How Myyearbook ‘Crowdsourced’ Its Relaunch — By Steve Smith

In late January the very popular 20-million member social network myYearbook launched a new design that was created in collaboration with its own users. The company had asked members for suggestions and even design mockups for the redo, and this eventually led to their voting on the final shape of their network. The site is one of the online success stories. Its collection of social networking, matchmaking, and gaming is a hybrid economy of advertising and virtual currency sources.

I recently caught up with myYearbook ceo Geoff Cook to review its performance and how it pulled off a crowdsourced redesign. Here are excerpts:

Steve Smith: For this user-generated redesign, were people actually sending in mockups of a new site or just suggesting new features?

Geoff Cook: We received dozens of actual mockups and hundreds of concept submissions. We were actually surprised at the number of mockups received [as there were] some strong Photoshop skills in our membership. However, we only required a concept be submitted. We wanted the submission process to be as open as possible.

Smith: Was the final design a variant on what someone had submitted or an agglomeration of the best submissions?

Cook: The final design was an agglomeration of the best submissions. Based on the feedback, we created five designs that we thought reflected the concept and mockup submissions. We then put these up to a vote. The actual five mockups that members voted on are available at the site. The winning design was a clear favorite.

The next question was whether or not the new design was going to be viewed as actually better than the old design. The more data that we could have supporting the notion that we were making an improvement, the easier it is to accept that feedback. It turned out that the new design beat the old design 3 to 1 in voting. And, it also turned out that resistance to change scaled linearly with age.

Smith: So, how did you manage the risk of designing around what members said they would use rather than what they actually would use?

Cook: To ensure that did not happen, we rolled out the new design slowly starting with 1% of our users. Our process was to create two groups: one was the control group (who got the old design) and the other was the beta group (who got the new design). In all cases, the new design was either better than the old design or no worse than the old design. As a result, we increased the ramp while continuing to monitor until we fully ramped to 100% of users on January 26.

Smith: I have reported that myYearbook was close to or at profitability. Is this still so?

Cook: Yes, still so....One-third of our revenue is now driven by virtual currency-- up from zero in July 2008.

Smith: Will there be any media partnerships with magazine-branded sites or blog networks?

Cook: We expect to have something to announce in second-quarter 2009 as far as interesting partnerships with large media companies.

Smith: Is virtual currency a phenomenon that is restricted to social networks and gaming or do you see a future for this model among other kinds of content?

Cook: I think virtual currency can extend beyond the social network/social game. Certainly, Facebook Connect could be step 1 of a larger virtual-currency-for-the web strategy, which would enable microtransactions around content. However, one stumbling block is that virtual currencies are complex, as they relate to social gaming, and often not pure, in the sense that users can earn the currency in ways other than paying for it.

Steve Smith (popeyesmith@comcast.net) is digital media editor for min/min’s b2b/minonline.com. He posts regularly on minonline and directs the min Webinars. Smith also co-chairs min’s Digital Summits and, as ceo of Roving Eyeball Inc., he consults for a number of publishers in the digital space.