christmasgorilla - { chris muscarella }

The Mullet Theory of Social Software Design

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 20:49:00 -0500

For several years, I’ve been using the phrase mullet theory of software design to talk about a very special kind of software: the kind where it’s all business up front, but the real party is in the back. Tumblr has always been the perfect example of this: to any random person on the web, a tumblelog looks more or less like any other blog that’s short form or otherwise (though usually prettier)—but most of the real sub-communities and fringe cultures are all jamming in the back room on the dashboard.

I think it’s my favorite mode of social software because it’s the one that combines utility the most with it’s socialness. Because of the utility, it’s not as necessary to shoe-horn users into auto-following awful things that they won’t like (think Gimme Bar vs. Pinterest). Because the social mechanics aren’t gamed, the actual value to the social pieces is much higher.

Some of the original social software on the internet was marketplaces. Ebay was dependent on an engaged network of users mutually reviewing each other to broker trust in the marketplace, though the identities of those users were often obscured and that was fine because those users would never meet face to face. These days, mutual reviews are just as important for building trust in a marketplace, but they’re often taken in wildly divergent directions. For example, Airbnb focuses heavily on real-world identity because their marketplace depends on people actually meeting in the real world. The flip side of that coin is a marketplace like the Silk Road, where the users need an identity to accrue karma in the marketplace, but it’s crucially important that the identity and the actual currency of the marketplace are obscured from real world identity because the participants are exchanging contraband products.

A while back, Chris Dixon asked Roelof Botha:

the “why now” question regarding web-based marketplaces. He said something I thought was really interesting: marketplaces depend on trust, and trust requires knowing the reputation of a prospective counterparty. Today, for the first time, you can get background information on almost any prospective counterparty by searching Google, Facebook etc. Or put more simply: we finally have an internet of people.

But that internet of people is a way of saying that we now have multiple modes of looking at identity and what we actually have is an internet of people with identities that can support real-world needing to meet in person transactions—which is a large part of commerce in the world.

Bringing that back to the mullet theory of software design: it’s a perfect way to build a marketplace. Have a very tuned funnel—it’s all business up front. But build your product around something people love and support multiple kinds of identity with a crazy rager in the back. Airbnb’s taken that torch a very short way to great effect, Etsy is doing a lot of experiments but hasn’t tied them into the core experience of their product, and Fab is doing some great things but ultimately isn’t a peer-to-peer marketplace.

And yes, that’s exactly what I’m working on—if you want to ask about it you have to use the password “Tennessee Flap.”

"A particular problem is that he [Mitt Romney] betrays little indignation at any of our problems and..."

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 19:00:00 -0500

“A particular problem is that he [Mitt Romney] betrays little indignation at any of our problems and their causes. He’s always sunny, pleasant, untouched by anger. This leaves people thinking, “Excuse me, but we are in crisis. Financially and culturally we fear our country is going down the drain. This guy doesn’t seem to be feeling it. So why’s he running? Maybe he thinks it’s his personal destiny to be president. But if the animating passion of his candidacy is about him, not us, who needs him?””

- Peggy Noonan on Mitt Romney, WSJ

There’s probably a phrasing of this that is equally damning of a certain kind of entrepreneur—the one that is pursuing a project not out of passion but out of a kind of megalomania to be the top dog in their own pony show.

Yesterday, the Kitchensurfing team and a few friends went to...

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 17:14:11 -0500

Yesterday, the Kitchensurfing team and a few friends went to Jackson Heights scouting for Thai chefs. We had an amazing time eating wonderful Thai food and managed to get quite a bit of interest in our project. Afterwards, we decided to take over a little salon and everyone got a pedicure. I haven’t had a pedicure since I was a foot model.

photo and nail color credit: cassie marketos

"There is a communion of more than our bodies when bread is broken and wine drunk. And that is my..."

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:56:14 -0500

“There is a communion of more than our bodies when bread is broken and wine drunk. And that is my answer, when people ask me: Why do you write about hunger, and not wars or love?”

- M.F.K. Fisher

Pretty much any time I ever have to put together any kind of...

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 09:00:00 -0500

Pretty much any time I ever have to put together any kind of information about market sizing, I just want to embed this video.

People who like ice cream x People who has hands = our market

I miss the Ali G show. When it was good, it was brilliant.

via jacob—who has the top search result for “people who has hands people who like ice cream.”

Today at Kitchensurfing, Helena brought us some ancho chilies...

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 16:46:00 -0500

Today at Kitchensurfing, Helena brought us some ancho chilies that had been smuggled over the border in a suitcase.

She made simple salad with pepitas and lemon-miso dressing and pozole de frijol—a hearty, belly-warming soup made with rancho gordo hominy, pinto beans from cayuga organics, with said ancho chilies.

If you’re interested in joining us for a Kitchensurfing lunch, you should send me Fan Mail.

"She claimed to like the way starlight smelled on sand. Once Cornelius asked her how the smell of..."

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 11:59:10 -0500

“She claimed to like the way starlight smelled on sand. Once Cornelius asked her how the smell of starlight on sand differed from the smell of moonlight. —More peppery.”

- Annie Dillard, The Maytrees

Chris also made a Hibiscus Agua Fresca that was off the hook.

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 18:58:16 -0500

Chris also made a Hibiscus Agua Fresca that was off the hook.

Today, we had Chef Chris Edwards at the Kitchensurfing office...

