Powazek's First chapter highlights some design decisions to make when incorporation community features in a website. I would highlight for the reader that he is speaking from the long-bygone era of 2001, when adding a discussion board to a website took considerably longer than a half hour. In retrospect, some of his comments are a bit amusing. How many discussion boards and chat rooms that you frequent have professional paid moderators and help deskies?
He starts with a couple of "bad reasons" to add community features: "because it's cool" and "because we'll get free content" -- he highlights why community features are not always a good idea for every site, and how selective addition of community features can bring out better results than adding these features willy-nilly.
Given that you have good reasons for adding community features, he offers some sage advice:
- Consider who your audience is, and what they want. If you don't know, ask them. You may have multiple audiences, ie teenagers and as a secondary audience, their parents.
- Consider what content you want to elicit, and give users something to talk about. He offers the example of a photography enthusiast's website being divided by camera manufacturer.
- Consider how you want people to talk to each other, be it synchronous (chat rooms) or asynchronous (discussion boards). This will impact the tone and forethought that goes into inter-user communication.
Finally, he offers some interview style questions which will help a designer determine what they should add in terms of community features:
- Who are you and what's your background?
- Please tell us about the community project. What is it about? What is the intent behind your project and what do you hope to achieve?
- Who is the site community project for, exactly?
- What is on this site for the community to talk about?
- What kind of community features do you want to provide?
Overall the chapter is a quick read and offers some valuable insights into community site design process.
In this week’s Powazek reading, the author discusses both good and bad motives for adding community features to websites. The belief that online communities automatically translates into free content is criticized by Powazek, who argues that a significant amount of management and up-keep is necessary for this endeavor. While this is generally a true statement, I believe that for any technology-related product, a forum (at the least) is pretty much expected by the end users. With a solid amount of people spending large portions of their day on the internet, the notion that community features should be considered as an “option” just does not quite make sense. Furthermore, assuming that these websites relate to products and things that people actually care about, roles such as forum moderators or officers can easily be filled by loyal enthusiasts.
Therefore, it appears that Powazek’s discussion about the several important things to keep in mind while implementing online community features is much more relevant to site owners these days. Powazek mentions quite a few things, but the idea of providing valuable content strikes me as the most important element. One experience that I had (which might not appeal to everyone in the class) was with a site and forum set-up before the release of a particular computer game. Before the release, the specific site “obtained” the beta version of the software, which was without a question, “valuable content” to several gamers. After the official release of the software, the traffic at the site decreased as expected, but the site owner(s) and users began to use the site and forum as means to organize gaming sessions. Soon the site and forum evolved into a community where everything related and unrelated to the game was discussed. In a sense, tangible content of value was provided at first by the site owner(s), but after words, the thriving community created the content.
Submitted by LizBlankenship on Wed, 01/09/2008 - 20:36.
0
points
... but is it expected for the company itself to provide it? I think often unofficial forums often fill this role. I'll say more under Dustin's post because it relates to moderation as well.
Powazek pumps out the sort of writing that I can respect... concise and practical. At the beginning of the chapter, he discusses the "cool" and "free" factors that motivate some companies to push community features on their sites. This strikes me as a trend that frequently occurs among top level decision makers who are too far removed from the actual technology. Every new web technology inspires fanciful thoughts of "coolness" to the uninitiated, but whether it's e-commerce (yes, the bubble), web 2.0 (oh, I went there), or ecommunities, these technologies tend to have specific uses and real costs. Sure, these technologies are wonderful, but none has proved to be a panacea. This chapter is a valuable reminder that new technology should be evaluated for its net benefits, despite buzz.
I tend to agree that community tools can not simply be added, particularly to a corporate site, and be expected to yield results. For one, the amount of effort exerted in fostering the community is going to directly correlate to the size and quality of that community. As Powazek suggests, moderation is also highly important, especially to corporations, and even more so for companies with well established reputations that are beginning to establish a new web presence. Companies that have an established reputation, perhaps through brick and mortar operations, may not bring the most tech-savvy customers to their site. As a result, their customers may be more easily offended by 'interruptions' from rogue users, if not properly moderated.
The important thing to remember about users is that they will do what you least expect... and anonymity on the web reduces inhibitions. Corporations aren't in the business of democratic discourse, but rather, they're in the business of maximizing profits, and some lunatic spamming profanities across their forums won't help accomplish that goal. Of course, lunatics might not be the worst of the trouble... most rational people will acknowledge a lunatic. Even worse would be the use of your community for the purpose of advertising a competitor, in which case even rational users will welcome the comparison. Moderation is clearly important and must come at some cost.
