BretWagner.com

Leverage Peer Production for Your Network

Peer production created eBay, Wikipedia, Craigslist, Facebook, and provided Netflix with hundreds of thousands of movie reviews. Netflix alone has user-generated content worth millions to the company. Facebook’s community of super-active (hyper-active?) users has helped to push the social networking site beyond the competition, with recent valuations as high as $15 billion.

All are examples where users happily do for free what companies would otherwise have to pay employees to do. It’s not outsourcing, it’s “crowdsourcing.”

Chris Anderson’s book The Long Tail takes a look at the power of crowdsourcing. Anderson states that “the advantage of crowdsourcing is not just economic; customers can do a better job, too.” User generated content on review sites like Amazon and Netfilx is often well-informed, articulate, and trusted. The trust factor alone is enough reason to make user-submitted content the focal point of your social network. You’re not going to create an effective community of users by maintaining a one-way stream of communication. In fact, I would go so far as to say 4/5ths of all content on your site should be user generated. In the case of this “self-service” model, the work is being done by the people who care most about it, and best know their own needs.

Book Report: The Long Tail

The future of business is selling less of more. This according to Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail. Anderson looks at why the future of commerce and culture isn’t in hits, the high-volume head of a traditional demand curve (and what is still driving the motion-picture and music industries). He makes the case that the future is now in what used to be regarded as misses- the “long tail” of the same demand curve.

Rise and Fall of the Hit

Remember when Britney Spears was known as a pop artist rather than a freak show? The commercial success of teen pop hits like Spears is best demonstrated by the group NSYNC. On March 21, 2000, Jive Records released NSYNC’s latest album No Strings Attached. The album sold 2.4 million copies in its first week… 11 million by the end of the year.

Anderson argues that this will never happen again. So what happened to the hit parade? The industry blamed piracy. Anderson states it was choice. Not only were users able to download music freely on such services as Napster and Limewire, but they were given unprecedented choice in what music they downloaded. Today’s iTunes model uses this same choice to create a legal system for accessing millions of tracks, from the hits to the obscure.

So what’s the take home here? If you don’t have the resources to create a big hit social network like Facebook or Netflix, don’t worry. With the right niche and the ability to offer infinite content within that niche, you can build a strong brand by supporting and encouraging the right users. What’s more, with technology advancing to a point where anyone can be a media producer, you can offer it faster than any of the hits could hope to.

Niche Culture

American political and cultural writer Virginia Postrel observed that the popularity of niche is nothing more than a reflection of the diversity inherent in any population distribution:

“Every aspect of human identity, from size, shape, and color to sexual proclivities and intellectual gifts, comes in a wide range. Most of us cluster somewhere in the middle of most statistical distributions. But there are lots of bell curves, and pretty much everyone is on the tail of at least one of them.”

Anderson observes people reforming into thousands of what he calls tribes of interest, connected less by geographic proximity and workplace chatter than by shared interests. You can find the niche for your social network by having a tightly defined purpose and audience.

Long Tail Rules

The book is well summarized by the last chapter, where Anderson states the secret to creating a thriving Long Tail social network as

1. Make everything available
2. Help me find it

Seems simple enough. The first part can be a challenge, as copyright may be an issue, as well as digitizing some content. But with the cost of storage and bandwidth decreasing rapidly, it will continue to get easier to offer everything within a niche.

The second point is moving quickly with the rise of powerful search engines acting like filters. Programming an effective search feature on your social network, as well as performing appropriate search engine optimization, will drive traffic down the long tail and to your network. Remember- the power of the recommendation trumps all, so be sure to include some type of ratings system within your website.

Overall, The Long Tail was a quick read, well worth a trip to your local library. If you are short on time, you may consider checking out this book for the last chapter alone. Anderson’s nine long tail rules are critical for any social network being considered.

Get a Community Manager

Every party needs a host. Like a good host, your community manager should be your most active, high-profile member- accountable to everyone and responsible for setting the tone for the community experience. Because your community manager will have special powers and insider knowledge, you’ll need to take extra care in choosing someone to fill this role. Step one in the screening and selection process – locate qualified candidates.

Finding the community manager.

The most important leadership role in your community is the community manager. This person is ultimately responsible for keeping the community running smoothly. I would suggest recruiting a small pool of 3-5 active participants drawn from your forum or professional experience. Develop a relationship with each of these potential candidates, through email or over the phone. Get to know each so that when it comes time to selecting your manager, you feel confident that you have made the best choice.

Defining the manager’s responsibilities.

