Slashdot Log In
Hosting Web Communities
from the -people-people-people-trust-trust-trust- dept.
| Hosting Web Communities: Increasing Customer Loyalty and Mainta | |
| author | Cliff Figallo |
| pages | 448 |
| publisher | Wiley |
| rating | 7/10 |
| reviewer | Jon Katz |
| ISBN | 0-471-28293-6 |
| summary | It takes people and trust to build a community site |
Creating Web communities on the Net is one of the more important social and business challenges of our time, but few people or companies seem to know how to do it with skill.
Into the fray comes Cliff Figallo, author of the useful no-nonsense Hosting Web Communities: Building Relationships, Increasing Customer Loyalty, and Maintaining a Competitive Edge, from Wiley.
Like many books about the Net these days, this one is cast in part as a business tool, probably for marketing reasons. And no doubt it will help individuals and companies -- especially small ones -- who want to establish viable Web communities.
But despite the practical packaging, the book takes aim at anybody who wants to join or run one.
Figallo knows whereof he speaks. Director of Community Development for Salon and its Table Talk discussion site, he spent six years as director of the The WELL, arguably the world's most influential and enduring virtual community. Figallo also helped develop AOL's first chat interface, "Virtual Places." That would put him in three especially coherent, community-minded Web enterprises.
Hosting a successful, bona fide Web community is rough.
As Figallo notes in his introduction, three themes recur: "The first is that community is a social constant looking to take hold in an environment of unrelenting change. The second is that trust is essential for community to happen. And the third is that meaningful relationships, far more than size, determine the success of online communities." Figallo's gift is that he sees the web community clearly from every perspective: host, user, designer, businessperson. He understands that at some point, community has to pay the bills in order to survive.
What is an online community? The word gets tossed around so much that, Figallo points out, the very term "virtual community" has been reduced to meaningless jargon. "A sense of belonging," is his answer. "Unless that feeling is there, no manager, advertiser, or promoter can claim the presence of community, no matter how much commonality exists in the users' interests and demographics."
"Community" is not synonymous with "harmony." Virtual communities don't have to be cheerful and sweet. But users must feel included. If you feel like you're part of a Web community, Figallo argues, you probably are.
Authoritative and common sensical, Figallo draws heavily on his own experience and scores of examples to make his case about flow, interface and atmosphere, helpfully backing up every point with illustrative URL's and examples.
He also offers counsel on how to preserve free speech and other online values while curbing the endemic flaming and erratic communications styles that have done in too many Web communities.
Hosts are essential to the building of relationships, he insists. They not only openly maintain the meeeting place -- arranging chat room schedules, starting and naming new discussion topics, keeping order and serving as librarian for online resources -- but they also act as "social adhesives" between the people who meet there. They help create certain essentials, including an interwoven web of relationships that last through time.
"Where these attributes exist," writes Figallo,"they solidify loyalty to the group and, therefore, to the Web site that support its activities. Members return regularly and in doing so, affirm the feeling that they belong, and maintain the relationship identified with the site. They come back because they are rewarded for doing so with valued facts, feelings, advice and opinions. As time passes, they help construct a history that is shared with others, adding to the feeling that they are part of some greater entity."
Figallo has come closer than most people in recent memory to defining the social structure that has to occur -- in conjunction with the design, interface and configurations he also outlines -- before the term "community" has any real meaning in connection with cyberspace.
One interesting chapter focuses on gathering business clientele into communities. Small business sites selling specialty items have become the mom-and-pop stores on the Internet, Figallo writes, selling to customers who can now be found anywhere there's a dial-up connection. Although companies like Amazon get most of the attention, the Net has spawned thousands of electronic shops, and it's reasonable, even necessary for these entrepeneurs to see their customers as members of "communities," because they want them to keep on returning.
