Embedded assumption #475 in Stack Overflow users: it is obvious that replying to a question is not Answering it.
I have no idea what the badges, karma, etc. are. For me, it works quite well. In fact, the only mildly confusing thing for me was that I had to use some OpenID thing to login the first time.
Think about that. Their value prop to someone coming in through Google or posting a question is simple and the barrier to entry is very low.
My first experiences with the site weren't too good: I tried to upvote a comment (I mean, there's a big fat arrow to the left of the comment!), and then I tried to answer the question and I believe it didn't let me either...
If you want to I'll try finding it :) (it should be on my PC somewhere, I don't usually delete those things)
Edit: I'll put my e-mail on my profile, sorry people for the offtopic.
No, you're not. I remember looking at stackoverflow once and there was some sort of New here? Read this wall of text to get started! to which I responded Awesome! Maybe I'll read that when I have looked at the latest pictures on reddit!
Stackoverflow incorrectly assumed that I gave a shit about their website. They can get away with it because they have technical users who often don't react like that. But if your users aren't technical, then you can't possibly overestimate how much they don't care about your website.
* Posting a question: I go to the site, click on "Ask," and post my question.
* Searching for answers: I go to the site, type in my search, and search.
Facebook:
* Posting a photo: I go to the site and look for a camera icon. I can't find one, so I start clicking on stuff like "Account", "Home" and "Profile". Still nothing. I start clicking on everything that isn't a friend's wall post. Eventually I hit "More" on my list of apps (the fully-expanded list still doesn't take up the entire height of my screen), and see "Photos". I look for an upload button and see nothing. In the upper right corner, in 10pt font, I eventually find "My Albums." I click there and search for an upload button. Nothing. I click "Create album," and finally get to an upload prompt.
* Changing a privacy setting: I see a post on Hacker News about some new Facebook feature, and of course, the default is "Everyone in the world can see everything that this feature involves, even if it's something you locked down for every other feature." No one has posted a reply explaining how to lock it down yet, but it's Facebook, right? How hard could it be? I go to Facebook and click "Privacy Settings." Honestly, they change the layout every few months, so I have no idea what it looks like now, and I don't remember what it looked like last time, but every single time, I have to re-learn the entire model and it takes forever and half the time I don't even find what I'm looking for.
* Take a quiz: See a quiz on a friend's wall. Click on the app name. Click on "Take Quiz." Get a popup saying "Let this app access your profile: [Click Here]." Close tab.
- click once in the "what's on your mind box"
- click on the "attach photo" icon
Privacy is a different thing, it was once quite easy but everyone was crying that there's "too many options", so they made some mess with it.
Also, posting on stackoverflow requires you to be familiar with Markdown, an obscure markup language based on conventions used by geeks on mailing lists.
On facebook, the first thing you do is look at other people's posts and statuses. And that's incredibly easy; you don't even do anything, facebook just shows it to you.
The first time I used facebook, I was like whaa? What's a WALL? What's the difference between a post and a note? How is sharing a link specifically different from embedding it in your status?
Lots of complexity there, but we learn it after a while.
People join facebook because all their friends are on it, and they get to see a news feed.
It's not instantly familiar or usable, and no one knows what's a wall or a news feed, but when you find pictures of a friend you haven't seen in 10 years, you'll probably stick around and try to figure it out.
Of course, at the beginning the only users where college students and people in their teens or twenties. But now even people in their forties join just because they can keep in touch with their distant relatives and old friends.
* Take picture * Hit 'send to facebook' (maybe add a caption) * Done
On that sense Facebook is very simple as what you can do is almost entirely driven by whether you're friends with someone or not, and the mechanism for becoming friends (or stopping being friends) is straight forward.
Obviously that's a somewhat simplistic view though and ignores little factors such as doing even the simple things with 300 million users is massively complex.
From a software perspective it's really no harder to gather and store 1000 words on a detailed C++ problem than it is to gather and store "Mmm mmm mmm, Justin Bieber, he's soooo dreamy".
"it just means that it has a very specific requirement for the knowledge of the participants,"
is not a trivial exercise that should be left to the reader.
The technical issue for Stackoverflow is to make editing an standards enforcement efficient and socially desirable to a highly tech savvy community.
It's not storage, it's filtering.
StackOverflow, for example, was sold on features. Look at the early pitches -- it's a reddit+wiki replacement for Experts Exchange. Developers already knew that PHPBB and EE sucked for Q&A. They added voting and editing of old answers, and the demand flowed to them.
The difference isn't features vs lack of features; it is features vs BENEFITS. This is the thing "business people" bring to the hackerverse.
It's the designers who deserve the credit here, not the business people.
Plus, not all hackers are feature-centric. There are many hackers who understand design.
Speaking just for myself: I don't use SO (or reddit) because of the features they offer. I use them because of the communities involved. I think that's the point here -- there are loads of sites that can compete on features (reddit, meet digg...) but lack something else. It's that "something else" that drives success (partially; I'm not suggesting it's entirely based on some esoteric quality, but that the specific quality can be different for different applications).
Their combined blog readership was huge. They capitalized on that audience, not just the features.
I've always thought that, but Joel Spolsky did an excellent talk where he made the exact opposite point. Skip to 25:00:
You're saying early adopters want try to be impressive by using new technology? That one of early adopters' "problems" (that you are trying to provide a solution to) is jealousy?
Apply practically built an entire company on this notion.
This is your first problem. First, features do not sell software. If there were a Ten Commandments of customer acquisition in the Internet age that would be #2 right after "Google is your god, you shall have no others." People use software and use websites because of the benefit that you credibly propose to bring to their lives through use of the software. Ironically, your users are even telling you this, which is fantastic because most of the time they don't have accurate insight into why your site doesn't do it for them. (Incidentally, "I don't know what problem you're solving" really means "I don't know what problem THAT I ACTUALLY HAVE will get better instantly if I sign up for this.")
StackOverflow is incredibly more complicated than Facebook is. You need an accurate mental model of how the game works in order to play it. (Seeing answers is easier, of course.) There is a reason Joel and company try to seed new Stack Overflow sites with people who have used one of the pre-existing ones. (That also helps solve the chicken and egg problem, which I suspect your sites are likely suffering from in a severe fashion.)
Early adopters are a quirky bunch. One of their problems is that other people are cooler than they are because those people have technology that they haven't used yet. Another of their problems is that the software they previously liked is now lame because even their mother uses it. Most people do not have these problems.
Talk to people. Find out what their pains, fears, frustrations are. This is not hard -- most people love to talk about what they hate about their life, jobs, etc. Identify problems which are tractable with software. Develop the smallest possible thing that shows the vision of a solution. See if it 'clicks' with people. If it clicks, you know you have a viable idea for a product. If not, development is generally expensive guessing.
P.S. Translation from user into English: "It's too complicated" => "I am insufficiently invested in this to do the work that it looks like it is going to take to extract the unknown amount of value I may get out." There are a number of solutions: simplification, hiding the complexity, easing the users into the complexity, and demonstrating higher value. Your user can play effing bridge, she is clearly capable of understanding complex systems when the spirit moves her.