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In the early 2000s, a startup called Yelp came up with the novel and friendly features of The Emergent World Wide Web. Regular users can post restaurant reviews that anyone can read. However, there was a problem. Few people were interested in writing things on the internet. Yelp engineers had to give them a reason.
The story of how they incentivized this user-generated content is that they brightened up the history of the internet by two business and technology veterans. Yelp thought that if people received compliments from others, people might be forced to post reviews. Ultimately, alongside similar experiments in other high-tech startups, this has resulted in an ubiquitous representation of instantaneous recognition, where the button written by Bob Goodson and Martin Reeves is a button that was clicked 16 billion times a day.
As with so many features of online life, it was far from self-evident until recently that it was taken for granted. I had to imagine it. The author was assumed in the early days of the Internet that “only 1% of people would write and create content that they would actually read.” The success of Bike Button and Yelp “exploded that percentage,” creating an online world where everyone is content creators.
Goodson wrote from experience: In his 20s, after training as a medievalist, he played the role of an instrument in its development, sketching its “thumb” iconography, thinking up concepts, and discussing codes that allow him to record responses without leaving the page.
His earthly perspective is perhaps the most valuable thing in the book. It brings us back to a time when the web was a sandbox full of clever and excited people inventing the future. What often resulted in the selection of quirky designs decades ago is looking at current ways that relate to one another, from frictionless expressions of praise to instantaneous online.
If behind the scenes accounts are the book’s strengths, it also becomes somewhat lighter to truly investigate criticisms about similar, broader influences. This is not completely absent. One chapter briefly explores issues such as smartphone addiction and mental health issues among children, regular virtual micro-validation, or industry-dependent issues that aggregate huge amounts of personal data without compensation.
However, the author quickly jumps to the defense of the “friendly little button” and appears unforgiving at its deeper outcome. They appear shocked when discussing 2019 targeting for UK intelligence commissioners, as a “reward loop” technique that encourages users to be involved in services that collect data. “What do you think about this?” They cry. “A single technical feature among many people rooted in human sociality and accepted by millions of people. Why do everyone want to crack down on it?”
The authors say the problem is “multiple unintended consequences.” Similar buttons were invented for “narrow purposes”, such as encouraging user-created content, but were applied “absolutely different” and incorporated into a new business model.
This seems simple. Enhancing user-generated content is not a narrow purpose, but creating a reward loop that encourages users to post more seems like a fair explanation of what Button’s designers were doing. The authors themselves can communicate to current business models that control profits and controls from data that partially emerge from the button itself. The unexpected ways that affected the Internet were in line with Bist’s core functionality and purpose. This is a feature, not a bug.
This book ends with speculation about the future. Could the button end up in an eternal conversation with AI? Can I register as well using only thoughts? Either way, Reeves and Goodson don’t seem to devour. “History is full of predictions of a dystopian future that never came to fruition,” they say.
But looking at the unfolding of new kinds of technology in what feels like a dark chapter in the history of the Internet, such a refreshing tone seems to be a mismatch. It could also be beneficial. I have doubted to some extent the optimistic “end-to-end” approach, reflecting the attitudes of modern engineers. I didn’t think this idea was reassuring.
Like: Martin Reeves and Bob Goodson Harvard’s Business Reviews That Changed the World Button £25/$ 32, 288 pages
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