Web 2.0 Expo notes: Josh Porter’s “Designing for Community”
1) What is community?
Online community is a forced move, resulting from the inefficient ecology of the Industrial Revolution
Pre-Online: Big disconnect between people who buy products and people who build products.
Online: Getting us back in touch with the buyers and visa versa. The relationships we have should be direct and one-to-one with the people that are providing services
Community is:
(n) A group of people living together in one place [pre web]
(n) A group of people who share an interest, activity, etc
One of the biggest challenges in online communities is knowing:
What community are you supporting?
When designing for community:
The community is not a feature of software. (It’s not something you can go out and buy.)
When you support an activiey, when you make people better at that activity, by either supporting them directly or helping them support eac other, then you gain the opportuity for that group of people to call themselves a community.
3 Types of Conversations:
(Company person) to (user)/(users) within community
user to user
user to outsider
Talking points to clients:
1. Software doesnt make communities, people do.
2. You don’t create communities, you cultivate them.
3. You probably have a community wheterh you know it or not.
4. Communities change over tme; they grow and evolve.
5. Communities need to be managed.
6. Communities form around avitives, not neccessarily software.
7-10….
ROI
Kathy Seirra: As your community becomes more mature, your expendure for user support goes down.
Rule: The more users particiapte, the less money you need.
2) Growing your Community
What community related features should we add?
Short answer: Model the interactios that already exist.
Long answer: Start with the activity you’re supporting.
What how people currently do it?
How do they inteact with you/each other?
What probs do they have?
How do they currrently solve them?
Who do they communicate with in the community?
Ask: How can we model this same social intearaction in software?
The AOF (Activities, Object, Features) Method
1. Choose an ACTIVITY (you probaby already have one). What your audience is doing.
2. Find out what OBJECT people use within that activity. Identify the social objects. What are the objects that people interact with while doing that activity.
3. Chose core feature set. What are the actions that people perform on the objects.
4..
Example 1: Youtube
Objects:
- video
- meta user info
- other videos
- promoted vids
- video responses
Verbs:
-title, favorite, rate, post comment, embedded it, subscribe, etc
the point is the ENTIRE PAGE IS A BUNCH OF OBJECTS AND VERBS
Example 2: Netflix
Objects:
-Movies
-Movies that you’ve watched
-recommended
Verbs:
Rate them
Add them
Example 3: Yelp
Objects:
reputation
person
friends
compliements
Amazon product page’s social feature:
objects and verbs. All the features that dont have to do with the book and are social include:
- product ratings
-share your own proudct images
-add to wish/registry lists
-tell a friends
- people who vieewd this… buy this
-amazon sales rank (social proof)
- customers who bough this also bought…
-tag this item
-rate this item
-help others find this item
-customer reviews
- customer discussions
- listmania
- offsite reviews
-so you’d like to…
Good Strategy to build communities: Build Outward aka start with people you know, start with your friends, start wtih the pepople already using your service
1 start with people you know (friends or current customers)
2 get them up to speed
3 let them bring their friends, fam„ colleagues into the fold
4 get thosee people up to speed
5 let them bring their friends, fam, collegues itno the fold
6 rinse and repeat
Community Manager
Liason between the users and the company
best example, Craig Newmark of Craigslist:
“this isnt altruism or socail activism, it’s just giving people a break. pretty much all the world religions tell us one moral value is to help others if you can. i feel that customer service, even when you get paid for tit, is an expression of that value, an everyday form of comassion.”
What are the responsibilities of a Community Manager?
1. Responsible for the morale of the community
2. Responsbile for greeting new members and getting them up to speed
3. Responsbile for handling incoming compaints, compliments, and feedback
4. Responsbile for advocating for users with the rest of the team
5. Responsbile for watching for and identifying trends in use
6. Responsbile for keeping the peace
7. Responsbile for enforcing the rules for participation
8. Responsbile for evanginizing the software and the community
9. Responsbile for growing support documentation.
Community Manager = Trend Finder
1. watches feedback, comments, surveys, metrics, etc
2. tells team
3. actively update: support docs, faqs, support emails, wecome letter, interfaces (talking to desingers to make it better)
Read flickr’s 10 keys to community management.
3 Designing for reputation
people in the community to manage each other’s reputation
Bryce glass, ID lead for Yahoo Reputation platforms “your reputation is equal to the sum of your past actions within (a) community”
you want reputation to decay over time:
i.e. rewind at end of the month
or can be an “elte squad member” for 2007 or 2008
you don’t stay great forever, you have to keep doing things
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