Building a Stickier Quibb
This post originally appeared on Quibb
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A few months ago I joined Quibb, a community to share and discuss industry news with wicked smart people. At first I brushed it off as just another firehose of content in my already information-overloaded world.
But then it clicked. Quibb is now a part of my daily habits and is the first place I go to share quality startup and tech content (desire engine, engaged) with its hand-chosen, insightful community.
And as I used it more, I began to think about how it could be improved.
1) Quibb Everywhere
To post to Quibb, members install a browser extension and click a button next to the address bar to share the URL being viewed. Buffer, which shares similar engagement loops and funnels, also offers an extension but they take it a step further.
Once installed, Buffer embeds buffer links directly within sites like Twitter, Hacker News, and Reddit. Although minimal, this serves as trigger to remind users to share on Quibb. Fortunately for users that dislike this “intrusion”, this can be disabled in the extension’s options menu.
2) Frictionless Engagement
Quibb’s extension button appears the same for every URL you visit but imagine if a notification surfaced when visiting a page that other followed members on Quibb submitted, upvoted, or commented on. This external trigger may encourage more user-to-user engagement and serve as a pleasant serendipitous discovery - “Oh, Sandi commented on this? I wonder what she said.”
This could be taken a step further by surfacing pages that a followed Quibb member visited but didn’t engage with (e.g. “Sandi checked this out”). Borrowing from an existing feature on the site, members could “ask to comment” with a click of a button.
Of course, privacy-concerned members would immediately disable this but the growing population of those that live in public (myself included) would find this valuable.
3) Complete the Engagement Loop
Here’s the current flow when posting to Quibb:
Something’s missing.
The loop ends without bringing the user back to Quibb. Instead of directing users to a dead end, notifications, recently submitted content, or similar articles should be surfaced to engage users. Increasing engagement has a downstream effect as organic notifications are triggered by user-to-user interactions.
4) Give Recognition with “By”
There’s a reason we retweet and add via @username to our tweets. We enjoy giving others props for creating great content.
Often when I read must-share articles, I go out of my way to find the writer’s Twitter username to include in my tweet.
Giving members the ability to add a “by [twitter username]” in each Quibb post allows them to give recognition to the content creator (who probably isn’t on Quibb) when the article is shared on Twitter. Unfortunately, this adds a bit of friction; however, there may be ways to streamline by scraping the page and providing suggestions or using a third party service that associates domains to social profiles (one must exist).
5) Broadcasting to Twitter
The @Quibb account is underutilized. There’s opportunity to broadcast popular content and discussions to Twitter, @mentioning Quibb members and the original content creator. Similar to the above, this is provides recognition to existing members and draws attention of content creators.
With that being said, Quibb’s success will ultimately come through its community. Some of these tactics may annoy some members so a careful balance between privacy, user experience, and growth is crucial (learn from Quora).
In any case, I hope these ideas spark some creativity and I’d love to hear what others think.