We’ve spent the last week doing all kinds of things including preparing a video introducing our users – alpha users today, public users in 2009 – to the site.   Up to now, we’ve been training our alpha users one by one.  A charming but hardly scalable process.  So, we opted for a video.  

I drew the short straw and am the voice on the video.   After an early attempt that was excruciatingly long, we settled on aiming for a shorter sweeter version.  Well, it’s definitely shorter.  We’re now dubbing and editing it.   Hopefully, the finished product will be at least passable and posted to the site soon so we can test it on our other alpha users.    For the record, we are using ScreenFlow which, I can confirm, is more or less idiot-proof.

Several days ago a frustrated legal researcher sent out an open message to the leading online research service for lawyers:  “why don’t you just tell me the answer??!”  More or less this very question—you might better call it a cry of anguish—was the inspiration for Spindle Law.  At its heart, Spindle is an organized collection of answers to legal questions, together with supporting authorities and commentary.  If you’re a lawyer, I don’t have to tell you that legal questions often don’t have simple answers, or that sometimes they have two or more answers that contradict one another.  Spindle has room for answers of all kinds—the simple, the complex, and the conflicting.  Spindle won’t replace your other research service, but soon enough it will be telling you the answer(s) a lot of the time, so that you can get what you need from your other service a lot more quickly.  When Spindle doesn’t have the answer, you’ll be able to add it when you find it, so that you and the rest of us will have it the next time.

Welcome.  I am Nick Diamand, also a Spindle partner.  I am responsible for developing business at Spindle.  Specifically, I work on building ties with contributors to the site, expanding our user base and raising money.    Here, I intend to write about my experiences and observations as the company grows.  We try to think a lot about our growth:   planning, predicting and revising our expectations.  I also remain a lawyer and, from time to time, I add authorities to the system.  Finally, when I can, I try to read about our field.  At the moment, I am reading “Here Comes Everybody – The Power of Organizing Without Organizations,” by Clay Shirky.  It’s clear and thoughtful.   One section describes the power law distribution of contributors to shared websites like Wikipedia and Flickr (and Spindle).  Essentially, the principle is that on a collaborative site a very small minority of users plays the biggest role:  adding, editing, posting, and commenting, while the majority takes the benefit of the material but otherwise only sporadically chimes in.  This distribution makes thinking about an “average” user nearly meaningless.   When we contemplate our growth we need to split our thinking:  those who will actively engage in the site all the time by adding and editing rules of law and adding, editing and vouching for authorities; and those visitors coming to do a quick piece of research or to check BlueBook citations* or to vouch for an authority when they see one during the course of their day.    More on this in the coming weeks.  

*Error corrected thanks to DHK.  See Comment 2.