We know our model isn't perfect so I'm really intrigued by this thread on Twitter: twitter.com – excited to get your feedback!

I think there are some obvious benefits in having a smaller, more restricted conversation with a group of people, as opposed to the noise of more open networks -- but I also worry about potentially valuable viewpoints being excluded from the conversation as a result

I think there are plenty of totally open networks, but I really like the idea of using social connections (Add participant) as a filter on the conversation. Adding those voices is just one click away and Twitter can help with the discovery of those voices.

How do we include those viewpoints? How do we entice you all (non-hosts) to click "add participant" at the top?

Do you think we need a "Request Invite" button?

Or a "Letter to the Editor"-ish feature?

I agree, Ryan -- but when I go to add a participant, all I get is email or DM. What if I want to add someone whose email I don't know and who isn't following me? Plus, email is cumbersome and DM is not always polite, depending on the person.

Maybe the person who started the discussion should be able to add people from Twitter or elsewhere, the way you can with a Cover It Live discussion, and then it is up to them to choose wisely and/or moderate the conversation.

Is the point of this service to only have a conversation with close friends or to have conversations with likeminded "filtered" people? If it's the latter, I think services like Klout will be the answer. There has to be a way to judge the quality and likemindedness of people algorithmically through their past usage on social networks. Solving the problem this way would allow previously unconnected people to engage in discussion while filtering out the noise.

If you're looking for a more practical answer, I wanted to join a convo today which i saw in a tweet. the tweet said contact MG Siegler for an invite. ... probably not a realistic onramp. There needs to be a nice way outside of e-mail to notify a participant that somebody else wants to join. What means do you have for sending notifications? Any channels like twt DM that most people have enabled on their phones? Invite requests would have to get grouped so that a popular user doesn't get spammed.

I feel that this is another attempt at @padday's Circles, but creaky. Twitters semi-overlapping publics j.mp when combined with collation via storify actually work better for me. I do miss the cross-blog conversations model we used to have too.

I want to write more about this, but I'm going to do ti on my own blog, thanks...

Yes, that's pretty much what Dave Winer said when I asked him to join a discussion here :-)

Josh, I'd love to hear your thoughts in this discussion as well.

First off, thank you all for taking the time to contribute. I have a few thoughts on the above:

1. I have a lot of respect for people like Dave Winer and Kevin Marks, but they'll never use Branch – and that's OK. I respect their belief in owning their own real estate and content, it's just not the Internet I grew up with.

2. It's amazing that Om can tweet to the masses and receive unsolicited feedback from across the globe, and the open community that Fred Wilson has cultivated is incredible. But there's also a place for structured, curated conversations. It's not elitist, it's practical. Think about how many people can sit around a dinner table. A conversation – a true direct, dialogue - can only have so many voices speaking at once.

3. Branch is NOT an exclusive community that only "experts" can utilize. If it seems that way now it's only because we have limited dev resources (jobs@branch.com). The beauty of us all being connected is that, while there are only so many seats at the table, asking for an invite is but a click away (and there can be many tables having similar or identical conversations). Yes, we need to make it easier to ferry people in and out but you all have the power to click "add participant" at the top.

Finally, just take a look at *this* conversation. I've never met you, Kevin and Yaniv, yet here we are talking directly to each other –disagreeing (and hopefully, occasionally, agreeing). We're not indirectly bickering via blogposts, or lobbing twitter @replies with the hopes that you'll pay attention. Here, I know who I'm talking to – and that, I believe, is powerful.

[so sorry for ignoring the 500 character limit. i've been running around all-day and had a lot pent-up. Expect brevity from me moving forward, I promise :)

Ah, realized my brain dump didn't respond to you guys...

Yaniv– Eric Fisher (FB) said that the best way to gauge trust and expertise is by what someone says. I don't think an arbitrary Klout number – which measures how loud and controversial you are, not knowledgable – will do the trick.

Kevin– I'd love to hear more about the good ol' days of cross-blog conversations. I am too young to have experienced those. What was so special about them? When did we lose that magic and why?

