This is the original announcement and all of the related discussion. I am not sure that there is value in reading the 1899 posts to the thread...I have to admit that I quit following it a week ago and there have been almost 300 posts since then. Feel free to ask more specific questions.

OK, thanks for the link, but like you, I don't have the desire to go through 1899 posts. The initial post basically says, "we created this network, it was good, now we're closing it". There's not much explanation that I can see. Again, perhaps the real explanations are buried deeper into the 1899 post discussion.

So here are some more specific questions:

Were Omidyar.net's initial goals large or small? i.e. The first post in that link makes it sound like all they were doing was making an internal tool open to the public (i.e. a small goal). Yet I was drawn to Omidyar.net in part based on a magazine article that, IIRC, framed Omidyar.net in rather grandiose terms - as ebay for charity, more or less.

Is Omidyar.net closing because it has failed to meet goals, or because of a loss of interest by those running it?

Is it only the community forums/public portions of Omidyar.net that are closing, or is the overall Omidyar charitable organization/foundation closing or changing substantially as well?

Finally, I see references to a lot of possible substitute communities to which Omidyar.net members are encouraged to switch. It appears there is not one clear site that will step into the void created by Omidyar.net's closure, and that various folks are advocating various alternatives. Many of these alternatives seem a bit 'raw' - beta products and/or with small user bases. I guess the most important feature of any community site is not the software (though that IS important), but rather, the members themselves. What I liked about Omidyar.net is that it had a reasonably large user base, and that many of those users were/are reasonably sophisticated - not just 18 year-old college freshman with big dreams (though those aren't bad), but also a fair number of gray hairs with some experience in the field to go along with their idealism. What community charity-focused site might best capture this mix of reasonbly mature technology, reasonably large user base, and a dose of experience to go along with the idealism?

Phil, many members have been going to Razoo, AboutUs, WiserEarth, Facebook and ned.com (same o/net software and UI).

Please check it out: http://www.ned.com/home/

Phil Steinmeyer (CCAL30) said:

OK, thanks for the link, but like you, I don't have the desire to go through 1899 posts. The initial post basically says, "we created this network, it was good, now we're closing it". There's not much explanation that I can see. Again, perhaps the real explanations are buried deeper into the 1899 post discussion.

So here are some more specific questions:

Were Omidyar.net's initial goals large or small? i.e. The first post in that link makes it sound like all they were doing was making an internal tool open to the public (i.e. a small goal). Yet I was drawn to Omidyar.net in part based on a magazine article that, IIRC, framed Omidyar.net in rather grandiose terms - as ebay for charity, more or less.

None of this has been addressed.

Is Omidyar.net closing because it has failed to meet goals, or because of a loss of interest by those running it?

There has been no indication of failure form the Omidyar Management team.

Is it only the community forums/public portions of Omidyar.net that are closing, or is the overall Omidyar charitable organization/foundation closing or changing substantially as well?

It is only this social network that is ceasing.

Finally, I see references to a lot of possible substitute communities to which Omidyar.net members are encouraged to switch. It appears there is not one clear site that will step into the void created by Omidyar.net's closure, and that various folks are advocating various alternatives. Many of these alternatives seem a bit 'raw' - beta products and/or with small user bases. I guess the most important feature of any community site is not the software (though that IS important), but rather, the members themselves. What I liked about Omidyar.net is that it had a reasonably large user base, and that many of those users were/are reasonably sophisticated - not just 18 year-old college freshman with big dreams (though those aren't bad), but also a fair number of gray hairs with some experience in the field to go along with their idealism. What community charity-focused site might best capture this mix of reasonbly mature technology, reasonably large user base, and a dose of experience to go along with the idealism?

I think part of the goal here is to scatter seeds into other existing and new communities. There are a fair number of people who are setting up a home base on Razoo.com, facebook.com and ned.com.

I hope this helps.

Phil Steinmeyer (CCAL30) said:

I guess the most important feature of any community site is not the software (though that IS important), but rather, the members themselves.

Good point -- I would also add: content (note that the most significant and/or reliable indicator of content is the domain name [e.g. http://books.com/ ]).

What community charity-focused site might best capture this mix of reasonably mature technology, reasonably large user base, and a dose of experience to go along with the idealism?