Submitted by LizBlankenship on Wed, 01/09/2008 - 21:01.
0
points
I agree that moderation is important, indeed you make many of the points that I saw as relevant about both cost of upkeep and moderation as a necessity for such sites. To add some thoughts in another direction, I'd like to point out that it's also pertinent to take into consideration the role of unofficial online discussion places such as forums or chats.
As you described, moderation may be necessary on official product sites where a certain image and quality is expected of the company and its site's content, but it comes as a cost. Often, when there is a strong need for communication and support, unofficial sites have sprung up on the internet for the discussion of particular products and services. I feel these fill a similar role to the moderated forums, but there are a few key differences, the pramiry one being the level of freedom of content and tone is wider on an unofficial site, allowing flaming, cross-advertising such as you mentioned, and more. There is also no financial cost to the company since they do not provide the site.
Basically, companies should consider whether an unofficial site could (or already is) adequately fulfill(ing) the role they are looking to play before they leap into plans for their own form of discussion mechanism on their site.
On a sidenote regarding other types of online communities that may not be as discussion-based, I think that the cost/benefit analysis of these should be even more careful and detailed since they are generally more experimental. We have seen even in the case of Notes.net's discussion-oriented site that a site needs careful planning or else the flexibility to redesign based upon user response.
Some of Powazek's assertions reflect their relevance for antiquated eras, but his main thesis still applies to the modern times (when adding online communities is only a matter of expending few extra person-hours to web projects.) Even if modern communities are not developmental- or maintenance-costs-heavy, companies should still employ them with caution. The reading is an indirect, and valuable, pointer to the fact that even if a cool, fashionable accessory is available (today) at a low cost, every company or a website shouldn't wear it unless it really suits the demands of it's occasion.
On a different note, he raises a particularly intriguing design problem whereby Notes.net community became the victim of its own success. Users began posting comments and questions so frequently that the comments only lasted on the homepage of the community area for a brief time. The very purpose of creating great content was defeated by the creation of great content itself.
The design remedies that he suggests, particularly for the secondary target audience (experts answering developer's questions), points us yet again to the importance of understanding users' needs. His solution tells us what the server logs or usability reports could not easily reveal: A relatively smaller, but critical, user base also sometimes needs better user experience. For the experience of these small number of users could affect the experience and relevance of site for a larger, primary, user base.
The first chapter (following last week’s preface) to a book about designing web communities. She outlines the benefits and pitfalls of adding web community elements to any site. Of two bad reasons, people often think it’s merely cool and/or that they’ll get free content, but as she says, “when users post to your site, it isn’t a gift from them to you; it’s the beginning of a very real relationship between you and the user” (3). She then lays out three things to consider before adding community elements: knowing your audience (7), creating valuable content (10) including “giving your user something to talk about, and they will reward you with high-quality conversations” (11), and community (11) including the different between synchronous and asynchronous communication. She ends the chapter by asking a series of question that anyone (including me) should ask before setting up a community.
I agree with nearly everything the author had to say here, especially her initial caution of adding a community function in order to generate content. I'm very interested in Web 2.0 communities and user-generated content, but the author here brings up a good point that unless the relationship between designer/user is honored the content will dry up or become irrelevant. I think this ties into the preface from this book last week in that the best communities are volunatry and serve a purpose for the users even if it seems arbitrary or trivial to non-users.
In light of our conversation about community metaphors last week, I found Powazek's brief discussion under the community heading interesting. She actually doesn't ever use the word "community" in her discussion of "Community." Instead, she talks about what communication behavior is enabled by the community feature.
I found this to be a very practical definition of community on the web. Community is how your users are able to respond to each other.
Powazek's first chapter provides a good introduction into basic principles that have to be considered before creating a community. Some points seem to be common sense but are extremly valuable listed together. I had quite a few aha! moments, where i found myself thinking about communities that i have dwelled through recently while reading this chapter. I liked especially the interview part at the end of the chapter that involves the reader and let's him apply the learned objectives right away.
Submitted by John Blair on Thu, 01/10/2008 - 00:06.
0
points
John Blair
The chapter was right to the point and I think a great way to start a book on the subject of web / community development projects. I've seen countless projects fail because they didn't heed the simply advice noted in this chapter. It's not an easy process to understand the audience and address their needs. it takes time and effort as the author also notes - which is most likely why projects fail in this respect, the project team didn't have time to execute these foundation steps effectively.
