Hey @ all, and special thanks to Wade for the sophisticated and spot on observation :)
I am not surprised about the "social components" effect on your user experience, this is something one will experience on any kind of internet community, and actually in any kind of offline community as well.
If you never interact with anyone, you will hardly gain a lot of sympathy and interest - it is however interesting to notice that people tend to think this rule would not apply online, it sure does, and I do not really see a way to change that programmaticly.
But let me try to get back to the "invite"-situation and possible ways to improve that, based on what you guys have pointed out:
I think the general "problem" can be summarized as "We like to tell people about wikiloops, but once they get here, it seems a little complicated to have them realize how this works and why this is a cool project", and I would agree to some extent.
I think it would be wise to distinguish two or three common scenarios here:
1st - I am inviting someone to listen to some of the music produced on wikiloops, who may not be a musician or likely to actively join, and
2nd - I am inviting someone who I feel might enjoy wikiloops when practising, and who may have interest to join actively.
For the first kind, I do agree with raymond on the albums, and I also see the radio feature as another way to let people realize what kind of music and which quality level can be found on wikiloops.
Especially the radio with the built-in world-map display does explain something about the musics origin and may raise interest in how this actually works.
An invitation along the lines of "visit wikiloops.com and click on the radio on the homepages shifting-banners, or go to "search" -> "albums & radio" and check out some of those albums" seems sufficient, the invited person really only needs to remember "wikiloops" and "radio" to get there.
Now, inviting someone to use & join the 'loops is a bit more tricky if you expect the invited person to become an active collaborator, if you just want to inform the guitar student from next door that there are a bunch of practise templates to be found on wikiloops, then I'd be quite positive one curious look at the wikiloops search engine will be self-explanatory enough to let someone browse around a little ("oh, I can select "Blues" with "Drums + Bass" in "Key of E", now, that's pretty cool!").
While the listeners and practicing folks can be guided quite easily, getting someone involved in the collaborations is much more complicated.
To tell someone "Yeah, go and register an account on wikiloops and you will have a lot of fun" is not enough information, and there may be invited people who feel like "OK, now I have this user account, what now? Theres a zillion of tracks, and people seem to enjoy themselfs, but what shall I do now?".
As Wade pointed out, the new users happiness depends on his or hers expectations, and very strongly on interaction (comments & likes) and the "follow" function.
Since we can not change the users expectations, I'd like to focus on making sure new folks understand the very basic principles of interaction and the follow-function, so they will get some crucial info on how to turn their initially blank newsfeed into the lively place of interaction which you as active members are used to.
This may seem totally self-explanatory to people who are using other social media platforms, but it is definetly good to make sure these bits of information are properly presented to new members, and that is actually something I'll be working on in the next few months.
I believe the crucial bits of information might be:
- interacting with members: get familiar with some folks by commenting and liking their tracks. Your newsfeed will keep you informed whenever someone replys to a comment
- follow others: If you enjoy some users contributions, "follow" him or her and new tracks by that user will show up on your newsfeed
- first remix: Start by remixing others instead of posting new templates, that way you will get noticed by those whom you remixed
- first remix: Choose a track to remix which is not 5 years old. If you pick a track from the latest jams, your chances of the creators being active and waiting for a remix is much higher then when remixing ancient tracks which already have 300 remixes.
I believe it is quite normal to see that there are people who realize wikiloops does not meet their personal interests, and it is only natural to have a percentage of people leave or loose interest.
One could try to prevent that by informing people up-front about what not-to-expect (as Wade suggests), but I feel that may go wrong communication wise - it would read like
"You will not get rich or famous by using wikiloops, and as anywere on this planet, no one will be nice to you if you are not nice to anyone.
Actually, no-one is sitting there waiting for your music either, but you are welcome to join and have a lot of fun with us. And don't forget, wikiloops is 80% about you collaborating with others, and maybe 20% about others collaborating with you :)"
That would be bold & true, but may not seem like a good up-front-advertising strategy ;)
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