http://simonwillison.net/2025-07-03T19:23:05+00:00Simon Willison2025-07-03T19:23:05+00:002025-07-03T19:23:05+00:00https://simonwillison.net/2025/Jul/3/i-built-something-that-changed-my-friend-groups-social-fabric/#atom-tag

<p><strong><a href="https://blog.danpetrolito.xyz/i-built-something-that-changed-my-friend-gro-social-fabric/">I built something that changed my friend group&#x27;s social fabric</a></strong></p> I absolutely love this as an illustration of the thing where the tiniest design decisions in software can have an outsized effect on the world.</p> <p>Dan Petrolito noticed that his friend group weren't chatting to each other using voice chat on their Discord server because they usually weren't online at the same time. He wired up a ~20 lines of Python Discord bot to turn people joining the voice channel into a message that could be received as a notification and had a huge uptick in conversations between the group, lasting several years. <p><small></small>Via <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44403988">Hacker News</a></small></p> <p>Tags: <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/social-software">social-software</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/discord">discord</a></p>

2024-02-19T15:57:50+00:002024-02-19T15:57:50+00:00https://simonwillison.net/2024/Feb/19/dang/#atom-tag

<blockquote cite="https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=39426902"><p>Spam, and its cousins like content marketing, could kill HN if it became orders of magnitude greater—but from my perspective, it isn't the hardest problem on HN. [...]</p> <p>By far the harder problem, from my perspective, is low-quality comments, and I don't mean by bad actors—the community is pretty good about flagging and reporting those; I mean lame and/or mean comments by otherwise good users who don't intend to and don't realize they're doing that.</p></blockquote> <p class="cite">&mdash; <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=39426902">dang</a></p> <p>Tags: <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/hacker-news">hacker-news</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/moderation">moderation</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/social-software">social-software</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/spam">spam</a></p>

2019-03-28T15:12:49+00:002019-03-28T15:12:49+00:00https://simonwillison.net/2019/Mar/28/next-ceo-stack-overflow/#atom-tag

<p><strong><a href="https://stackoverflow.blog/2019/03/28/the-next-ceo-of-stack-overflow/">The Next CEO of Stack Overflow</a></strong></p> “Including the Stack Exchange network of 174 sites, we have over 100 million monthly visitors. Every month, over 125,000 wonderful people write answers”—this fits the rule of thumb for user-generated content that only a tiny portion of your audience will actively create content: in this case it’s just 0.125% (one eighth of one percent). I’d love to know how many people are upvoting or performing other more lightweight interactions. <p>Tags: <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/social-software">social-software</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/stackoverflow">stackoverflow</a></p>

2009-02-09T19:04:53+00:002009-02-09T19:04:53+00:00https://simonwillison.net/2009/Feb/9/four/#atom-tag

<p><strong><a href="http://uk.techcrunch.com/2009/02/07/four-reasons-why-facebook-status-updates-wont-kill-twitter/">Four reasons why public Facebook status updates won&#x27;t kill Twitter</a></strong></p> Mike Butcher highlights the importance of “follow” rather than “friend” in social software. <p>Tags: <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/facebook">facebook</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/follow">follow</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/friend">friend</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/mike-butcher">mike-butcher</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/social-software">social-software</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/twitter">twitter</a></p>

2007-04-25T19:22:55+00:002007-04-25T19:22:55+00:00https://simonwillison.net/2007/Apr/25/home/#atom-tag

<p><strong><a href="http://www.scribd.com/">Scribd</a></strong></p> This appears to be social software for the huge population of people who can’t imagine creating anything without using Word. <p>Tags: <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/bemused">bemused</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/scribd">scribd</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/social-software">social-software</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/word">word</a></p>

2007-02-02T18:03:32+00:002007-02-02T18:03:32+00:00https://simonwillison.net/2007/Feb/2/digg/#atom-tag

<p><strong><a href="http://blog.digg.com/?p=60">Digg to drop their global &quot;top users&quot; list</a></strong></p> It’s fascinating how big an effect a simple feature like a top users list can have on the social behaviour of a site. <p>Tags: <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/digg">digg</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/social-software">social-software</a></p>

2006-12-24T19:32:53+00:002006-12-24T19:32:53+00:00https://simonwillison.net/2006/Dec/24/myspace/#atom-tag

<p><strong><a href="http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue11_12/boyd/index.html">Friends, friendsters, and top 8: Writing community into being on social network sites</a></strong></p> I finally got around to reading this. Fascinating; lots to digest. <p>Tags: <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/danah-boyd">danah-boyd</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/myspace">myspace</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/social-networks">social-networks</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/social-software">social-software</a></p>