I had forgotten about Namesake. Steve de Long referenced them mentioned that the challenge for Branch is to continue to build momentum around conversations.

How can they address this?

Some ideas could include:
- Prompts/suggested topics that are then curated
- Topic categories/buckets (that could also feature prompts)
- Content partnerships

Other thoughts?

Conversation is the key to community and community is key to my business so I want this platform to work and evolve — as I want to similar platforms work.

Hi Nation, thanks for inviting me to this Branch. So you hit the nail on the head with one of the things the Namesake team was very good at and that was prompting or "seeding" conversations. I was one of a group of community managers who were passionate about the platform that they leveraged to try scale that process of initiating interesting conversations and do some other things in terms of controlling the nature of the community. But that model was very hard to scale/sustain with a wide open universe of conversation topics. The advantage a forum has is a core topic that carries the community. Branch needs to find the equivalent of its core topic in order to become self-sustaining. IMHO. :-)

What if they create a series of core topics/collections as Medium seems to be trying to do?

You could envision a future of Branch along these lines:
> Core collections/topics that feature prompts
> Each topic also could have highlighted user content ala Quora
> Each topic could also provide the ability for users to post prompts and earn the right to broadcast them out

Of course I would imagine a big part of the future would be utilizing Branch on non-Branch community platforms, blogs, etc to make discussion central which takes you in another direction as well.

What do you think?

So, lots to think about/discuss here. Medium seems to be creating "showcase" blogs as examples to inspire people to adopt the platform. At least that's how it feels to me. The idea of creating a series of "core topics/collections" seems more like Yahoo Groups. Is that what Branch is going for? An aggregation of forums? One of the interesting dynamics going on with Medium, Branch, Namesake, Quora is an attempt to keep the quality high by various riffs on exclusivity. Medium, Namesake, Quora were/are all "invite only" communities. Quora made a successful transition to an open community (for now). Namesake didn't. Branch is taking an even more restrictive tack by making each conversation invite only. Running out of typing space. TBC

So, because each convo is invite only Branch has created a high friction point in their attempt to maintain quality.

There are so many ways today of encouraging or maintaining user engagement. It might be interesting to actually look at examples from various sites and imagine how they might work for Branch. But for me for now it seems as if your last thought about utilizing Branch as a way to extend, continue or launch a conversation from another platform is really the most interesting use case.

Fred Wilson recently wrote about knowing the Atomic Unit of your product. avc.com

What is Branch's Atomic Unit?

By the way, I like Yahoo Groups. ;-)

Wouldn't the atomic unit for Branch be conversation? Or is that too vague?

If you think about it I know a lot of people who post and/or frictionless share to Twitter, foursquare and Facebook without interacting.

Quora and now Branch make that more difficult as you need to engage to drive the value forward. Of course, that may be too hard for people.

Branch being built in to sites in the future has a lot of promise certainly but it seems like they could also build here by allowing you to have conversations with key figures, answer questions and generating debate.

I think "conversation" is more like a molecule. You can have asides, debates, Q & A, real time (think chat room or IM), celebrity interactions, "branches", topic expansions, contractions, etc. Is there an atom in the conversation molecule that can/should be a focal point.

"If you think about it I know a lot of people who post and/or frictionless share to Twitter, foursquare and Facebook without interacting." Very astute point. Interaction is the difference between publishing and conversation.

I just re-watched the introductory video. There are some really interesting nuggets in there about the focus/purpose of Branch. Trust, Perspectives, Growth, Noise, Jerks, Off Topic, Egagement, Intimacy, Openness....

Having conversations with key figures is a really attractive proposition but hard to execute on. If you think about it "conversation" almost implies "real time". Otherwise, just like letter writing we are sending a missive off without ever knowing there will be an answer. Which in some ways is part of the attraction. But asking a "key figure" who isn't actually a community member to engage in a conversation over a period of days or weeks seems like asking a lot.

The interaction/engagement level HAS to be high — but Branches have the advantage of being something that you can follow and gain from without interacting which is the other key to success per Fred Wilson I believe.

I agree that conversation may not be the killer app but I believe we're seeing a very early iteration of what they hope to get towards.

Publisher partnerships could be key, particularly if they build it for you to be able to engage separately from Branch and make the look and feel match the sites a bit more. This allows for key figures to chat in a better fashion for brands/organizations than Twitter since they can send people here.

I am already considering how to use Branch instead of Twitter chats due to the context and conversation feature. The only problem at this point is that Twitter chats can sometime take on a life of their own BUT I think it might be possible to drive a hybrid.

Something that could be in the pipeline and would certainly make my life easier in terms of Branches vs Twitter chats is if they better tracked the Branches as they Branch off to enable discovery and following of the conversations. Positioning by topics would help do the same.

As for key figures, I think it is more of a time constrained Branch that takes the place of a live chat in commenting form, etc.

Hi Nation and Steve! Thanks so much to you both for this awesome discussion, and to Nation in particular for adding me.

Just wanted to let you both know that I'm listening intently to what you guys are describing and think it's amazing feedback. We are thinking a lot about these exact ideas and it's super helpful to see what you both think about it organically.

You both touch several times on "inspiration" being central to, as Steve said, "keeping the momentum going." Would love to hear your ideas on what you'd like to see for that.

@Libby - thanks for joining.

A few things that could inspire additional momentum:
> Prompts and topics to generate activity and organize discovery
> Search
> The ability to connect to other Branchers
> The ability to invite via FB
> Additional Branch/publisher partnerships

I recognize that many of these are "big ticket" items...

The partnerships are one key for my wish list just so I can integrate you further into client work — particularly one exciting project that is coming up.

One reason that I keep coming back to topics — and perhaps even groups: exp.lore.com

@nation... can't tell you much for fear of over-promising, but let's just say you'll like what we're working on now ;)

Keep being awesome.

josh

Hi Libby and Josh, thanks for joining in and for building Branch. Looking forward to much awesomeness.

Reflecting on Nations comment about Topics and Groups and his quote my take away is this:

A sense of "belonging" is a key to engagement. I join a group to discuss a topic that I love and I get a sense of belonging as a reward. Ignoring the superiority complex component there is something very compelling and comforting about that thought.

To me, the sense of belonging is key. One of the key elements for Branch is to find a way to make sure that people who want to hold a conversation are able to find someone to discuss items with. Imagine "Suggested Topics" and/or "Suggested Invites" that would go out to folks based off of tagging to get them involved.

The sense of belonging is another reason for topics and/or groups.