Whats the good Word(le)?
Hi All,
I hope you all are doing well and welcome to Dozen Worthy Reads. A newsletter where I talk about the most interesting things about tech that I read the past couple of weeks or write about tech happenings. You can sign up here or just read on …
Today’s read is quite short and keeping with the theme of not capturing a lot of your attention :)
If you have not heard about Wordle you’re not the only one. I came across Wordle when Apple removed a bunch of Wordle clones from their app store last week! This got me a bit more curious and the topic has a tonne of interest on Twitter
So what is Wordle?
Basically Wordle is a once a day game which gives you six guesses to find a word that has 5 characters in 6 tries. The game is extremely intuitive and I dare say …fun? The beauty of the game is that you just enter 5 characters and the game tells you which of those alphabets are in the word you are trying to guess in the correct spot (green), which are not in the correct spot (yellow) and which are not in the word at all (gray) so you can choose carefully (which if you notice below, I didn’t :))
I really like the game because there is no pressure to play and .. you .. just .. guess! A lot of people first heard about the game when they saw something like this on Twitter or a Social Feed.
Wordle 213 X/6
🟩🟩⬛⬛⬛
🟩🟩⬛⬛⬛
🟩🟩🟩⬛⬛
🟩🟩🟩⬛⬛
🟩🟩🟩⬛⬛
🟩🟩🟩⬛⬛
As you can see that is a graphical encapsulation of my guesses (and obviously I sucked at getting the right word in 6 guesses :))
The game’s dynamics are quite simple really
Easy to start .. all you gotta do is type any alphabet with a very low cognitive load
Easy to paste your stats to any site
Now anyone seeing those funny little blocks is going to be curious; after all we are mimetic creatures. So really a brilliant way to create FOMO (even it it was not intended) and get people to try it out, realize, oh wow I can spend 5-10 mins on this
Try again the next day
In other words, a limited product in the age of abundance. The key gamification though is a shared experience of someone else’s attempt, their guesses, their potential actions and their success or failure that makes you want to try it. If they can guess the word in 3 guesses, I should be able to. The shape and colors tell you everything. It’s kinda like having a competition without forcing anyone else to compete. There is no winner and it’s a positive feeling even if you don’t get the word correctly.
If you’re anything like me and you have really busy days the feed based products are no longer working from you. It, at times, feels like one is a slave to the feed always trying to get a mini dopamine hit and the only way out is to make it harder to access these apps. While Apple (and Android) as well provide app limits those are easily surpassable with a simple “ignore usage” and well damn its my phone so let me use it.
Take any feed. LinkedIn or Facebook and while I am guilty as the next person, I find little value in the feeds. It feels like a hunt for something worthwhile because of course an unlimited feed is attractive as well as there is always new stuff to look at, most of it things you really don’t care that much about.
Consider this article from the NewYorker on on Tumblr
The Tumblr users I spoke to, both new and returning, cited a few unfashionable aspects that keep them using the platform. Tumblr’s main feed doesn’t shuffle posts algorithmically based on what it determines might appeal to a user. It’s “a good, old chronological river,” Maryellen Stewart, a social-media consultant who has kept a running diary on Tumblr since 2014, said. (Despite the anodyne nature of her posts, Stewart sometimes gets caught in the overaggressive content filter.) Posts appearing in the feed are undated, and many accounts are pseudonymous, creating a respite from the frenetic exposure of other social media. Users spoke of the platform feeling disconnected from the “real world”—no President would ever try to shape world events with a Tumblr post. “It’s harder to be a brand” there, Karina Tipismana, a twenty-year-old student who uses the service primarily for its text-based jokes and “Succession” gifs, said. “It’s the periphery of the internet; nothing important is happening there.” There aren’t influencers on Tumblr the way there are on Instagram and TikTok, and the experience for all users might be more pleasant as a result. Chris Black, the co-host of the podcast “How Long Gone,” has kept a Tumblr account since 2010 and updates it daily. Titled Words for Young Men, it is a preppy-punk mood board of starlets smoking cigarettes, fashion-shoot outtakes, and design objects, interspersed with Black’s own photos from daily life—a life-style magazine for one. Compared to the public-facing mode that is dominant on Instagram, Black’s Tumblr “is almost more personal, in a way, even though it’s not always images that I took,” he said.
I recently excavated my old Tumblr account, which I created in 2010 and stopped using years ago. Only three of the accounts I followed were still active, and I relished the silence. Where else on the Internet do you see only a handful of posts a day?
It’s chronological and with fewer posts, which is what is appealing. Relishing the silence is appealing whether its Wordle, a meditation app, or an app that you can look at just once a day and be on your way. This is one of the reasons that I love Matter, no noise, mostly no “news” and just good in-depth content about subjects that I know nothing about but nevertheless fascinate me.
In the words of Josh Wardle, the creator, from a Techcrunch interview
People have asked me about the app thing a lot — one response is I don’t have the skills, and I’d have to invest the time to learn how to do it, which I could do, but it would be an investment of my time. And again, if I’m building a game for my partner… We can use a website every day. It’s not a problem. If my goal was to make Wordle my business or to monetize it, I can see why it would make sense, but then I would have to wrestle with a bunch of things like… Would I send you a push notification? I would definitely have to think about the contract I’m establishing with the player. Do you really want me to notify you? Is this the best way? Why don’t you just forget about Wordle for a little bit?
Why don’t you just forget about Wordle for a bit?
Consider a reality in which Facebook or Twitter feeds just didn’t update after 30 minutes of use, forcing you, the user, to find something else to do? That, of course, is an unrealistic expectation. The key takeaway is that its incumbent upon each of us to limit our use of such products to ones where we find value and ones that make it easier for us to extract more value from them, than the product extracts from us in terms of time. Would you really want a meditation app that asks you to “meditate” 30 times a day? Or a feed of everyone who meditated in the past hour? I really don’t think so
In terms of Wordle, this might go the way of VC’s and then I can quite easily envision levels, social feeds, 3,4,5,6,7,8,9 word games mastering the art and bringing back complexity to something so innocent and simple. Imagine, if a user could play unlimited guessing games? One would quickly lose control and lose joy of the fact that it's ok to spend more time on this since there is no additional game available today! I'm optimistic that maybe we’re renegotiating with ourselves, our use of tech and not using it as an excuse to fill in each open void second which allows us to think and add the right kind of value to our lives?
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