In the past decade, countless "communities" have cluttered the Net, but only a handful are memorable, effective, or enduring. Figallo's publisher undoubtedly thought it could snare an audience by presenting the book so distinctly in business terms, but don't be put off by that.
This is a strong, convincing look at what it really takes to build enduring and yes, profitable communities online: the deployment of software and architecture and, above all, people, that permits humans to get to know one another and to keep coming back.
You can purchase this book from ThinkGeek.
online communities: (Score:3)
2) KISS.. not everyone on the net is a techno-genius..
3) Be realistic in your claims.
4) Have some kind of content review, so that people who go there can have other things removed if they dont like them. I am not advocating "censorship" per se.. but I am advocating that I am not going to hang out on an online community that has five health rooms, and a white power room right next to it. No-one is saying you cant say waht you want, just not *here*
5) Take some responsibility for your hosting/setup.
I used to hang out in an EFNET channel that was the closest thing I have ever seen to a "virtual community".. we had births, we had deaths, we had marriages (mine among them) between regulars.. it was *wonderful*.. parties, etc.. but the line got blurred when some people let the power get to their heads..
6) make it available to people who want to have *fun*.. if you have moderators, give them guidelines, put pick people with a good sense of humor.. not people who will remove you because they dont like your nick, your religious choice, or your jokes.. (within reason.. see # 4)
Thats my recipe.. can anyone implement it? In todays day of litigation and corporate fear of the former, probably not.
Maeryk
No (Score:3)
Relative to the amount of time involved in using Slashdot, I would rate it as having the lowest sense of community of any on-line potential community I've yet seen.
I've done this stuff for aeons now; BBS, CIX, Usenet, mailing lists and Web-hosted boards (never did MOOs, IRC or ICQ though). The "community" of groups has definitely declined in inverse proportion to the technical complexity of their host, but Slashdot is noticeably low, even by web-hosted standards.
Why is this ? Well the "content to wittering" ratio on Slashdot is high. Even the Trolls are more about "bad content" than community-building witter. Karma also reduces witter; you can't karma-whore by being charming, just by flaming M$oft and posting links to some new geek-toy. It's the "pointless" witter that builds communities though.
I miss Usenet. I'm really hacked off with the number of e-groups I need to follow work-wise, when I know they're really better candidates for NNTP. I don't like working on shared protocol development, when the best backup is on some free-hosting DotCom with a dodgy business plan and a potential to collapse tomorrow.
I know of the non-Usenet Usenets (which I certainly won't post links to here), but this need for secrecy is what itself reduces their worth; it was great in The Old Days, when a shared interest in haddock juggling put you in touch with a worldwide community of fish flingers, but now alt.haddock is just H4XX0RZ and Pr0n spam.
Re: /. bias (Score:3)
It's hard to find one that works (Score:3)
You have to create a community based around something that people have pride in, rather it be their vehicles, their computers (hardocp), their homes, their stereos, etc. Regular 'teen hangout' communities are dying by the wayside because they just throw a thousand people into the mix and let them bleah on forever.
Re:Formula? (Score:3)
sig:
Constructed communities rarely work. (Score:4)
There are notable exceptions (TiVo [avsforum.com] comes to mind), but a lot of companies (and other organizations) get the idea that if they build a room, it'll become a community.
The truth is the web is so much vacuum that creating an empty space by no means ensures it will be filled with content. True online communities don't have one single home. Slashdot members form a community, but Slashdot itself isn't the community. Bloggers form hundreds of tight-knit communities, but Blogger [blogger.com] isn't a community, nore were they trying to be one when they started. All three of these sites tried to provide a great service, and the community grew organically.
TiVo's web board was just a quick addition to satisfy customer requests for a common area, and now it's flourishing grandly on its own. WebTV's community center is the same way.
Communities are emergent entities. You can't build them intentionally unless you realize that and create a product, service, or theme which inspires people to want to talk to others, not specifically to 'be part of a community,' but because they want to share at the more basic level.
Kevin Fox