Commoditization follow-up
Jun. 26th, 2008 11:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
waywardcatsWell, Matt Flannery visited the KivaFriends site a short time ago to clarify the issue of the pet pictures. I love his reply so much, I want to share it with you...
"Hey Everyone. Given that this thread has my name in it, I had to respond!
One point I wanted to make here is that I don't think anyone on Kiva should feel bad for using a cat as an avatar. Using animals on social web sites is pretty much well accepted net etiquette and it's natural that it's happening at Kiva too. It's something I've known about and thought about for a long time.
I just heard the catfood story a couple weeks ago and I thought it was a great anecdote. I blogged about it because it made a big impact on me and also because I like sharing pertinent and potentially controversial stories on my blog. I also think the story brings to light a tension in our business.
There is the tension surrounding whether Kiva is truly "p2p" or not and whether the borrowers are being treated like commodities or not. It's obvious that Kiva is not "p2p" in the purest sense, because there are intermediaries (MFIs). When we started, the Kiva web experience was very personal and connected. In the last 1.5 yrs, it's become less personal. As we've scaled fast, much of the personal touch has been lost and the borrowers have little voice on the site. That's something that hopefully we can rectify in the future. As borrowers get further away form the website, the more they can seem like commodities that are bought and sold without a voice. A previous poster mentioned something to this effect and I share the concern. Hopefully we can resuscitate any personality temporarily lost under rapid growth.
Matt"
Hopefully the conversation will therefore move in the direction of the more pressing issue.
"Hey Everyone. Given that this thread has my name in it, I had to respond!
One point I wanted to make here is that I don't think anyone on Kiva should feel bad for using a cat as an avatar. Using animals on social web sites is pretty much well accepted net etiquette and it's natural that it's happening at Kiva too. It's something I've known about and thought about for a long time.
I just heard the catfood story a couple weeks ago and I thought it was a great anecdote. I blogged about it because it made a big impact on me and also because I like sharing pertinent and potentially controversial stories on my blog. I also think the story brings to light a tension in our business.
There is the tension surrounding whether Kiva is truly "p2p" or not and whether the borrowers are being treated like commodities or not. It's obvious that Kiva is not "p2p" in the purest sense, because there are intermediaries (MFIs). When we started, the Kiva web experience was very personal and connected. In the last 1.5 yrs, it's become less personal. As we've scaled fast, much of the personal touch has been lost and the borrowers have little voice on the site. That's something that hopefully we can rectify in the future. As borrowers get further away form the website, the more they can seem like commodities that are bought and sold without a voice. A previous poster mentioned something to this effect and I share the concern. Hopefully we can resuscitate any personality temporarily lost under rapid growth.
Matt"
Hopefully the conversation will therefore move in the direction of the more pressing issue.