A short and simple advisory from someone whose obviously witnessed a few disasters. While the article itself may be considered dated in some respects, the wisdom provided certainly is not.
Interesting! CEOs are sometimes ... Well, the good and bad reasons for establishing a community that are brought out at the beginning of the article are realistic and still worth thinking about more deeply. Overall, it also tells us a general lesson, never runs after something simply because it seems cool and popular, always think whether it fits your specific needs and will be benefcial in the end.
This article is a great compilation of advice on how to approach designing web communities. Much of the information in this article seems a little obvious but it is probably also the type of stuff that most web designers are likely to get wrong the first time. I personally have tried to encourage employers to make mistake one and two. That made her dismantling of those arguments all the more interesting.
I also found how users repurpose others infrastructure fascinating. I for one would have never guessed that pantyhose fetishist would have used a L’eggs website as an improvised confessional and meeting spot. The story does provide a very memorable parable about what we are possibly inviting when we open our doors to web communities.
I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.
Submitted by Matt Adamo on Thu, 01/10/2008 - 18:18.
0
points
I also thought the advice in this chapter seemed obvious, though it's always helpful to start from the basics. But, maybe instead of obvious I should say intuitive, given the amount of time (I assume) we spend online as well as the relative age of the book. Also, Powazek gives good enough reasons to avoid features just because they're cool, but despite his warning I suspect coolness, even for the best of us, will always be oh, so tempting...
Most things Powazek talked about in chapter 1 are obvious. However, I have one question. Powazek said that "Give your users something to talk about, and they will reward you with high-quality conversation." This is certainly true and important to all kinds of websites, but some websites or forums are mainly used for social communication, without obvious topic/theme of the sites. In these cases, there may not be "main" content other than the conversations between users. I am thinking that maybe some other social mechanism could be incorporated into the design to help the generation of high-quality contents from users, rather than the owners, to produce high-quality conversation.
In Chapter 1, Powazek efficiently summarizes cost-benefit considerations for creating Web communities. She outlines resource costs (people, hardware) (p2) and reciprocity costs (if users add value to a product or service, they'll expect benefits in return) (p3). Further, if a community isn't controlled, people may act in ways that negatively effect a product or service. For example, any teenage gathering place has the potential to attract sexual predators. (p4) One benefit of adding community features beyond product support is emotional support. (pp5-6)
To make informed cost-benefit decisions, Powazek suggests three criteria. 1) Understanding the target audience allows community developers to prioritize features that most benefit the majority of intended members. (pp7-9) 2) High-quality content may inspire insightful conversations, site loyalty, and an improved reputation (pp10-11). 3) Synchronous modes of communication are engaging but aren't optimally suited for well-thought conversation, while asynchronous modes of communication lack immediacy but are more flexible. (pp12-13)
Submitted by Tracy Liu on Thu, 01/10/2008 - 11:11.
0
points
This chapter first introduces two pitfalls to implement community features for organizations and firms, the first one is to go with the stream or only hunt for fancy title, the second one is to expect user generated content for free, on the other hand, we need to know the cost and benefits of adding community features. After measuring the prons and cons, there are three questions we need to ask ourselves as a web designer: who is our audience, what content we expect and how we want users to respond.
My question in this chapter is about the user-generated content. What’s the difference between this kind of content and other kind of content, such as knowledge/news/information on the portal websites? For me, user generated content are more prolific and quickly updated and transmitted through the web, however, they are less organized and reliable as it is more difficult to verify their correctness. In addition, I am wondering people’s search behavior when they want to know something, they will first go to google or directly go to related online communities? What’s their separate advantage and disadvantages?
Powazek lays out his opposition to two motivations for creating online community: 1) because it is cool, and 2) because our users will generate content for us.
He makes in important point about when the community will come to lead you instead of you leading them. This is a bit overstated. In political theory it is an open debate as to when/where/how the community should lead vs. when the elites should lead (and they often do).
Nevertheless, Powazek is still on track when he reiterates that community interaction is not content, but conversation, and that understanding that conversation and promoting it means sometimes having to be selective about community features.
I like his point that we should always expect surprise. In the 19th century, the Vienna coffeehouses were created primarily as a place for professionals to discuss trade, but they took on new forms of activity and ended up as places where people had all kinds of conversations and interactions.