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 18:44:00 -0500

Today, we had Chef Chris Edwards at the Kitchensurfing office for lunch. He made us buttermilk fried chicken (with some chile dust), grits with jalapeno, cheddar, and a poached egg yolk, and an amazing slaw of multiple cabbages, kale, brussels sprouts, and wheat berries.

In contention for the best fried chicken I’ve ever had.

You have to love people that elevate your level of articulation—not so much by their speech, but...

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 09:30:25 -0500

You have to love people that elevate your level of articulation—not so much by their speech, but more as a magic osmosis. And we’re not talking about diction that tends to words like adumbrate, we’re leaning more towards prurient.

Sly and the Family Stone - Que Sera Sera

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 21:22:05 -0500

Sly and the Family Stone - Que Sera Sera

"I believe that in our culture of simulation, the notion of authenticity is for us what sex was for..."

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 12:31:00 -0500

“I believe that in our culture of simulation, the notion of authenticity is for us what sex was for the Victorians—threat and obsession, taboo and fascination.”

- Sherry Turkle, Alone Together

via caitlinwinner

“To draw moral wisdom from a serious fiction, you have to...

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 09:59:31 -0500

“To draw moral wisdom from a serious fiction, you have to relive it as if the possibilities were still open and the tragedy still preventable.”

If there was any doubt that Craigslist has become a ghetto, I...

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 14:24:27 -0500

If there was any doubt that Craigslist has become a ghetto, I present to you the twelve most recent postings for Event Gigs in NYC.

"Men who ache allover for tidiness and compactness in their lives often find relief for their pain in..."

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 13:45:00 -0500

“Men who ache allover for tidiness and compactness in their lives often find relief for their pain in the cabin of a thirty-foot sailboat at anchor in a sheltered cove. Here the sprawling panoply of The Home is compressed in orderly miniature and liquid delirium, suspended between the bottom of the sea and the top of the sky, ready to move on in the morning by the miracle of canvas and the witchcraft of rope.”

- E.B. White, The Sea and the Wind that Blows

via jacecooke

"To put this as crisply as I can, the study of the classics is the study of what happens in the gap..."

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 09:16:16 -0500

“To put this as crisply as I can, the study of the classics is the study of what happens in the gap between antiquity and ourselves. It is not only the dialogue that we have with the culture of the classical world; it is also the dialogue that we have with those who have gone before us who were themselves in dialogue with the classical world (whether Dante, Raphael, William Shakespeare, Edward Gibbon, Pablo Picasso, Eugene O’Neill, or Terence Rattigan). The classics (as writers of the second century AD had already spotted) are a series of “Dialogues with the Dead.” But the dead do not include only those who went to their graves two thousand years ago. This is an idea nicely captured in another article in The Fortnightly Review, this time a skit that appeared in 1888, a sketch set in the underworld, in which a trio of notable classical scholars (the long-dead Bentley and Porson, plus their recently deceased Danish colleague Madvig) have a free and frank discussion with Euripides and Shakespeare. This little satire also reminds us that the only actual speakers in this dialogue are us; it is we who ventriloquize, who animate what the ancients have to say: in fact, here the classical scholars complain what a terrible time they are having in Hades, because they are constantly being told off by the ancient shades who complain that the classicists have got them wrong.”

- Mary Beard, “Do the Classics Have a Future?”, in the New York Review of Books. (via thebronzemedal)

"American schools in which fewer than 10% of the students were poor outperformed the schools of..."

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 11:12:10 -0500

“American schools in which fewer than 10% of the students were poor outperformed the schools of Finland, Japan and Korea. Even when as many as 25% of the students were poor, American schools performed as well as the top-scoring nations. As the proportion of poor students rises, the scores of U.S. schools drop.”

- Diane Ravitch, quoted in Time’s Why Are the Rich so Interested in Education Reform

BERG’s Little Printer is one of many new pieces of...

Sat, 10 Dec 2011 09:21:00 -0500

BERG’s Little Printer is one of many new pieces of hardware that I’m very excited about. A while ago, I met Matt Jones (a BERG designer) and we talked a bit about the internet of things*—it’s a wide open playing field.

While I love the design of the Little Printer, I’m not that excited about printing out social streams—I’m much more excited about trying to hack the software to have a personal telegraph machine where friends can send real correspondence. I have a fantasy of waking up to letters and reading them over coffee and that would be better than Christmas.

* I’m also working on a piece of a smart hardware.

Serious brogramming going on at the Muppet Office.

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 12:44:00 -0500

Serious brogramming going on at the Muppet Office.

"Kahneman never grapples philosophically with the nature of rationality. He does, however, supply a..."

Sun, 27 Nov 2011 11:01:00 -0500

“Kahneman never grapples philosophically with the nature of rationality. He does, however, supply a fascinating account of what might be taken to be its goal: happiness. What does it mean to be happy? When Kahneman first took up this question, in the mid 1990s, most happiness research relied on asking people how satisfied they were with their life on the whole. But such retrospective assessments depend on memory, which is notoriously unreliable. What if, instead, a person’s actual experience of pleasure or pain could be sampled from moment to moment, and then summed up over time? Kahneman calls this “experienced” well-being, as opposed to the “remembered” well-being that researchers had relied upon. And he found that these two measures of happiness diverge in surprising ways. What makes the “experiencing self” happy is not the same as what makes the “remembering self” happy. In particular, the remembering self does not care about duration — how long a pleasant or unpleasant experience lasts. Rather, it retrospectively rates an experience by the peak level of pain or pleasure in the course of the experience, and by the way the experience ends.”

- Jim Holt