The goal isn’t for this person to control the community, but to curate it, and the work done up front will pay off later. Defining responsibilities up front will help. According to Amy Jo Kim, author of Community Building on the Web, here are some important responsibilities the community manager must take on:

• Defining key leadership positions and recruiting individuals to fill these positions
• Creating a social and legal policy
• Setting up a training program for leadership positions
• Overseeing the creation and maintenance of a leadership manual
• Defining compensation (financial or otherwise) for community leaders
• Creating feedback mechanisms for evaluating the effectiveness of other community leaders
• Training and managing a community staff

Whew! That is a lot to chew on for one person. If you are running a small community, your defined roles may be different in that you are the community manager, and it is your job to recruit and train other community leaders. In this case, you may want to transfer some of these responsibilities to the other leaders.

Training the community manager.

Once you’ve selected the community manager and defined their responsibilities, you need to teach them how to perform their new role. Setting up an online meeting space will give you a chance to present the training program and encourage the participant to ask questions through direct contact. Small communities just starting out will likely have small, informal training sessions. As the community grows, it is important to start to develop more formal training programs with written documentation to serve as a reference. The online community Well has an excellent example of a written manual they provide to all new hosts.

Support and compensation.

If you’re a larger community, and have a steady revenue stream, you may decide that financial compensation is appropriate. In this case, you should look for someone who is capable of performing most if not all of the above tasks, and be prepared to reward them for all their hard work.

For many large communities, managing can be a full-time job. However, as your community flourishes, other hosts will emerge from your member base to share the work. With the right mix of paid leaders and volunteers, you should see results in increased membership and traffic, as well as in the loyalty of your members and participation in the community.

Defining Your Community’s Purpose & Audience

Why do people interact online? Are these the same reasons for interacting face-to-face? These are two questions I’ve been asking myself while considering a redesign of my social networking site, Science For America. These are questions you should consider before creating your social networking space. By having a clear purpose that makes sense to you, the space designer, and the members, you can give yourself a head start in designing and running a successful online interaction space or community.

What I’m hoping to accomplish with my social network is motivating teachers to collaborate online and share science teaching strategies. They are going to have to overcome time and technical barriers to do this. I’m working to demonstrate to potential users how participating in the space will benefit them. Two of the best strategies to accomplish this is defining who exactly I’m going after, and what will be our community’s purpose.

How to Avoid an Online Ghost Town… Have a Well-Defined Purpose!

The purpose of your social network helps you decide both its structure (what tools to use, how to apply them), and what resources (time, information, and expertise) you will need to support and facilitate it.

To help you articulate and clarify your purpose, you should ask yourself the following questions (I’m crediting Full Circle Associates for coming up with these):

• Does your community have a mission or a vision that you can communicate to potential members?
• Are the benefits measurable and visible to members and potential members?
• Is the outcome determined by the organizer? Group members? Both?
• If the group is part of a larger organization, is it consistent with organizational goals and culture?
• Is the group’s purpose something that can only be done/accomplished online? Will it replace something offline? Or is it some combination?

Purpose helps you articulate your community story which helps attract and draw members in. It sustains interaction. I’ve mentioned the importance of story in a previous post reviewing Daniel Pink’s book A Whole New Mind.

As far as Science For America goes, our purpose follows:

“To empower educators as teachers and learners as they develop and implement new themes, ideas, and curriculum. Educators are given the opportunity to learn and build networks with leaders, experts and each other.”

I believe our purpose is articulated well in these two sentences. Our story is in our empowered members. Ideas to make this story stronger might be to include quotes from teachers who have used the website to make a difference in their classroom, or show a picture of the network of teachers who have connected through the site.

Sighting in your Target Audience

A tightly defined target audience will make it easier when developing content for your site. You will be able to look at everything through a lens, asking “Is this what my community members want?” While defining the target audience for Science For America, I found that defining a single target audience was actually impossible. Instead, I had to focus on two audiences- a group of experienced science teachers (5 or more years in the classroom) and a group of inexperienced teachers ( 5 years or less in the classroom).

Here are some questions to help guide you (from Full Circle Associates, with some modifications by this author):

• How would you describe the website’s visitors? It may help to articulate the difference between a visitor vs. participant.
• How motivated are your visitors to participate?
• What is “in it for them?”
• Do they have adequate computer equipment and Internet access to have a satisfactory experience on your system?
• Do you tell them the minimum requirements up front?
• Do you want your community to be public or private?
• If private, what determines eligibility?
• What is the ideal size for your group?
• Is there a limit to how many members can participate?
• Do you have a sense of how your community can expand if there is greater interest?
• Where might you find potential participants?
• How might you communicate with your participants to market your online interaction space? (If you build it, they may not come!)
• Are you building from an existing pool of participants, or drawing in new people?

Of these, I believe the “What’s in it for me?” question should drive everything you do. Ultimately, all visitors, whether they are just passing through or returning participants, have come to your site with a purpose. Whether that purpose be to connect, or learn, or download or submit content (we’ll look at defining WHAT your visitors do once they arrive at your site in a later post), the closer your site’s purpose is to their purpose, the more likely they are to become loyal participants.