I do take issue with the idea that you can know your audience however. Goffman's work on presentation of the self, which uses theatrical metaphors, also has this focus, as does the Kim readings ( http://si684w08.cms.si.umich.edu/node/21 ), but one of the key problems in the internet age is that you can never really know your audience. If the material is public, then many audiences will view it, and even if it isn't, your audience may transport the material out of your walled-garden and out to elsewhere, where it will replicate and flourish. These are challenges to be navigated.
I like the triad: audience, content, interaction. It seems a handy way to frame the work to be done.
-------------------------------------------------------- PHartzog@umich.edu
--------------------------------------------------------
The Universe is made up of stories, not atoms.
--Muriel Rukeyser
I found Powazek's tips in this chapter to be very sage advice for those of us who might someday manage online communities. With buzzwords like 'web 2.0' and 'user-generated content' flooding the web, it's easy to get caught up in the hype and believe that adding these community tools will automatically make a site successful. But, I like Powazek's more practical approach, which urges us to step back and evaluate why a site needs community features and what the community is for. This is pretty standard software development advice, yet I feel it's important to be reiterated since at many companies it is all too quickly forgotten. Powazek's stories about the company that wanted the 'cool' chatroom, or the non-smoking campaign that wanted the chat and forums were some great, vivid examples of this.
I personally liked Powazek's advice of being selective when applying community features - and using things like soliciting user stories or allowing comments after posts or news items, instead of chat rooms or discussion boards. In the right circumstances, these can yield richer stories and discussions than otherwise possible, stay more on-topic, and have less flaming. Are there others who are also in general not fans or participants of chat rooms and discussion boards?
Powazek’s First chapter reminds us to step back to think about pros and cons of new features when we intend to add new ones. I agree Powazek’s points that before adding community features, three elements we should consider: audience, content and community.
I especially like her views regarding content. High quality content won’t be generated automatically. It takes time and effort to create an environment where valuable conversations may be elicited.
I thought the advice in this chapter was useful, but I think the author missed an important point.
Having spent money on a forum or chatroom, there still needs to be people who will use it! Many times in the past, I've gone to a company's forums only to see that it's been left stagnant for months or even years!
A dead forum reflects worse on a company than no forum at all. If there is no audience for the feature then the features themselves are worthless.
I pretty much like this article although it is old. But it is right. I am not sure if there is study on the bad effect of unnecessary design would add onto a system. People get hard time to realize that bad/inappropriate thing can actually cost you even it is free itself.
I have been recently helping my friend to amend an online-shopping system which was bought from some code-developer company. It is very cheap like less than one thousand bucks but includes everything like online payment and a forum. I was looking at many other similar websites to get ideas how the design should be. In the Chinese websites, I found there are several websites are using the exactly same template as the one I am changing. I could not understand how people could use the same templates when they are selling totally different things. I spent much more time than I expected because I wanted it to be what I figured out for this particular website. But it is far from what I will be satisfied with.
In addition, I had asked my friend that I want to turn off the forum function but he was surprised and said NO. This article gives me some ideas to convince him again.
I like practical ideas. For this one, it is also the old lesson that subtraction is more difficult than addition. And, building a community is not equal to add an online forum; in format, it can be less; in the substance, it is definitely more.
Submitted by Rozaidi Rashid on Thu, 01/10/2008 - 22:24.
0
points
It is the dream of all community developers to have their online community to be self-sustaining in a good way, and virtually low or free maintenance cost.
My experience was in setting up a community site for K-12 kids (not in
US). The site's purpose was financial education at an early age. While
the content was "good", the community portion was not. Admittedly, we
had many goals, not focused. We had "Ask Aunt Sally"-kinda thing, we
had open forums or predetermined forums, but getting the kids to
contribute was hard. We found out they prefered myspace. The only
measure of success we could be proud of was the new members, even that
was from membership drives done at schools. It was not sustainable. (u
may visit duitsaku.com)
Powazek told us we can get it done if we have good content and reputation built up front before the community features come in. Technical support (or games tips) sites that involves highly-demanded consumer products are also more likely to become self-sustaining. So this is the easy way to get a community to be self-sustaining.
Since everything else has been said by other posters, I'll play devil's advocate. I think it is time to replace this article in the course reading list unless it is being treated as an historical example. In terms of best-practices (or next-practices), it is really showing its age particularly in giving advice to businesses about setting up communities (cool??).