What you've reinvented is the conversation on a group blog - for examples see gonzoengaged.blogspot.com or smallpieces.blogspot.com - blogger had this ability form the beginning. Over time, it became easier to follow threads between blogs, though better linking, and tools like Technorati (which I worked on)

I wrote a blog post inspired by this discussion (I guess I still like to blog too, Kevin) and it is here: gigaom.com

I really enjoyed your post, Mathew. You definitely highlighted issues that we need to address. But I think your post was also demonstrative of the need for Branch. Don't you think Charlie Cheever, Kevin Marks, and myself should have been invited to have a follow-up conversation about the issues you raised? Why should I be relegated to being a second class citizen in the dungeon that is your comments section?

Thanks, Josh -- they were just some thoughts I was musing about after our discussion, and felt compelled to blog about. As for the "dungeon," I suppose that's a fair point -- many comment sections are like that, although we try to make ours a nicer place at GigaOM. As for Charlie and others, drag them in here and we'll hash it out! :-)

I know this is very much late to this conversation, but I've only just joined. Aside from the topics already mentioned, I think one of limitations is it loses the immediacy of other social platforms. On Twitter, I can see a topic emerging, throw in my thoughst and engage instantly. For this, once you find something to comment on, you have to request the add. Waiting even more than 5 minutes would probably - a lot of the time - be enough to kill the attention span. That said, there's nothing wrong with a little more considered thought...

The lack of immediacy is what initially turned me off @Joshua. But on the flip side, here I am being pulled into a conversation from a few months ago (thanks to email notifications), a conversation which otherwise would have been long dead on any other social platform.

These conversations and individual comments should have dates, would add context. Why no dates Josh Miller?

@Erick If you lay your mouse over the comment it does, but agree - it should be more obvious. Also, perhaps @ should notify as a direct mention with options for email notifications of entire threads or just direct mentions.

Erick, it's been interesting to see – since we added real-time updates – how synchronous some of these branches become. We definitely designed branch to be asynchronous but our users are increasingly using the product to have real-time chats. See Salon, for example: salon.com

Same here.

For me, asking to join gives me time to read other people's responses, as well as properly form my own. The rapid-fire realtime nature of Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and even blogging these days gets you into trouble sometimes. I don't think there's anything wrong with collecting your thoughts before joining a conversation, as listening before you speak is always a smart move.

I dig this approach, a lot.

As far as I'm concerned, there's something to be said for a place where you can densely pack thoughts with value from vetted sources. You're not curating the information, you're curating the sources of information, which means that you don't get to pick and choose what arguments get made, but you do get to choose which spigots you turn on. This keeps the signal/noise ration down, but still allows for intelligent dissension and challenge, which are at the heart of all revelations of any value.

Those are good points, Drew and Matthew -- and those features are what make discussions in any non-Twitter forum better in a lot of ways than the 140-character debating style, which can turn into shouting and bumper-sticker-level debates. But at the same time, a "curated" discussion is never going to benefit from the kind of random or serendipitous contribution from a stranger, which is what I like about the internet -- even though it is also a source of intense frustration a lot of the time :-)

Choosing who gets to speak is a form of vetting.

Some of the things I always say to start-ups is to define your main goal very clearly. Define what you consider "capital" as well. What is the main "point" of, what many in the social media world may see as, "just another site." I can only speculate as to your goals in this venture. Invite based conversations provide a more "face-to-face" feel. People don't generally run around yelling at each other, shouting adverts to each others faces in real time. It also provides the opportunity to gauge if the person is there to contribute, or sell his wares... a big reason I think no outbound linking should be allowed. Again, that ties back to the revenue model and goal. Are the processes needed to make it effective also congruent with the goal?

I like to use invite only and small group discussions for NTP value. Net-To-Personal. A way to find people of similar ilk online, and then to meet in person and collaborate as soon as possible. The open, come one, come all, will allow for a lot of spurious advertisers who will try to take advantage of the compartmentalized topics to, so-called, target advertise, et al; another reason I would discourage links. Spammers will get the point that it isn't friendly in that manner. So it goes back to the model again. Where does the conversation go once it has left Branch? Into collaboration? Into inner thoughts? Just for fun? For users, the invite is a great way to keep a tight circle. For a business model....slow early rev, but high info capture.

