un|we|sen

If you look closely at websites with social features, very few of them offer communications tools that are entirely unrelated to some form of focal point. Gmail does, but nobody would view that as a website with social features — it’s a web-based mail client and instant messenger.

Yes, it provides communication tools, which form the basis for internet communication, but that doesn’t seem to matter, it’s not a social website in most people’s view.

Real social websites usually center around a user profile, while other websites with social components tend to center around pieces of user-generated content. YouTube I mentioned. Wikipedia turns the user-generated content into the only thing visitors see, with discussion occurring only in the background. But it also turns the user-generated content into something that’s not the work of a single creator, but multiple creators who may be at odds with each other. Facebook is an example of a website centered around user profiles. Myspace is as well, but it’s audio player turns it into something of a hybrid between Facebook’s model and YouTube’s. I could go on.

The thing to realize about websites with social components is that

1. They’re about participant-to-participant communication.
2. They’re not free-form communications channels, but include structure to focus communication around specific topics.
3. That specific topic is usually user-generated.

The latter point bears some clarification: implicitly, if not explicitly, such websites often distinguish between creator-type users and consumer-type users. The important point for websites focussed around user-generated content isn’t that they provide vastly different tools to those focussed around other topics, it’s that they deliberately blur the line between creators and consumers. In effect, anyone can be a creator, if they but choose to be.

That, finally, is what brings me back to virtual worlds.

There’s a very strong line between creators and consumers in virtual worlds. In early MUDs, it used to be that you had to complete the game to become a wizard. These days, it’s nearly impossible to be a creator at all — games such as WoW offer easily customizable user interfaces, and thus allow players to express themselves through creating such non-essential aspects of the overall game experience.

As far as I can tell from my ivory tower here, making user-generated content part of the Elder Game in virtual worlds requires two essential components.

First, there’s the actual creation tools. And then, there’s the pedestals for users to place their content upon.

Now when I previously compared websites with social components to virtual worlds, it may have seemed as if I consider those two to be one and the same. After all, I did try to argue that social websites invite user contributions, and neatly skipped over the fact that creating text is a lot easier than creating 3D meshes or textures.

So in order to clarify this point here, I do not, nor have ever, assumed that the content creation tools social websites offer can be easily transferred to the realm of virtual worlds. After all, they tend to offer little more than a text box.

I do stand by my argument, though, that the pedestal-forming tools of websites with social characterstics can be. And they should be IMHO: I’d bet my pinky that is what attracts users to contribute anything at all, being able to express themselves, and gain recognition for it.

Facebook

Internet Relay Chat

User-generated content

Website

World of Warcraft

YouTube

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