I do not think it is the size of the user base that matters as much as the level of expertise (cf. http://physician.md/ ). Moreover, UGC is only as valuable as this level of the expertise observed among its membership (with a dose of responsible community management ;). The primary generic search term for "community" sites is "groups" (with a modifier that describes the desired topical focus -- e.g. http://support-groups.net/ ). Therefore, I am trying to garner interest for a "CX" portfolio of sites (http://groups.cx/ , http://group.cx/ and http://wiki.cx/ ), such that the directory of groups will be found at the plural (http://groups.cx/), individual descriptions (redirects, etc.) will be located at the singular (http://group.cx/) and a wiki can be accordingly use the appropriate "branding" (http://wiki.cx/). As you say, this is so far still in the earliest of stages -- and therefore I have simply opted to use an "off the shelf" go-between to allow team members to sign up (see http://yahoo.groups.cx/). [1]

This bites! I just decides to use this, and now they are closing? What for?

The answer is that the people who know the answer refuse to tell. We have asked about 1000 times. So all we can do is piece together evidence for theories.

I've been following all the "Why" and "Please No" and "What Now" conversations religiously. Two of the more focused of these were "Why did o/net fail to survive" and "Campaign to save o/net".

We asked the board to ask Pierre to make a closing statement about this place, but the message we got back was "Pierre will not make a statement".

Put yourself in his shoes. The domain is named after you. Hundreds of really amazing people started hundreds of really amazing projects here, and you've got amazing free advertising from that. There is also a sense from many of these same amazing people that the site needs serious work to work. Many amazing people left in a huff, because they felt that either someone was abusive here or else management wasn't managing this place well, or both.

Pierre (or someone close to him, like his lawyer) clearly wanted this place shut down. I don't think it was Thomas or Haney, because they just finished rolling out the "tagging" solution and the shutdown notice came way too soon after their announcements of that for it to have come from them. Plus, if they were shutting it down, they would have probably said a lot more about why, and answered a lot more questions. The consistency with which they have stuck to the very terse official story makes it feel to me like their employment depends on them doing that.

If I were Pierre, the two things that would make me want to shut the site down would be the liability from flamers, some of whom were really testing the limits, and the fact that ever since he stopped posting the activity level on the site had been dropping. Businessmen have a hard time staring at a downward trend for that long. Even if it had stopped falling, "Omidyar" is too valuable of a brand to have that kind of graph attached to it.

But before anyone gets mad at Pierre, go to ned.com! Pierre is my hero, because he basically gave away the core of this place. People will have to rebuild over there, but that's kind of a good thing. And they are also going to keep this content viewable for another year and a half. That is very generous, in case we later realise we want to move some of this content over. Oh, and they set up that whole CCAL30 thing very quickly.

So it really isn't fair to fault Pierre for taking his name back. I think under normal circumstances he would say all this himself. I believe the only reason he does not is either because his lawyer advised him not to, or he is deeply offended at what someone(s) did or said here, and he doesn't want to engage that person(s) in any way.

AmbassadorsoftheLight@yahoo. com (CCAL30) said:

This bites! I just decides to use this, and now they are closing? What for?

Sounds like you might be interested in funding. I'd highly recommend going to: http://beta.razoo.com/onet/ you could even have a shot at $10,000...well, two shots really. Good luck.

Mark Grimes said:

AmbassadorsoftheLight@yahoo. com (CCAL30) said:

This bites! I just decides to use this, and now they are closing? What for?

Sounds like you might be interested in funding. I'd highly recommend going to: http://beta.razoo.com/onet/ you could even have a shot at $10,000...well, two shots really. Good luck.

Looks to me like some people want to give a barbecue to smoke out their conscientious tought.

But then again, who cares. Throw a few bones on it and see who's gonna eat it.

The cost of running Onet is minimal (Not even a peanut, more like a peanuts skin).

Still pondering their decision to make way with it.

Could make a good thesis for a PHD, and i hope somebody will follow it up.

Phil said "For the benefit of those of us who haven't been following closely, could someone summarize why Omidyar.net is shutting down, and/or point me to a relevant discussion of the topic?"

You will never know the reason.

Some came here for the money. Some came looking for a cause. Some came to support others.

The o/net was unclear on their purpose both in presenting it to the public and the members.

This to shall pass.

I must say that I think Mark is a great guy, and I do wish him the best with his "ned" project. But when he mentioned that this will basically be his personal desktop -- and that people can simply "come along" -- then it became clear to me that this was not going to become a collaborative effort in the sense of equal parties collaborating. It will be interesting to watch how the "ned" group develops -- and I applaud the efforts that are being put into making the use of feedback more transparent.

