It’s Not Just the GIFs

In https://chat.meatspac.es, it’s obvious that realtime messaging and animated GIFs can contribute a lot to a fun web interaction. But I am not convinced these elements in themselves are all one needs to create the right user experience to enable constant participation, a positive community and creative motivation.

Why GIFs and Realtime Work

GIFs connected to a video stream from WebRTC enable someone to make a funny face or show what they are currently doing. Having a feedback loop of responses based on your current situation generates a conversational interaction - just like a real face-to-face interaction.

But one difference of this model from a real face-to-face encounter is the ability to step away when you are overwhelmed, feeling shy or wanting to do something else without offending the active participants. You can’t just walk away from someone mid-conversation (well, you could but then it would be rude). On the other hand, in virtual space it is easy and also allows people to feel safe.

GIFS and Realtime in Virtual Space with Multiple Channels and Private Messaging

Suppose we create this GIF and chat site and replicate all the functionality of IRC (Internet Relay Chat). Now we have the ability to create private channels and private messaging. We can’t privately message each other or invite others without a unique identifier for each user. That means everyone will first need to create a username or have something that others can reference when they want to talk to that specific person.

The Problem of Choice Paralysis

Now imagine a person who is in multiple channels, tied to an identity and add in the element of time. Assuming the person is busy with work and non-work life activities, there is only so much attention they can focus on this GIF and chat site.

As a result, they will likely have a limited attention span and won’t be able to spend equal amounts of time on every channel they are participating in. Now you risk having dead channels where nobody is speaking - these are more or less a waste of space.

Another possiblity is that they are participating in too many channels and are too overwhelmed to bother putting any effort in having a serious conversation or interaction with others. Then they risk avoiding participation fully and completely. Based on this flow, it makes sense to remove multiple channels.

One Channel vs. Multiple Channels

With a single channel for public discussion, we’ve eliminated the risk of choice paralysis. A person only has one option - either to participate or not. They don’t have to choose which channel to chat in and this simplifies the participation model.

One Channel with Private Messaging

Let’s take this a bit further - we’ve removed multiple channels but we still have private messaging and forced identities. What is the purpose of private messaging except to create a private channel of discussion between two individuals?

Again, this is a similar situation with the multiple channel model, where you have to keep track of users you are interacting with on top of a single, public channel. Socializing is reduced in the public channel since you have the option to go talk to someone else.

One Channel with No Private Messaging

We have reduced the site to only support a single channel and no more private messaging. This means we don’t need to manage unique identities since all discussions are focused in one public space. We remove that barrier of creating a username, verifying that it is unique and keeping track of who we want to talk to.

As a result, the choices we have are only what message we want to type, when we want to type it and what the camera will take an animated GIF of when we send the message.

The GIF Becomes the Identity

Removing the requirement to create a unique, stable identity means that our GIFs of our faces, where we are going or what we are doing become our ephemeral identity. We can easily be whoever we want to based on what we post. The animations add a layer of complexity that enables participants to understand our current status with as little effort as possible.

It’s not the Number of Participants but the Quality

Forcing participants to only chat in a single public channel with a requirement for their camera-to-animated GIF submission encourages people to be more sincere since they generally show their face and their face becomes recognizable by others.

A single channel can only handle so many chats from users before it becomes noise. I haven’t verified the following, but I suspect that some form of Dunbar’s Number occurs in Meatspace chat that filters out many lurkers and streamlines the social relationships between regular participants. In other words, the single channel method results in a limit of participants that will actively communicate.

Focused Public Space and Community Regulation

Since the focused community starts forming real relationships built on various levels of positive, genuine conversation, they self-regulate the channel. Having a client-side mute button allows participants to easily ignore people who join the conversation and are trolls or providing a negative experience.

If a muted individual is not receiving feedback from the community, they are not getting the attention they crave and will find it difficult to continue participation in an environment where nobody wants to talk to them.

And Last But Not Least …

Messages are ephemeral by default - after ten minutes, each message on the server is deleted. It is possible for people to log these messages on their own but the site has no default archiving support.

Ephemeral messaging has an interesting side effect of being similar to a real conversation. When you talk to someone face-to-face, you don’t archive everything you discuss while speaking. You remember parts of the conversation in the current time and a week later you will likely forget most of it or even the context.

Combining the ephemeral aspect with content generated by a self-regulating community, it feels more like a geniune digital tribe - something that we seem to long for on the Internet.

Is this the perfect model? Likely not. This is just one way of structuring social interaction to enable positive outcomes. It may only be short term but the hope is that it influences others to think about similar models and to solve related problems of conversations in a digital space.