I like this small group discussion for NTP idea, not that I'd used/heard of it before. Will be very interested to see how micro topics of conversation can get to be able to really pool ideas/debate a point and then the comparative effects that has - as you say in terms of NTP.

This is the first real service like this I've used, so will be interesting to see how it pans out.

The governance of introduction is only the first hurdle. Is there any collaborative moderation? There are a number of forum sins, from trolling to people unable to move off a topic.

Certainly a service that restricts access to improve discussion should allow delisting as well?

I think a small hurdle to entering a discussion is exactly what is needed for conversational communities these days. Look at MetaFilter, for example - it's not perfect, but maintains a decent environment without denying all debate or getting too hive-minded. Its $5 entry fee and waiting period help a great deal in keeping outright trolls out without squashing meaningful discussion.

The tiny hurdle of asking to join a conversation may be enough to make this work as well. There will be conversation starters who decline requests from people they don't know - but their conversations will not be as rich or interesting as those who allow many voices to enter, and won't be as popular over the long haul.

I agree with Laura. The simple act of being able to turn down a request is an acceptable filtering method. I really appreciate that you have to actually contribute something meaningful just to get invited.

Just glad to be here. Although my earlier attempt to post do not seem to have registered.

This method has definitely caused me to rethink my communication style within the social media framework.

There is a community that already vets discussion in a similar way: the academic community. Conferences send out calls for submissions on certain topics, often inviting superstars of the field to submit. Someone then vets submissions based on the work quality and the submitter's reputation. This approach ensures quality submissions. But because there are few gatekeepers, conferences are often insular and not accessible, even to related disciplines. This has real downsides: many groundbreaking works are rejected for being too weird only to be rediscovered much later, and cross-disciplinary work is difficult. Branch has gatekeepers but also allows "branches" and makes conversations public by default. In a way it's the best of both worlds.

Funny seeing you here, @gabestein!

Just looking at this thread, I don't see it so much as a closed conversation but as a nucleation site for small groups to start a conversation. Then the enticing "Add person" button below, while being a bit of a people curation barrier, still feels inclusive.

I appreciate the ability to ask into a conversation, and for participants to be encouraged to reach out to get more opinions. I agree with others that this is an interesting way to get people to press their networks discursive action.

Hey @mchang, nice chatting with you in more than 140 characters for a change.

I'm certainly not saying it can't be used as you and others describe, nor that it has to be used only closed conversation. Instead, I'm pointing out another benefit and use case of the invite-only model for communities who are accustomed to a certain level of exclusivity but for whom, I would argue, lack of exposure is harmful.

Moreover, it would be my hope that this newfound exposure combined with the features you mention might be a gateway drug to more inclusion.

There's no reason that different groups can't use the same product in multiple ways, especially with good community management, right?

Invite only conversations mean only certain voices are heard. At some point, I'd consider adding a randomizer, or some other way for a non-invitee to give their 2 cents...or possibly at a $1 (or credit) to buy in. This means literally "put your money where you mouth is". Dissenters are more likley to set up their own separate conversation/club.

People who 'belong' are most likely similar points of view as well. I'm curious to see how bad of a trainwreck a political or religious discussion goes over a heated issue.

But, I think invite only conversations have a better potential - controlled, focused viewpoints. With all communications, the longer and more drawn out the less likely any individual post will be read. Including this one.

The best way to think of a system like this is as collaborative art. Let's say you were commissioning a mural and you had Picasso, Gaugin, Cezanne, Monet, Rembrandt, and 300 other painters at your disposal. Many would argue that picking a single painter would produce the most impactful result (this is tantamount to a traditional blog post). There is one vision, one style, and it's going to come off compelling if the artist (or writer) is inspired. Then there is the opposite, which is all 305 painters taking part (this is a typical internet comment thread). This is bad because there is just too much going on. Branch should be somewhere in the middle: focused conversations featuring purposefully picked participants to create a unique dialog.

I wouldn't describe this system as "invite-only". I wasn't invited, I asked to participate. That's a pretty huge difference to me.

Invite-only is flat-out dull. It's exclusionary and off-putting. Why should I listen passively to conversation between someone else's estimation of who "the cool kids" are? Boring.