Mark is very good at marketing -- he is a natural. He has probably made more edits to the "where we're going" workspace in the last week (i.e. promoting ned by listing names of people than have signed up) than he has made edits to any workspace in the 3+ years he has been on omidyar.net. It is quite clear that Mark wants everyone to know again and again that "someone is showing up at ned right now" (so why don't you? ;)

For me the answer is that I am looking for collaboration -- and it has been quite clearly stated (by Mark himself) that that is not what ned is about. Ned is about promoting ned-labeled projects. That may very well be a good thing -- it's just not what I'm looking for.

So in sum, I would say yes: do take a look at ned (I will certainly do so for a while longer [if only to see whether the site actually does become as "transparent" as Mark says it will]).

:) nmw

Mark Grimes said:

Please check it out

>>I must say that I think Mark is a great guy, and I do wish him the best with his "ned" project. But when he mentioned that this will basically be his personal desktop -- and that people can simply "come along" -- then it became clear to me that this was not going to become a collaborative effort in the sense of equal parties collaborating. It will be interesting to watch how the "ned" group develops -- and I applaud the efforts that are being put into making the use of feedback more transparent.<<

Thanks. Also, one of the reason there are 16 people on the board of advisors is to make absolutely certain that it remains open to collaboration one many fronts. WRT equal parties, the members from Gulu may well be collaborating on the Ned-Uganda front...but it is still very much their coop and their initiative. Other members and groups will have nothing other to do with <Ned> as a brand other than using the site, and that's fine too.

>>Mark is very good at marketing -- he is a natural. He has probably made more edits to the "where we're going" workspace in the last week (i.e. promoting ned by listing names of people than have signed up) than he has made edits to any workspace in the 3+ years he has been on omidyar.net. It is quite clear that Mark wants everyone to know again and again that "someone is showing up at ned right now" (so why don't you? ;)<<

It's hard often to understand someone's reason for doing something without asking them. Even then I guess you have to trust the answer. The edits have more to do with wanting to include everyone is listed than marketing. With 9/7 fast approaching, I simply don’t want to leave anyone out, guess I could have done an edit every 48 hours, but I'm working in the flow...like usual. Ned will certainly not be for everybody...not by a long shot. I think there are plenty of great new locations for members to find themselves working in, and think there may well be cross collaboration between some of the platforms too.

http://www.aboutus.org/

http://beta.razoo.com/onet/

http://wiserearth.org/article/ae 936f10e632db9f4991a805e9c5a550

>>For me the answer is that I am looking for collaboration -- and it has been quite clearly stated (by Mark himself) that that is not what ned is about. Ned is about promoting ned-labeled projects. That may very well be a good thing -- it's just not what I'm looking for.<<

Sure there will be ned-labeled projects, products and services, but many other groups, projects and initiatives as well. And I'm not sure where I said it's not about collaboration...it is very much about collaboration. It's also very much developing organically and going thru changes real time and in the flow.

this was not going to become a collaborative effort in the sense of equal parties collaborating.

Well, o/net wasn't that, either. And it was still fun. :)

How can you promote anything other than a ned-labeled-product on ned.com? In a sense everything here is an omidyar-labeled-product. I think that's why it's shutting down.

So, regardless of my personal feelings towards Mark (if graphed over time, this would probably be a sine wave, but so would my feelings about myself :) I encourage Mark not to make the same mistake as Pierre by just letting everyone do whatever the heck they want with your brand image. That attitude cost us o/net, imo.

Give people the bad news up front. Spares people a lot of disappointment, and ultimately leads to a lot more productivity.

See you over at ned.com! :)

Mark Grimes said:

And I'm not sure where I said it's not about collaboration...it is very much about collaboration.

Mark Grimes said on Wed, 25 Jul 2007 14:01:31 PDT in "ned.com - the platform" (in response to my question):

>>How will you use it? The same way as here?<<

I'm not sure. There'll be no need for a Ned Group, that's for sure. To a certain degree the way I use it depends on what I'm working on or who I'm trying to help I guess. In short, one way I'll still use it is just like it’s my digital desktop, and other members collaborators...much like I do now.

That response is full of "I Me Mine" -- not a trace of "We".

hehem: "mimimimimi..."

;D nmw

Oh dear, now we could have an "I Me Mine" tag! :)

Dav in Phoenix (CCAL30) said:

this was not going to become a collaborative effort in the sense of equal parties collaborating.

Well, o/net wasn't that, either. And it was still fun. :)

Now that's interesting -- and perhaps this is also the crux of why I never liked rating (i.e. giving feedback points to) people. So the fact that I never fully came to terms with that is indeed why omidyar.net might be considered a "failure" from my perspective. But no, I do not think that rating people this way is fun.

