Comment by @iamtheyakuza • Hey
Funny thing is that I'm working now on a plan to revamp community 😃 😃
What metrics/KPIs would you focus on?
Community growth, engagement levels, user i
Comments
- I think I would choose user interaction and collected posts ( users post collected)
- Awesome! Can’t wait to see what you’re building, though I’d caution against trying to unite the entire Lens community. That’s akin to trying to align all of Twitter or Facebook…a futile effort. It’s easier to foster a niche community and build for your specific needs. Later, at scale, it can be leveraged into becoming a platform of its own.
Now I’m not sure where in the stack you’re building but I will say my encouragements/complaints are aimed at the consumer-facing apps (and lack thereof) like Orb, Buttrfly, Lenster, etc. When I say “tools” I generally mean “apps” or the data formats within those apps. The tools for actually creating data. Building analytics dashboards and creator tools and middleware is great and really useful—the teams at Wav3s/MadFi/Bello and beyond are all doing really amazing things and the more tools we have like those the better. However, none of those are important if there are no users.
Most users of web2 socials have little to no incentive to switch to Lens right now. I believe it’s a mistake to over-index on data sovereignty, especially in a world where AI will connect to any and all databases without the user’s knowledge or care.
Most users only care about what they’re given or shown.
When you open Instagram you’re given tools to create very specific data. You can create Photos, Stories, Reels, etc, all of which are very specific formats of data. When you look at a profile in Instagram you see Followers and a grid of thumbnails.
When users are inside Instagram they can only care about those data formats and those follower metrics. Users don’t care about music playlists bc none exist. Users care about Followers. Users care about the grid. If Instagram enabled music playlists which are similar to Spotify then people could create music playlist data and care about that too. If Instagram came up with a leaderboard of the most popular playlists and displayed who created them, people would care deeply about that. The point is, we rely on Instagram to make the data valuable. They do this by creating new tools and showing us select data. We can only care about what they want us to care about. Communities/Apps on Lens should follow this approach!
Let’s look at Lens in its current state: What users see when they open Lenster and Orb is a newer Facebook with Patreon built in, and also none of their web2 friends or followers are here. It’s an interesting tech demo! But there’s nothing unique or compelling at the surface level for -most- Instagram users coming over here right now.
Orb/Buttrfly/Lenster should hide the follower count in a menu. They should instead display either raw data like:
[Collectors/Top Collectors
Supports/Top Supporter Of]
Paid and non-paid
Or develop ratings and rankings scores based on that data, which could include all kinds of other data such as “this user has generated X amount of collects via Y amount of content” kind of like a hit rate. In other words, “does this person spam the network and get 1 million collects or do they post 12 times a year and each post gets 50 million collects? “
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What isn’t making sense to me right now is that Lens is -very- focused on getting creators to create when actually approaching this problem from the opposite direction is easier/faster. Create apps which make people want to create & collect and the creators will follow.
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Right now it’s up to each individual creator to incentivize collecting.
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That approach doesn’t scale. Far easier is to create a compelling app which makes people want to create. And then if you want to apply Lens’ unique superpower: turn the Collects into data, incentivize users to collect, and thus turning passive consumers into creators as well.
No one wanted to be an Instagram influencer in 2007 because the tools didn’t exist. Once the tools were created people were incentivized to become creators. Once TikTok enabled people with 10 followers to get 10 million views with one video, millions of people suddenly wanted to create videos to achieve the same status.
Create compelling apps on Lens which use Collects as data and you will create new collectors AND creators. Additionally, only display metrics and KPI which serve the end goal(s) of your app! Make your users CARE about your goals. 🤷♂️