Companies are interested in engaging customers (and often partner, suppliers, etc.) to come up with new ideas for products, services, collaboration, value creation. Engagement platforms need to exist. Online communities are an important part of this experience and communication, but they are not the only piece, they don't exist in isolation, etc. Experiences need to be designed and developed for the physical world, for retail environments, for F2F interactions ... These need to be supplemented with online community environments. Or, the online environment can be primary, and other interactions secondary, but at this stage, people are expecting a lot more integration than is covered in the Powazek piece.
An example of a company and a product that has allowed its customers to develop a community and a very successful product extension is LEGO and LEGO Mindstorms. The community actually develops the products that LEGO later releases. This is outside of Powazek's vision, and by now, it something that many companies are trying to do. (The Ross school offers a whole class about this.)
Here's an example of some tips from a powerpoint presentation by LEGO about co-creating with their community. Note, that while these tips are not limited to the "online community" environment, every single point can be reinforced by LEGO through its design of and interaction with its online community.
Co-marketing Dos/Don'ts
Understand what is their perception of value
Interact frequently - be open and honest
Sound like yourself and admit mistakes
Encourage conversations between consumers
Find your advocates and invite them inside
Formalize what can be formalized
Participate - you get what you give
Inspire - don't "manage" your community
Don't sell - show passion and share passion
It's OK to say, "I don't know"
Powazek's chapter has a "back to basics" approach advocating for cautionary feature additions. Although I support the argument, and generally am fond of minimalism in site design, I wanted more nuance from the article . What I liked about the chapter most was its solution-based perspective. Instead of merely ripping apart overdone sites and over-giddy wanna-be feature adders, her perspective is solution-based.
Before reading other students posts on this text, I was planning on saying that her suggestion to "know your audience" was a good call. I do concur, though, that pinning down your audience when the medium is the internet is counterintuitive. Assigning surveillance to someone's job description also seems a waste of human resources.
When I find what I deem an inappropriate post I don't hold it against the site's integrity typically. I stumbled on one such post recently that was a long wash list of someone's gripes with a professor on a site intended to provide support as he wrestled with terminal illness. "Wrong place and time, should be removed" immediately ran through my mind.
In terms of sites gone wild, I thought the leggs example discussed in Kim was a more nuanced case, and not the best fit for the point she was making about attracting the wrong audience. If all these guys were doing is talking about their appreciation of panty hose, I think its harsh to label them as an inappropriate audience unless they were acting outrageously in the forum. I see the point (not the target audience), but the example bothered me. The vast array of human perspectives and reasons for being attracted to a site are impossible to cull in any way that doesn't ultimately lead to some artificial site where all the reviews have 5 stars and everyone's a satisfied customer.
Submitted by Sean Munson on Thu, 01/10/2008 - 23:27.
0
points
I appreciated that Powazek cautioned would-be-community-builders to stop and think about whether or not they really have and understand a good reason for building the community. His discussion also showed a lot of awareness that building certain communication tools may technically enable community, but won't build it on their own (the non-technical challenges are something on which he and Kim expand on in later chapters of their books).
As a bit of a tangent - his discussion about "should you build an online community?" and the mention of mindstorms got me thinking about some other ways to provoke community among a company's customers. If you start with the assumption that building a community loyal to your brand or customers is desireable (which is, I think, in most cases a reasonable assumption*), an alternative question might be "is an online venue the right way to create that community?"
One alternative route might be designing the product in a way that supports people building a community around modifying it or getting the best possible use out of it. One example, and their are many, is the DNS-323, a networked hard drive enclosure. Users can flash the firmware and install their own, and this has helped a sizeable "community" (loosely defined) form around modifying the product to add various other features (without, as far as I know, any support from dlink). I won't presume that this was a design goal for dlink, but it certainly seems to have had some advantages for them. The groups working to unlock the iPhone or enable developers to add their own applications to it probably fall into this category as well.
* one exception that comes to mind is certain frequent flyer communities that have made an art out of squeezing every last cent out of their miles, and every last mile out of their dollar. Also consider the communities related to optimal Priceline and Hotwire bidding. It's unclear to me how much these help or hurt the companies.
Users are creating content in Wikipedia, Flickr, YouTube, del.icio.us. It is easy to get allured by the successful websites and assume that users will flock to any website with their content. Sure, it is easy for users today to share their content and amount of online time is increasing rapidly. But blindly deciding to add community features is never going to work. As Kim mentioned, the successful websites met some need of the users. Without offering anything to the users, offering community features to meet business goals will not work. Powazek argues that not all websites need a community and not all communities are self managing and low maintenance. So websites have to think before taking the online community plunge.
