Addictive Web Services

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Addictive Web Services

Paul Graham’s latest post on the acceleration of addiction is great. You can read what I’m about to write without the context of reading Paul’s post, but I highly recommend you take the time to read it. [Side note: I’ve been reading Paul’s book Hackers and Painters and am totally digging it too… it’s like one huge Paul Graham essay. It’s modern day light philosophy framed as social commentary on geeks in society.]

Being in the business of selling an addictive product is emotionally difficult, yet I’d argue that everyone in the internet startup community is in that business to varying degrees. Think about the language we all use to describe the people that use our products and the actions around their engagement: we call the customers “users” and we speak of “converting” them, often via a free taste (aka “freemium”). We want to retain users in order to maximize their “lifetime value.” A sign of a valuable web property is the amount of “repeat usage.” Perhaps I’m being a bit dramatic, but these all sound like terms that are designed to describe and optimize addiction. Addiction often plays to people’s weaknesses and makes them do things out of their control, which doesn’t feel like a great business to be in.

I remember reading back in 2006 or so that Mark Zuckerberg famously avoided using the word “users” to describe the people that use Facebook (I can’t find the link to the article I read… can someone who works at FB verify this?). Instead he preferred the term “members” because it had a less pejorative connotation. But, I point this example out because in this case the terminology doesn’t matter… Facebook is perhaps the most addictive site in the market regardless of what Mark calls his users, and I suspect Mark is quite proud of the addictive nature of the service.

I believe strongly in educating and empowering people to make their own decisions about what they use/support/consume. I’m not a fan of laws that prohibit peoples actions when those actions don’t harm or interfere with others. So, I take issue when I hear about overbearing laws that restrict certain addictive behaviors, like banning trans fats in NYC. But, on the other side of that coin, I don’t feel great about making or enabling a product that causes people to become addicted in an unhealthy way.

I’m not going to change the language I use to describe users of web services, but I hope the services I am directly involved in creating/enabling are leaving the world a better place than before they arrived on the market. I suspect many of the services I will work with over my career will be addictive, but I hope they won’t be emotionally destructive.