One should expect a site that was providing a lot of value to its users to grow, even if it wasn’t explicitly trying to.
Yes, I do expect if you’re generating enough value you will should see automatic growth, from which I infer that LessWrong 2.0 isn’t providing that muchvalue to its users right now. Though I think there’s a mix of reasons to not be especially pessimistic:
Successful companies with worthwhile products seem to me to still have to invest in getting new users. My feeling (not really backed by data) is that you have to be outstandingly good to get full-on organic growth without trying. Not being there doesn’t mean you’re not providing value.
We see in the graphs that LW was not growing for most of its history: most of the metrics peak around 2011 and remain steady or decline slowly until 2015. I would argue that despite not growing, LW was still providing a lot of value to its users and the world during this period.
My outside view and inside view lead me believe hockey stick growthto be real. Part of my model is that even if you’re doing many things right, it might require having all the pieces click into place before dramatic growth starts. The pieces are connected in series, not parallel. Relatedly, sometimes the key to winning big is just not dying for long enough.
LW2 is much more fussy about which value we provide to which users than I expect most companies are. Most companies are trying to find approximately any product and corresponding set of users such that the value provided to users can be used to extract money somehow. In contrast, I care only about finding products and users to whom providing value will generate significant value for the world at large (particularly through the development/training of rationality and general intellectual progress on important problems). I think this is a much more restrictive constraint. It leads me (and I think the team generally) to want to forego many opportunities for user/activity growth if we don’t think they’ll lead to greater value for the world overall. Because of this, I’m not worried yet that we haven’t hit on a formula for providing value that’s organically getting a lot of growth. We have a narrow target.
Generally, I (and others on the team) don’t consider LW to have achieved the nonprofit analog of product-market fit. More precisely, we haven’t hit upon a definite and scalable mechanism for generating large amounts of value for the world (especially intellectual progress). I have an upcoming post I wish I could link to which describes various ideas we’re trying or thinking about as mechanisms. Open Questions is one such attempt.
Perhaps most of the value of the site is in the fact that it has posts, comments and votes. Beyond that it’s the value of the content, and that is modest and static.
I’m unsure of your meaning here. Are you saying there’s content separate from posts and comments? I consider all our content to fall into those categories. Some of it is arguably static, but I’m not sure I’d say modest? Can you say more what you meant by that?
Paul Graham is such a fun read, but when I have my skeptical hat on I don’t find myself convinced. What’s the mechanism of action? If LW doesn’t die it will eventually achieve its aims because .. ?
I do like the lens of product-market fit, and I tentatively agree LW doesn’t really have it. I guess you could say that you have successfully avoided dying and now you get to continuing swinging at ideas until you hit a home run.
What’s the mechanism of action? If LW doesn’t die it will eventually achieve its aims because .. ?
I think you really answered it, as long as you don’t die:
you get to continuing swinging at ideas until you hit a home run.
Of course, this works a lot better if you’re learning as you go and your successive attempts fall closer to success than if you’re randomly trying things. I’d like to think that the LW isn’t randomly swinging. There are also hard pieces like keeping the team engaged and optimistic even as things don’t seem dramatically different (though you could call that part of not dying).
Here is one framing: If you have a site that has high user turnover, while also having a stable number of users, then if you increase your retention by just a tiny bit, you are now in the dimension of exponential growth (and if your retention declines, you are now in the domain of exponential decline). It actually feels weird to have as high user turnover and overall visitors as we have, with some significant retention, but in a way that is almost perfectly cancelled out by people leaving (I have some thoughts on explanations of this that I might write up some other day).
The hypothesis is: the value of the site technical functionality to the average user is mostly the posts, comments and votes. That’s already built so the work on the margin hasn’t increased the value that much. The real room for variation is the value of the content (writing) on the site. The value of that content is modest (not huge) and static (not growing).
Yes, I do expect if you’re generating enough value you will should see automatic growth, from which I infer that LessWrong 2.0 isn’t providing that much value to its users right now. Though I think there’s a mix of reasons to not be especially pessimistic:
Successful companies with worthwhile products seem to me to still have to invest in getting new users. My feeling (not really backed by data) is that you have to be outstandingly good to get full-on organic growth without trying. Not being there doesn’t mean you’re not providing value.
We see in the graphs that LW was not growing for most of its history: most of the metrics peak around 2011 and remain steady or decline slowly until 2015. I would argue that despite not growing, LW was still providing a lot of value to its users and the world during this period.
My outside view and inside view lead me believe hockey stick growth to be real. Part of my model is that even if you’re doing many things right, it might require having all the pieces click into place before dramatic growth starts. The pieces are connected in series, not parallel. Relatedly, sometimes the key to winning big is just not dying for long enough.
LW2 is much more fussy about which value we provide to which users than I expect most companies are. Most companies are trying to find approximately any product and corresponding set of users such that the value provided to users can be used to extract money somehow. In contrast, I care only about finding products and users to whom providing value will generate significant value for the world at large (particularly through the development/training of rationality and general intellectual progress on important problems). I think this is a much more restrictive constraint. It leads me (and I think the team generally) to want to forego many opportunities for user/activity growth if we don’t think they’ll lead to greater value for the world overall. Because of this, I’m not worried yet that we haven’t hit on a formula for providing value that’s organically getting a lot of growth. We have a narrow target.
Generally, I (and others on the team) don’t consider LW to have achieved the nonprofit analog of product-market fit. More precisely, we haven’t hit upon a definite and scalable mechanism for generating large amounts of value for the world (especially intellectual progress). I have an upcoming post I wish I could link to which describes various ideas we’re trying or thinking about as mechanisms. Open Questions is one such attempt.
I’m unsure of your meaning here. Are you saying there’s content separate from posts and comments? I consider all our content to fall into those categories. Some of it is arguably static, but I’m not sure I’d say modest? Can you say more what you meant by that?
Paul Graham is such a fun read, but when I have my skeptical hat on I don’t find myself convinced. What’s the mechanism of action? If LW doesn’t die it will eventually achieve its aims because .. ?
I do like the lens of product-market fit, and I tentatively agree LW doesn’t really have it. I guess you could say that you have successfully avoided dying and now you get to continuing swinging at ideas until you hit a home run.
I think you really answered it, as long as you don’t die:
Of course, this works a lot better if you’re learning as you go and your successive attempts fall closer to success than if you’re randomly trying things. I’d like to think that the LW isn’t randomly swinging. There are also hard pieces like keeping the team engaged and optimistic even as things don’t seem dramatically different (though you could call that part of not dying).
Here is one framing: If you have a site that has high user turnover, while also having a stable number of users, then if you increase your retention by just a tiny bit, you are now in the dimension of exponential growth (and if your retention declines, you are now in the domain of exponential decline). It actually feels weird to have as high user turnover and overall visitors as we have, with some significant retention, but in a way that is almost perfectly cancelled out by people leaving (I have some thoughts on explanations of this that I might write up some other day).
Clarifying:
The hypothesis is: the value of the site technical functionality to the average user is mostly the posts, comments and votes. That’s already built so the work on the margin hasn’t increased the value that much. The real room for variation is the value of the content (writing) on the site. The value of that content is modest (not huge) and static (not growing).