Building Successful Online Communities

If you build it, they will come. A statement ingrained in America’s psyche thanks to the 1989 film Field of Dreams. But while the film garnered numerous awards and accolades from critics and moviegoers alike (three Oscar nominations alone, Best Picture, Best Music, Best Writing), not even Kevin Costner can save your social networking site from fading into obscurity without the right stuff.

If you build it they will come works well for building baseball diamonds in Iowa cornfields, but when it comes to social networking sites, it takes a concerted effort of seeding, promoting, and managing to get things off the ground.

I’ve been scouring the web for other authors and organizations who have addressed steps to building successful online communities. Aside from a handful of personal blogs discussing this issue, there isn’t a whole lot of official research on what factors are necessary for successful social networks.

I did, however, find an excellent resource from the KickApps team. Kickapps recently published a whitepaper titled “Nine Steps to a Successful Online Community.” They’ve put together a list of guidelines to help social networks reach their fullest potential. The nine steps necessary to promote good planning and best practices?

1. Define your community’s purpose and audience.
2. Get a Community Manager.
3. Choose the technology that’s right for you.
4. Seed your community with great content.
5. Customize your community’s look and feel.
6. Promote it!
7. Encourage active participation.
8. Manager your community with fair-mind consistency.
9. Listen and optimize.

I’ll be writing about each one of these in separate blogs in the next few weeks. In the meantime, read up for yourself here and also check out some of these links.

My First Social Network – Things I’ve Learned

Believe it or not, Science For America was my first website. I’ve created four now- definitely still a newbie- but I’ve come to appreciate the relative ease of creating websites and applications using technologies like content management systems, blogging platforms and development frameworks.

While I think the design of Science For America is strong, and the platform I built it on is even stronger (Joomla! CMS), I’ve learned a few things about trying to create a social network that I’d like to share with you.

One…

Creating social networks takes time. Both time on a day-by-day basis, and also time in the sense of building up the site and brand to get passionate visitors who come back for more. I would attribute the relative success of Science For America to its tenure on the web, now 18 months. I found that initial traffic and getting the word out was critical in the beginning, but that after this had started, it simply took time for traffic and users to arrive at the site.

Two…

Creating social networks takes planning. I used a 20 Questions document to develop the underlying principles for the site. Who are we targeting? What are the sites’ competitors? What type of content will be included? All of these were important in deciding the direction of the site.

Three…

Creating social networks takes organization. Proper layout is critical, because you want your user interface to be intuitive. Where can I find science worksheets? Where do I go when I want to find links to science websites? All of these questions should really be answered BEFORE you start on the site and throughout the beta phase of development. There are many platforms out there- Joomla! and Wordpress to name a couple- that make it relatively easy to rearrange content and links on websites, but it is still a critical step to develop at least a rough sketch, wireframes maybe, of where you are going to have visitors click to navigate certain parts of the site.

This is simplifying things a bit, but I believe if you focus on these three areas, you’ll have a solid site ready for visitors.

A Social Network for Science Teachers?

Where are all the science teachers? It seems logical that those who teach technology should be using technology to connect and share ideas on the web. I’ve been reflecting on why, after 18 months on the web, my website Science for America only has 350 registered members. While the site gets 200 visitors PER DAY, really only about 5-7 people will sign up per week. Continue reading…

Welcome to Social Remix

Once upon a time people used to communicate face-to-face. They still do, but we’ve added a few more options. Early forms of communicating included cave paintings, then papyrus, paper, telegraph, telephone, radio, television, and the Internet. I’m sure I’m forgetting a few, but consider if you will this list. Consider how fast we’ve moved from the telephone to the Internet compared to the speed at which we developed from cave paintings to the telegraph. Communication is speeding up, but the point remains the same- connecting with others!

Welcome…

to M is for Minimize. This site is the blog and professional website of Bret Wagner, a former science teacher and engineer and current web apps creative examining the different ways to remix application development and business strategy to create new experiences.

My experience…

in web development has me coming back to the same point- social networking will continue to play the most important role in the future of the Internet. With applications like Facebook and MySpace helping to bring together friends, social bookmarking sites like Del.icio.us and Digg bringing together knowledge, and web applications like Ning available for users to create their own social networks, it’s difficult to deny the momentum social networking has gained the last two years.

This blog…

will explore the development cycle I’ll take to combine existing ideas nobody else ever thought to unite. It might be taking a current application, such as the social networking I’ve created over at Science For America, and making it better, or it might be creation of a new application. My experience has shown that there are thousands of great ideas out there… the breakdown is in getting the marketing, business, and programming sides to gel. Programmers are not usually strong in design, while designers may not be the strongest in programming. Marketing and business model are usually left by the wayside. The most effective applications have all of these elements working together.

Enjoy!