really old problem in the way people regard online communities. I think the conversation problem is common to all online formats of exchange. Even in very old online communities starting with stuff like BBS's or IRC, the kind of exchange is transactional. BBS's were a good place to connect with people and simple text based games on a limited basis. IRC is like the grown up version of that in that IRC handled many connections and was globally available. Again, you would end up file sharing or end up making jokes on a public channel for public consumption. The idea being that whatever you said was publicly consumable. Now you would end up in "flame wars" where people would simply take exception with you in order to get conversation. Better than none I expect, but certainly not anywhere near ideal.

My personal opinion is that if you want real conversations, you have to have really open people. So far, we are still just a touch apprehensive about talking to one another. Its going to be another generation before this breaks down. Even then, it may only be a online phenom.

Minter Dial November 25, 2008

Conversation can be with many people or just with one's self. There are times for deep conversation and meaningful content and moments when you are only looking for light entertainment -- sort of like the films you might choose to watch or books you might choose to read. The 2.0 functionality is allowing people to engage more easily such that more people become contributors and participate in the online conversation and I think that is good. However, truly intimate conversation (or photographs for that matter) is not for public domain and therefore not for the net. The question is not whether all conversation should be deep and purposeful, but whether or not you can or want to participate in it at the time that you happen to come across it. Like going to a party (we are generally social beings), you tend to flit around until you can find that one 'good' conversation -- and it may be with someone you didn't even know beforehand. If you didn't want the risk of meeting new people, you would not go to the party at all. Personally, I enjoy the opportunity to express myself with total strangers and, according to the blog features, will follow the thread (not available here I notice). It is just about taking the time and mindset when you come across a conversation you wish to join.