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Hosting Web Communities
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.
People don't generally want to participate in a venture whose sole role is to make some other a$$hole wealthy; and hey, that's appropriate. People's own interests have to be taken into account. There has to be an emormously strong draw, a type of community that can't be found elsewhere. The geek community that makes up /., the intelligent nouveau liberals that makes up salon.com's table talk, etc. And even in these two cases, the commercial aspects have largely been focused elsewhere at the time the community started.
Communities have to feel free to post whatever they want, whenever they want, for example, to truly be effective at being communities. Commercial ventures won't withstand that sort of thing. They have to allow endless criticism of themselves, their products, their staff, their management... how many public companies would go for that?
Communities have to feel that they will continue to exist, that their feet won't be pulled out from under them because the last quarter was a bad one or because their favorite moderator was laid off.
Take a look at this list of mostly-successful communities running vBulletin and see how many are commercial in nature. There's a reason for that!
There's a reason why I wrote my sig the way I did -- and BTW, I wrote this sig a week ago, so this is not just some self-serving situation. My own community is over ten years old, having survived as a local BBS, a netted BBS, a telnet BBS and now finally (as of a week ago) a web-based community. Some of the people there have been there since the inception. If it successfully makes the transition to web-based community, it will be because the users wanted it, not me. And that's my final point: you simply can't force community into existence!
I've been on QuakeNet IRC for a few years now and I can certainly say it's a proper community. Others have mentioned IRC however, so I'd like to concentrate on something tied to that community which is Barrysworld. Barrysworld is a UK based gaming service provider which has been the heart of UK online gaming for a few years now. They started off being run by a few people in their part-time and recently got proper funding and became a company.
Whilst I'd like to go on and on about them, it's late so I won't. However, I would like to draw your attention to recent happenings at Barrysworld. Basically, their second round of funding is due, and the backers have decided to pull out. Unless someone steps in before a week on Monday (Feb 5th), Barrysworld will close forever. Read the announcement and official press release.
This came as a huge shock to all of us who are part of that community. I think there was a future for Barrysworld as a company and it's a real shame that investors are too scared with all the recent .com failings to make that happen. People have worked very hard indeed to run Barrysworld and they've got to where they are by respecting their community and vice versa. When the news hit IRC noone could believe it. People are truely upset. Take a look at some of the comments on their forums.
The Register has a good article, and the BBC has one too.
It means more than the loss of a few game servers, a nice gaming dialup, and a website... Barrysworld also host the main UK servers for QuakeNet which is going to cause big problems when they go down (although I've been told there are plans to relocate those). Barryworld was the centre of the UK Quake3 scene without a doubt. No one else is in a position to take that on. The excellent leagues they ran will be no more. The community is broken. We're upset. If you've got a few million quid to spare, you know where to send it.
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The userbase is far more important than the actual site, and the people running it need to know that. I'd imagine most people that read /. on a regular basis find the threads far more interesting than the articles themselves. The articles should be seen as just a foundation for discussion. Indeed most of the criticism that I see here about /. is started when the people running the site use their article postings as a chance to influence others with their own thoughts on the front page, rather than discuss it with the 'masses' in the threads.
I haven't been with /. since the beginning, only the past two years or so, so I can't really comment on the initial growing pains/patterns. But another communitish site that has been doing well that I have been participating in from early on, href="http://www.livejournal.com">livejournal, has been extremely good about implementing the users requests, and gaining a lot of loyalty. The admins realize that their users are the livelyhood, their best and only real advertising is word of mouth, and that the users will define what the community is, and their job is just to make sure the servers can handle it. They go so far as to encourage related software development from the userbase.
It seems to me that /. as a community sort of suffers from too singular a mentality in the leadership, clashing with a more varied and diverse user base than they imagine. Things like the relentless microsoft bashing and shameless linux promotion from the very people running the site seem to alienate many of the intelligent readers, just go through the threads about MS' DNS servers going down on wednesday. The usual argument is, it's taco's site, he can do whatever the hell he wants. That's ok, but /. presents itself as a community, which is more than just a website, and if it wants to continue to nurture that, it has to realize that it's serving other people now, not its creator.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
Okay, I think most of us would agree that Slashdot is not a community. It has discussions, but no community. I'll read a post by someone, maybe become more educated, but I won't think to respond and chat.
In the old BBSes (well, the multi-line boards at the end), you could log on to chat, and you'd invite your friends to join to chat (which is now handled with IM/ICQ), the difference was, you'd also interact with other groups.
At random times, you'd be on, your friends wouldn't, and you'd chat and meet new people.
On the Internet, that's gone.
It used to be, getting a modem limited the participation, so there was a shared interest. Then, configuring your modem and a terminal program was a limitation. The web has no enterance requirements, so building community takes effort and creativity. There are limitations to HTML (it wasn't designed for this), and there is a need to create a useful interface for Interacting that will work and provide some community.
I have reservations about any book that claims to be able to define a "successful" web community, let alone how to duplicate that success. The most successful web communities seem to be happy accidents (see userfriendly and this esteemed site)
He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. - "Big Al" Einstein
Visit ArsDigita to download the ArsDigita Community System ¥ACS, a completely Open Source set of tools for building online collaborative communities© Go to the education section for help©
Also, read Philip & Alex's Guide to Web Publishing© If you are serious about online community development, this is required reading© I have never seen a better work on online community development©
I've reviewed the book at The Assayer©
While there is no doubt a lot of places to buy things online I'm not sure that it necessarily constitutes a community in the traditional sense of the word. The trend in the brick and mortar retail world is toward gigantic, all encompassing, department stores. Hardware shops that used to sell lumber and botls have been replaced by warehouse sized outlets that not only carry lumber, but TVs, applicances, and other items formerly out of the realm of hardware. The grocery business is heading the same way: it is no longer enough to just carry food, you have to offer clothing and toys and furniture as well. At least this is the case in the US.
I see online shopping heading that way as well. Times have gotten leaner and I expect that many small specialty e-tailers have been driven out of the market. This would seem to be to damage any sort of community feeling that the mom and pop folks have. If the players keep chaning and there really isn't much money to be made then that should be the trend. Even the larger shops like Amazon have not exactly been tearing it up sales wise.
Regardless, the online store community seems to be a recurring theme for Katz but I'm not sure where the evidence is.
Cunning linguists
1) streamline it.. i dont want to click through a million and a half checkboxes and free emails and popup banners to get to where I am trying to go. Try having the wigs that come up with your web concept actually *use* the sucker a few times before releasing it.
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
Feminine Protection? What is that? A chartreuse flame thrower?
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.
A zealous core group of users isn't a bad thing, infact it's a testament that the community matters to some people. I just think it can be bad when the administrators on the site tend to support that so much, to the point where they neglect or inappropriately attack the rest of their users, the majority of their users, who aren't part of that zealous core group.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
There are many sites that try to be too general. Like, a website community for the elderly, or for mothers. Well, when you get that general, there are 2000+ other sites that gearing for the same audience. You have to specialize in a single field, that doesn't rely on age, and have it be one where people want to check frequently for more information or help. One that I like to participate in is for Ford Ranger owners. A site where anyone of any age or sex can just talk about trucks, speed, modifications, cops, etc. You want to keep visiting because you want to see what the newest products are, and the newest trends to incorporate on.
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.
For the most part you can't make a community, especially if youre a big company trying to build a fan community around yourself. Creating a forum usually gives your critics a high podium to shout from, without much of an interest in actual discourse.
There are notable exceptions (TiVo 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 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
Kevin Fox