Really Short Summary: INCUBATING THE MINDVIRUS: MEME INFRASTRUCTURES
Moderator: Anil Dash (Six Apart)Panelists: Matt Haughey (Metafilter), Josh Schacter (del.icio.us), Alexis Ohanian (Reddit), David Lloyd (OCRemix), Drew Curtis (Fark.com)
- Q:What did you do before you started? Reddit: student trying to avoid going to law school. Metafilter: I was a designer/programmer. Fark: Running an ISP. Overclock Remix: Going to highschool. Doing radio.
- Q: Does print legitimize you? A: I want to say no, but yes. A: We got into New York Times. We got into a couple magazines that have since gone under.
- Q: Do you do it for a living? A: Yes. A:Yes. A: Remixing video game music … yeah we’re poor. No. We’re doing a remix soundtrack for Street Fighter HD.
- Q: Community leanings? A: Mario, Chrono Trigger, Squaresoft. A: Web obsessives. A: Ron Paul, Lispers, Paul Graham fans
- Q: How would you change your communities? Metafilter: Nothing. Reddit: Buy more t-shirts? Remixes: More diversity. Don’t go with lowest common denominator.
- Q: Do your communities reflect you? Metafilter: Sort of. Reddit: I hope not.
- Q: How much interaction between sites? Remixes: We submitted our new FF7 album to Fark… it didn’t get in. Fark: We believe in cross-pollination. Metafilter: Fark links used to cripple our site.
- Q: Control: Reddit has the least, Metafilter has elitism built in. Fark: Editor approval. Influences the government. Remixes: About 10 submissions a day, we examine them very carefully. Our community has a very high standard.
- Q: How do you wield your power? Fark: Tried to bump up a stock price. Didn’t work. Reddit: Mr. Splashypants, stop humpback whaling. Japanese gov’t stopped whaling season.
Panel gets rick rolled through question submission.
- Q: How do you feel about marketers. A: I hate marketers. A: Message to marketers: Things just happen organically, we couldn’t stage the Mr. Splashypants phenomenon if we wanted to. A: If you’re legit, people will accept you.
- Q: Super star users stealing the spotlight? Reddit: We support them. None have turned or abandoned us to our knowledge. Metafilter: Cut off the bad ones. Fark: We have a bunch of strong microcommunites. Check out Kelly Keagan. Remix: We have a broad userbase and new talent is always coming in to fill the void left by old talent.
- Q: Do you keep tabs on each other or use each others’ sites? A: No. A: No. A: Remix - if we’re competing with these other guys, we’re losing pretty badly.
- Q: Do you have IP issues? Remix: We’re in a grey area. We chose our battles wisely. Fark: All major news outlets use us as a source. We would like to get some cred, but there are legal issues about product placement if we get mentioned. Writers like to avoid those kinds of issues. Metafilter: It would be nice if they linked back. Reddit: Major news sites should rip us off more. They’d get better content.
- Q: Community in-jokes? A: Wake up sheeple! A: They show strong community, but are kind of confusing for newcomers.
- Q: US-centricity? Remix: We’re doing translations. Japanese is the biggie. Reddit: 40% of hits are from outside the US.
- Q: Can anyone in your community create a meme? A: Yes, but not on purpose. Remix: Your best bet is to take two things from different sources and combine them.
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