Just the other day I took part in the 3camp.pl event where I gave a quick heads-up on pstro.pl. Other presenter on that night was Dominik Kaznowski from Nasza-Klasa, who kicked off by announcing that NK success is an obvious case of a black swan theory in action. At first I was skeptical, but with days passing and grey cells evaporating his thesis started to sink in. So just to recap, if you’re not familiar with the theory, Nassim Taleb used the term Black Swan to describe a very rare and hard to predict event.
What phenomena could we attribute a BlackSwan sticker to:
1. Event has appeared by complete surprise.
2. Event has a major impact.
3. Event, after it has appeared, is ‘explained’ by human hindsight.
(definition by wikipedia)
Following this lead, we could say indeed that the phenomenon of Nasza-Klasa was an exemplary Black Swan.
#1. Notwithstanding incumbent, well-funded social networks in Poland, who tinkered with building their communities around classes/schools way beforeNK time, it was the new kid on the block – NK who had a break in the classmates category
#2. You won’t find a person in Poland who doesn’t know Nasza-Klasa. Just the fact that an online product built so much awareness outside of its Internet-savvy focus audience is clearly astounding. I know people who have active NK accounts and are not capable of starting a computer, let alone, typing or using a mouse. Show me any other web product so magnetic that mums ask daughters to set them up with user accounts.
#3. Daaaahh!. Haven’t we all had exactly same idea for an Internet service just before they launched? It seems so obvious from where we are today.
Now. By definition, Black Swan is something you don’t over-analyze, draw conclusions for future or try to smoke out black-swans-to-be, as they’re only meant the be the simple episodes of randomness. Hence I put the theory aside for a second and focus on #2 – the major impact on the mainstream audience.
Nasza-Klasa is the first major online product in Poland* (excluding portals that are merely a reincarnation of traditional media) that apart from being a regular hang-out for Internet kids, also taps into that mass audience of non-geek population, 50+ of mums and dads, semi-computer savvy teenagers and other non-obvious Internet users. This is their biggest strength. They’re for all and don’t try to be otherwise.
NK is the first web product in Poland that doesn’t replace or improves traditional products, but adds value where nothing else existed before. What do I mean. My dad or my friend’s mum isn’t inclined to switching to online collaboration tools (IM, email, skype, twitter), consume online media (blogs, portals, podcasts), because those only upgrade functionalities of existing products / mediums (telephone, conversation, tv, radio, press) which they got used to and are very comfortable with.
Difference with NK is that they furnished us with the value that wasn’t available anywhere else. So, population of you, me, our mums and dads and hordes of slow Internet adopters were sort of forced to jump on the NK bandwagon, if their need for 24/7-global-socializing, perving on childhood sweat-hearts, sneak-peeking their friends photos, and last but not least, building their self-image by comparison to others, was ever to be satisfied. The rest was history.
Staying with Black Swan theory, what other web apps could we expect that, above-all-else, will be eagerly received by the broad-base of Polish Internet users:
- opinions, reviews, advisory sites (check out pstro.pl for example)
- recommendation engines & collaborative / behavioral filtering stuff (show me things I will like, check-out szufler.pl for example)
- uncomplicated (unlike-GTD) simple productivity tools / frameworks – online calendars? seeing availability of your dentist before making that call?
- vertical social tools/portals for specific interest groups – ie. amateur musical instrument players
What I think Nasza-Klasa needs to do to maintain it’s growth trajectory:
- mobile (bring it to the masses, bring it to the Malls/Galerias
- open API and allow creating third party apps
- more functionalities with images please (apparently this is what people use NK mostly for these days, Fotka for the masses)
- change name (surely it’s passed their care factor by now) or create an alternative domain name in preparation for separation from the classmates core (www.nk.pl?)
- now that they’ve captured the slow-adopters, give them access to collaboration tools (NK email account, NK IM etc)
Concluding my random thoughts on NK, here’s a short list of things Nasza-Klasa taught me about web products for the mainstream market:
- Give them something they don’t have anywhere else. Not an online substitute. Not an upgrade. Just fill a brand new need. A need they never before thought they could afford to fill.
- Let your users feed their egos. Let them bask in the light of glory and fulfillment shinning from their profile photos of exotic trips, scuba dives, car racing tournaments.
- People (in Poland especially) are obsessed with monitoring their self-image and comparing themselves to others. Enters Personal PR.
- If you believe brand names (domain names) matter or if you believe they don’t, you’re right in both cases.
- As long as you do all of the above you don’t need to be obsessed with design and usability (just open nasza-klasa.pl, you’ll see what I mean)
- Lean startups lead by energetic, passionate teams can win with cash-obese incumbent players (ie. grono, fotka)
* all right, all right. Maybe second, right after price comparison sites like nokaut or ceneo.
any music files