Here, I can ask to participate. My request might be declined, but I have the possibility of joining a conversation even if the original poster and I don't know each other. That's not invite-only, it's permission-based.

I don't know that Branch is perfect, it's just starting out, but I think it's an interesting take on fixing some of the current issues with fostering a thoughtful commenting community.

Raising the bar for discussion on the internet is a good thing. If this service makes people take a second or two to reflect on what they are saying before saying it, it will already be worth having.

I couldn't agree more with Michael, I think the trick is to find the balance between being elitist and being select. there are some great conversations to be had there.

I agree with Laura's point about the utility of minor barriers to contribution in preventing spam & trolls. branch.com

Though in vetting participants the thread owner has great control over the direction of the conversation and the views expressed. The opportunity for abuse, to falsely present a seemingly open discussion, is great.

What an invite-only conversation brings to the table is a nice parallel to the real world construct of conference panels. The quality of the conversation has everything to do with who's invited and who's not. Bringing non-gratuitous controversy to the stage to break new ground with constructive people is the job of a good panel moderater and, I'm gathering, the job of good Branch-makers too. Invites give us a tool to shape the conversation and guard it against bickering and chaos. What's great about Branch (or, for that matter, Quora) is that online we get great opportunities to both extend the reach of important conversations and add and modify new features as we go: highlighting, voting, sharing, etc.

When (or if) Branch scales to a large size, I wonder if there will be a problem with popular/well-known people being inundated with requests to the point where they can't keep up. Then for most people, Branch will become read-only.

I doubt Ashton Kutcher spends a lot of time sifting through tweets from his 12MM followers.

I agree with Laura and the benefits of having a minor hurdle to jump through to participate, but I do wonder about the people too nervous to make the ask to begin with. As a first time Brancher, it was a little daunting to go, "Okay, this is the person I'm going to ask."
I would venture a guess that nearly everyone on this platform is a habitual early adopter, and therefore willing to take the risks of testing a platform. Once Branch becomes more mainstream, others be as willing to ask permission to join, post, and engage in discourse? Or will great minds be risk-adverse and unwilling to take the leap? Some people could gain so much from the discussion, but may be too nervous to take that step.

To expand upon Craig's point branch.com about how invites limit who takes part, there is a danger of not hearing many competing views to your own. Discussion can help greatly when we have to defend and challenge our own views, invite-only discussions could therefore be very disadvantageous. The option to request participation will definitely help avoid this, but not sure what else can be done.

@Duncan I completely agree. TBH, I was very worried that I would not be allowed to speak in a convo with professional tech bloggers etc.

I think that the limitedness of an invite-only achieves a certain *kind* of curation and intimacy but I don't think it is the kind that Branch should want for 2 reasons.

1) The conversation author has an incredible amount of control. It's weird that the *author* has to decide the fate of what is said. To borrow Josh's analogy, why am I second-class citizen in your branch?

2) Invite-only is is an unnatural contrast to an actual conversation where it is very fluid and democratic to participate. I don't have to "ask to participate" at a dinner table.

@Artur

"I don't have to "ask to participate" at a dinner table."

But you would ask to join a group sat chatting in a bar...

I'm sure invite-only (or ask-to-join) conversations will feel more valuable in a scaled-up "live" environment, where they can burst into life and stop again in minutes, giving Twitter conversations a bit more scope to roam without cluttering up feeds, for example. Where people really know their stuff, I like the invite-only idea. I think the Branch guys have struck a good balance between public and private. But I can't wait to see this working fast, at scale.

@Artur, following up on what Craig said, you would also have to first be invited to the dinner table.

I think the idea of the invite-only conversation is a good one, but to point of various views (of people not in the current conversation) it would be a good idea to curate other branches with a similar topic/flow and add the possibility of merging branches, assuming both original creators agree to the merge.

@Artur re point 1 - I'm pretty sure people can request an invite to the conversation from anyone participating, but the default option is the originator. Also, any participant can choose to add a person. Saying that, I'm not sure if there are any veto rights - I hope not.

Returning to Laura's point - I still balk at the idea of an entry fee. Whilst it might well discourage trolls, it will discourage a great deal more people who are a little hard up financially speaking. With a global recession, that would be an incredibly bad idea.

