You don’t ping me flowers anymore

Virtually dead flowers.

It has been a month since TechCrunch and Robert Scoble mentioned a new site for virtual flowers, They’re Beautiful. The concept is that people would send each other little graphically-pleasing bouquets of free flowers, enticing community members to recruit friends and keep returning to the site over time to sprinkle fake water over the fake cuttings, keeping them vibrant.

Although the death of virtual flowers seems to be greatly slowed in cyberspace, clearly my two little gifts—the default greeting bouquet from the florists, and one from Amy (a response to my sending her some the first day)—have been deprived the attention they needed to remain vibrant. I did come back once, about two weeks after the flowers arrived, to try watering them. They were already in the state they seem to be in right now. Is virtual death eternally dead? Perhaps I could bring them back to life by watering them every day to negate the time of neglect. Can I care too much, making them explode in a cloud or dew?

More importantly, why should I care?

What’s the point?
My interest in the site reveals a contradiction. Although the GigaPet fad came too late for my school days, I spent much of my youth wanting to build a robot pet. I am not a World of Warcraft junkie, but I did delight in lifting George the Bluebit to Level 20 in Facebook battles. So, why am I willing to battle spiders with rabbits but won’t head back to the visually pleasing They’re Beautiful site and spread some water and simulated sunshine?

To answer this, I first have to understand what the site is about:

• Flowers as a Gift
  Michael Clarke observes that gift giving is part of the Facebook culture and suggests the flowers are just a more elaborate version of that. My take on gifts is probably colored by my financial state and relatively short time as an active Facebook user: I saw them as the only thing that was asked to pay for. I may have no inclination to waste a buck or two on a little cartoon icon, but that isn’t to say many other Facebook users value that form of communication, especially on birthdays, anniversaries and graduation.
• Flowers as a Greeting
  Maybe the virtual flowers can be seen as a more embodied version of an e-card. Same sentiment, with room for a personal note but without dancing elves or ugly animation. E-cards are disposable (in a sustainable way) since most either expire or are forgotten. Here’s an example—how long will this anniversary card last on the web? Will the fact that I embedded a link to my sis-in-law’s appreciated well-wishing keep it eternal, or as a future reader of this post have you found the link to lead nowhere after a few months?
• Flowers for a Community
  The flower shop has the potential to build community. It is viral. The flowers are only created when someone sends one to someone else. Each time that happens, there is something that will need care. Does that act spawn reciprocation and a common place to communicate, or some resentment for forcing just a little more responsibility into someone else’s life? There are very limited actions you can take at They’re Beautiful—you either water existing flowers, or send someone new ones. The only communication, then, is through the act of giving and receiving.

George the Bluebit attracts my attention because he lives where I go for many other more important interactions. I doubt I would have fought even one praying mantis if I had to go to some site where that is all I could do or learn. The same was true for Twitter, which became infinitely more useful after I installed the Twitterrific desktop application. I no longer had to load up a web page to gain my knowledge. Knowledge came to me.

How does my current greenhouse compare to the snapshot above from July 22, 2007?

They’re Beautiful offers a nice little widget to keep tabs on my greenhouse. It is possible that there would be a correlation between people making use of this widget and the attentiveness to the fake flowers, just by placing the visual reminder in the path of normal activity. However, I suspect that getting me to come back to tend to my garden is not the main purpose of the site.

It’s about the company
The value of the virtual flowers has little to do with my interaction. The real value of They’re Beautiful is that through the bouquets you learn about Jackson Fish Market.

Based in Seattle, Jackson Fish Market was founded by Hillel and Walter Smith last November, adding designer Jenny Lam in the spring. Initially, I was more impressed with their blog than the fake flowers, until I read more about the latter on the former. In her design process, Jenny shadowed real florists and made paper oragami prototypes that became the models for the graphic arrangements. Clearly, web design is one of the skills at Jackson Fish. It made me get back out the e-watering can.

The company web site has a header that changes with the time of day.

They’re Beautiful is branded software. Jackson Fish is positioning themselves as an expert on the subject, having compiled an index of branded software experiences they have found on the web—with commentary—and published a white paper on the subject. In the commentary about one such example (Change Everything), Hillel distinguishes branded software from other forms of advertising, like adware or product placement:

Brand advertisers are primarily concerned with message and values. And they will get behind software investments that can convey their values to their target audience while being associated with their brand. In many cases, the most secure and confident of the advertisers will have the gentlest brand association (think NPR sponsorship messages).

It is not clear if the intended beneficiary of They’re Beautiful is meant to be the sponsor or Jackson Fish, but the value message is simple and powerful—take time to appreciate someone else with a beautiful moment. There is another strong sentiment: We care.

In addition to the flower shop, the company has published a diary found in a Hong Kong store a couple years ago. It is written in Chinese. Jackson Fish has scanned in each page and opened up the mystery of who wrote it by inviting the community to help with the translation. Each page has its own thread of interpretation and meaning-making. They call it an experiment, yet another example where designerly play might wind up serving a future client.

Jackson Fish Market is hiring, by the way. Sort of. They don’t have any full-time roles, but they do have plenty of paid web monkeying tasks for both the front and back end of their current projects. Not enticing enough? How about an employment atmosphere that encourages time away from work as a way of making work better? Back in March, Jackson Fish made a decision to design a balanced perspective into the business that turned into a 5-week summer break.

Jackson Fish Market is named in honor of a former business in co-founder Hillel Cooperman’s family tree. Hillel wanted to capture a sense of small-business ownership. In his reflections on the company, Alex Hopmann wrote: “The notion of building something as a long term company, not to get bought up is so rare lately. Not trying to hit a huge home run every swing but aiming for a bunch of great singles, doubles, and ultimately a bunch of runs.”

The florists return to the work part of their work on August 20. Perhaps I’ll send them flowers.