Magic Numbers

01010101    It's over with the 0's and 1's. I'd suggest 0's and 5's as the new magic numbers in technology. "None of your contacts have uploaded any photos that you can see. Perhaps you need to hassle them to get to it!" cries my Flickr contact page. Here's the 0-users.

Please, Flickr, be honest! The need to hassle won't stop once somebody has switched their state to being a 1 (exemplary excitement - hey, I've started blogging! This day must be very special indeed...). So - is the hassling part of the 'social' or part of the 'software' component of (potentially) social software tools like Flickr, Blogger, Delicious? Do I have to bully all of my friends?

It's such a huge number of people that doesn't make it over the first three thresholds of 1. generating an account (works! enthusiasm...), 2. testing how to contribute (wow! that was work for me! and it worked! more enthusiasm...) and 3. contributing (what? now I have to work? enthusiasm buggers off to more fun spaces). They end up not using these tools for more than magical 5 times (ok, that might be 3 or 7, but that would be all too old school magic, so let's average).