Hipset. It’s the stupid algorithm, stupid.

Disclaimer: I've never heard of Hipset before. That said, I'm going to go out on a limb and say it won't take off, for all the same reasons this blog post says it will.

The product itself appears to be essentially a 'simple' algorithm for Facebook, letting you avoid the pseudo-intelligent EdgeRank algorithm they use and letting you see an unfiltered stream of a specific subset of the content. If it really is that simple, the key questions are whether users will go to a third party to get it and if Facebook will refrain from copying it in-house. Call me skeptical. Taking the points in turn:

1. User Aquisition

> For Hipset, user acquisition is very obviously built into the product’s and team’s DNA. A well executed PR exercise this weekend generated a ton of interest from early adopters - who all signed up via Facebook auth. Meanwhile, the product aggressively (that’s a complement) integrates with Facebook’s Open Graph. Every time i engage with content on Hipset, it gets posted to Facebook. So all those early adopters using the product are actually busy sending notifications to their impressionable friends on Facebook about this cool new service. [...]

To paraphrase the blog, Hipset is better at 'growth hacking' than the blogger's product OneRiot was. It can go viral, and ... and what? It's positioned here as a feature for Facebook, so presumably a set fraction of the users would desire it off the bat. Getting in front of them is a recipe for an initial userbase, but there needs to be something beyond that. What's the long-term growth strategy, continue to hope Facebook doesn't provide a native view for this feed and growing alongside them? I don't buy it.

2. Users want it.

Again paraphrasing, the blog suggests that users want an undiluted feed. One benefit of this is that bands can directly email users who have subscribed. Except...what happens when a few are too chatty? Either they back down from that 'undiluted' idea, becoming simply a different algorithm, or users need to do all that micromanaging Facebook hides away, and get fatigued. There probably is a market for some who want control over everything themselves, but I'm not sure it's on Facebook in the first place.

The author also suggests that this is a perfect market for Mobile - where Hipset isn't yet trying to be. That's a significant pivot, although a reasonable one.

3 - Facebook doesn't need to copy Hipset, because it's complementary.

Facebook probably doesn't need to copy Hipset, no. But they have a vested interest in keeping everyone going to facebook.com, and not splintered into a set of micro-communities. Which means banking on their disinterest in the long run doesn't seem like a safe bet - and if Facebook decides to provide even half the features of Hipset, momentum and the hidden costs of each additional service will do the rest.

Now, there may well be a lot more to Hipset than this blog post is making apparent. I don't know. But there is nothing here to convince me that it's going anywhere, aside from a blip as the internet goes "oh, that's cool!"

Lots of great points. Mouthful of a post.

This looks similar to http://jellibug.com, except they don't have videos yet.