And perhaps ned.com would actually be an opportunity to correct what I consider to be faulty system (I would start by timestamping feedback and allowing users to track it FIFO [allowing them to adjust their time windows as they wish]).

I'm curious (Dav): What do you think was especially "fun" about omidyar.net?

Pierre was 'Right-On' here!!

ONet's failure was due to a lot of things,

1. the point system caused fighting which pulled discussions off topic.
2. the point system was 'game-able' which pulled discussions off topic and provided and un-level playing field.
3. the members were not on the same page! in terms of the goals and mission for the overall site!
4. development suggestions were not acted upon,

personally, I'm with Norbert with the collaboration goals,

but I think 'collaboration' is really the wrong word, I think Team Effort might be better,

but the real deal is Everyone on the same page (a level playing field)

In the beginning Pierre wanted to Move the Needle, he wanted to change Philanthropy, he saw that the way Philanthropy is currently conducted thru Foundations and such was failing, he hoped & wished that if given the tools that the people (the public) could as a group make better decisions at how and where charity should be directed, Pierre was 'Right-On' here!!

now, some here never saw that nor ever embraced the open/equality concept, they wanted the historical 'foundation' structures along with all it's potential insider flaws!

as is, <ned> is one of these 'old' foundation supporters, <ned> has a closed and private board, continues to support non-transparent feedback! continues to direct and control what can or cannot be posted, etc. <ned> is a stuck needle!! :)

now, Razoo.com on the other hand is a truly 'Open Space'! anyone can post anything there, open any new discussion, create any new structures, etc. there is no tools embedded that can cause 'bad feelings' or 'gaming of the system'! I do see room/need for some improvement in terms of 'how to find stuff' especially as the site grows, further I would like to see some rating/kudos systems applied to topics/causes/groups, and some sort of an indexing system but I havn't had time to really explore all the options so maybe some of this is already in place.

Razoo is very close to being able to 'Move that needle" imo :)

>>That response is full of "I Me Mine" -- not a trace of "We".<<

Right, and look at the question that was being responding to. Had you asked "how will the platform develop?", that would have been a different answer. Had you asked "how do you envision members might us it?", that would have been yet another different answer.

Yea, OK -- good point: My questions were, I guess, imprecise. Just look at the wording on this one:

Who will decide whether/what to change?

I acknowledge that a question like that might be pretty hard to navigate. Sorry about that, Chief!

;D nmw

>>Who will decide whether/what to change?<<

The Ned community at large is and will be making recommendations. Jim is going to throw the code on a site so other Python developers can improve it too, with ability to see it for quality control purposes for their changes. Right now, Jim can make changes based on time/money. Smaller changes like making all points transparent he made happen in less than a day. If there are changes that may take up more of his time, there will need to be a budget and funds gathered to compensate him.

Hey, I got negged a few posts back, and this is the first time I actually felt getting negged was a positive experience. Because it meant someone was still reading!

And even better, it was probably a lurker who negged me, because all the active posters are either totally against negs or very big on transparency.

I'm guessing they negged me because they disagree with what I said. I made it clear that those were my guesses, not facts. So either someone is offended by this kind of speculation (unlikely) or else they just feel that my guesses are wrong and want to register that sentiment, in case anyone might be swayed into believing my guesses were right.

That's one way people used negative feedback here. That part didn't work at all. You can't sort posts from highest to lowest feedback rating and find any correlation to how true they are, any more than you can correlate how many votes a president got with how good a job they will do.

Hey, btw, if the anonymous neg giver wants to tell me why, I'm all ears. I won't retaliate or anything. I'd also love to hear your opinion about why this place closed.

I'm curious (Dav): What do you think was especially "fun" about omidyar.net?

Well, meeting you, nmw, was one of the funnest moments. But basically I love thinking and writing and discussing and sharing ideas. I find it boring to just sit and write all my ideas out for myself. I like hearing other people's reactions, I like listening to other people's ideas and getting new ideas from them, and vice versa.

This place is not perfect, but it is really good at that. As long as you avoided the dead threads, and stayed more or less on topic, people responded.

There's a point I would like to throw in. I think this is about the 10th year that I have spent some time in virtual communities. Every one that I have experienced has had 90% of its value below the surface -people connections it made but that cannot be directly measured from what can be seen on the conversational surface.

I am pretty certain that whomever advises Pierre on measuring the efiiciency of this space has no accounted for below the surface. I find it a startling conclusion but in the absence of other possibilities it's about all that's left.

Phil, did you ever hear of Dr. Wayne Dyer -- the ball headed guy that they put on during public television fund drives?