@Craig @Gabriel But the dynamic is kind of different, don't you think? When you ask to participate in a Branch, it means you have something to say (otherwise you just lurk). Participation in a real-life conversation is much more fluid and implicit.

I think I'd agree with @Michael and argue that the best use case for Branch currently is in "conference" style conversations - where active participates fluctuate but ultimately "own" the stage.

Is the contrast between the dynamic of a conference panel and a "dinner table/bar" conversation enough to demonstrate some of the consequences that invite-only/atp functionality presents?

Thank you for your thoughts, I've had a blast using the service and am waiting for my invite to keep at it!

I think the element of control is useful for avoiding some of the horribleness of the trolls although, it might be useful to redirect trolls to their own discussion threads. ---Here you go, your very own dirty playpen, go nuts! They can do their thing without disgusting and repelling other participants (although I guess that is their thing)

Discouraging trolls - is there a way for an individual to 'mute' someone's input within their view of the branch? Kind of like an ignore button.

@Artur: It depends what you mean by real-life conversation. I don't join many random conversations walking down the street. But I think that's the point. This isn't about exactly modeling the dynamic of a real-life conversation, it's about being able to combine the intimacy of a dinner-table conversation or depth of a panel discussion with the audience and openness of the web.

@Sarah -- yes to "ignore button"!

@Gabriel: Do you think there should be a limit on the number of people who can participate in a Branch?
In some ways, this could encourage people to speak up - in my college courses where there were only a few of us, we all felt that we had to participate and not slack during discussion. Maybe as people "bowed-out" of a discussion, others could be added in.
Yes, this would limit the number of people, but maybe the discussion could be more than single comments, and develop into full-fledged, idea-changing conversations.

I'm really loving the fact that this thread contains so many ideas and suggestions for how Branch might be developed further to make it a better experience. Does anyone think it might make sense to add like or voting buttons? And how about tagging conversations? Finding them later probably sounds easy now, but what about when there are millions of threads? It would be a great way to find subjects and people.

I was thinking much the same Peter - would help people to keep track. I appreciate the overall idea is that any offshoots should become branches in their own right, but it would still be useful to gauge the 'value' of an individual post or easily spot where you've directly mentioned.

Likewise, if I notice a particularly good contributor in one topic, I might want to follow them up in another and see where else they're commenting.

@Duncan: Interesting thought. I think it might be too early in the game to answer that, but I would hope that branches might over time learn to be self-limiting. If it's a wide-open topic like this one, they should let more people in and accept virtually all requests to join, but if it's about something that requires a specific amount of expertise they should limit to people who have that expertise so that the branch feels comfortable discussing it.

Peter ... I second the idea of tagging threads. I imagine that there will be search as some point to help with thread discovery as well.

As for now I'm using this twitter search to see what people are talking about: twitter.com

As it stands right now, this seems more suitable for discussions where most of the participants are known up front.

Seems that this is NOT a place for building your network .... instead it is for USING your network.

As for the thread starter managing all of the join requests, maybe the thread starter should be able to allow any current participant to approve join requests.

@Aaron: Interesting about how Branch is a place to use your network, verus building it. I think that is maybe how Branches should start, but that overtime they should be about expanding your network and knowledge. The WWW was supposed to open us up to information of all kinds, yet research shows that we typically only seek out information that confirms our believes and mimics our offline social networks. Branch seems like the perfect opportunity to have us start with who and what we know, and lead us to more well-rounded ideas and experiences.

@duncan ... I agree. I imagine that the team behind branch molds the product ... they are trying to see what things early adopters are wanting/expecting.

One interesting thing is that none of the few branches that I've followed have had convos "branch off" of them. Even this convo is 2-D.

I didn't try it, but it looked as though I could create a branch of this thread before I even was approved to join it.

Maybe expanding the convo will be done through something like merging worthy on-topic branches back into the trunk .... applying source control concepts to conversations ...

@Aaron: I like that idea of bringing them together somehow. In a way it could be similar to tagging something. It could allow very large discussions to be broken down into smaller, more manageable conversations, but formatted in a way that it collects the voice of a community.