Hosting Web Communities

Do you feel like you belong in many -- any -- Web communities? Lots of people and companies try and host successful Websites, but few pull it off. Cliff Figallo has helped do it three different times, and has written a workmanlike, useful book about what it takes -- good design, time, patience, great software, trust and the right people. He never loses sight of what the user wants and needs. Here is a review of Hosting Web Communities, on how to build enduring and yes, profitable communities online. (Read more below.)

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.