IP Democracy: Simplicity Drives the Success of YouTube, MySpace

Paul Boutin has this piece in Slate today which has a superb title: A Grand Unified Theory of YouTube and MySpace. Boutin tackles something that’s been nagging at me too — why are arguably funny-looking and technologically boring (in comparison to the razzamatazz stuff found elsehwere) sites such as YouTube and MySpace so popular?

His deceptively simple answer: they’re easy to use and they don’t tell users what to do.

But the focus on the collaborative nature of these sites has been nagging at me. Sites like Friendster and Blogger that promote sharing and friend-making have been around for years with nowhere near the mainstream success. I’ve got a different theory. YouTube and MySpace are runaway hits because they combine two attributes rarely found together in tech products. They’re easy to use, and they don’t tell you what to do.

(And I love his characterization of the difficulties of using BitTorrent. “Given up on BitTorrent because it feels like launching a mission to Mars?” All these many months and I thought it was only me that had problems getting BitTorrent to work.)

Boudin writes well and persuasively but something is still missing. Lots of sites and places on the Internet are easy and flexible, but it’s just plain fascinating how so many people jumped on the MySpace train, for example, in such a short period of time.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on April 28, 2006 6:41 PM to IP Democracy