Submitted by Satyendra on Thu, 01/10/2008 - 23:56.
1
point
There are some good guidelines in Powazek's reading, however at times the author seems to be preaching and it's not clear how objective or founded in empirical evidence the advice his. He style of writing is such that he throws about points without actually justifying them - maybe the author does that in the later chapters though.
For example, just because someone says they want a community because its cool - doesn't mean they don't need it. He says to the insurance company, you are a company that sells insurance why do you need a chat room! His answer sounds sillier than wanting a community because it's "cool - because he assumes an insurance community couldn't need a chat room. Communities are a good way of starting a conversation with your customers. Even insurance companies need to do that. In fact as Prahlad and Venkat Ramaswamy point out transparency of information is an important factor in businesses trying to create value with their customers and provide a case study of how Progressive Insurance uses communities on their site to improve the customer experience.
There are other things like the availabliity of 'free' content which the author is so quick to dismiss with "there are no free lunches" but are issues which are not so easily resolved. There can be a reason to look at user created content as free content for various purposes and the definition of free depends a lot on how you define the value and your investments.
I'm sure the author had good intentions but the validity of his arguments is hard to determine because he provides no evidence for them and a rather biased perspective.
In his questions to the reader / potential community creator I think Powazek should have stressed to think about common goal much more!
Yes, he talked about what the reader hopes to achieve with the community and what the content is supposed to be, but in my opinion that does not stress the main point enough. I think it is most important to think about what is going to bring the people of the community together, what their common goals (aligned with your goal) are going to be.
As mentioned previously, though dated there is sage advice
throughout this article.
I particularly liked his questionnaire at the end,
highlighting to the potential reader/site owner/developer what is the real
intent of creating a community.
Questions of this sort are pivotal in today’s market where so many
online communities are being launched and not particularly crystallizing their intended
target market with potential secondary, tertiary audiences.
Online communities can often mirror physical
communities. Analogous to this example
are the similarities in developers who build real estate to online developers
whose real estate is the “attention” of the public. In today’s marketplace, we could use Simon’s famous quote where
we live in a world where there is a “…wealth of information and a scarcity of
attention…” Likewise, there is a surplus of property out there and not enough buyers,
which has resulted, in part, in a fractured economy. I wonder if this will ever happen in the E-world, where we will
approach a time where our attention economy will become fractured? Or perhaps all non-used e-sites will be
relegated to a massive graveyard where they will die a slow death.
powazek's first chapter summary
Powazek's First chapter highlights some design decisions to make when incorporation community features in a website. I would highlight for the reader that he is speaking from the long-bygone era of 2001, when adding a discussion board to a website took considerably longer than a half hour. In retrospect, some of his comments are a bit amusing. How many discussion boards and chat rooms that you frequent have professional paid moderators and help deskies?
He starts with a couple of "bad reasons" to add community features: "because it's cool" and "because we'll get free content" -- he highlights why community features are not always a good idea for every site, and how selective addition of community features can bring out better results than adding these features willy-nilly.
Given that you have good reasons for adding community features, he offers some sage advice:
- Consider who your audience is, and what they want. If you don't know, ask them. You may have multiple audiences, ie teenagers and as a secondary audience, their parents.
- Consider what content you want to elicit, and give users something to talk about. He offers the example of a photography enthusiast's website being divided by camera manufacturer.
- Consider how you want people to talk to each other, be it synchronous (chat rooms) or asynchronous (discussion boards). This will impact the tone and forethought that goes into inter-user communication.
Finally, he offers some interview style questions which will help a designer determine what they should add in terms of community features:
- Who are you and what's your background?
- Please tell us about the community project. What is it about? What is the intent behind your project and what do you hope to achieve?
- Who is the site community project for, exactly?
- What is on this site for the community to talk about?
- What kind of community features do you want to provide?
Overall the chapter is a quick read and offers some valuable insights into community site design process.
--------------------------------------------------------------
oostendo@umich.edu
--------------------------------------------------------------
Some thoughts on Powazek reading
In this week’s Powazek reading, the author discusses both good and bad motives for adding community features to websites. The belief that online communities automatically translates into free content is criticized by Powazek, who argues that a significant amount of management and up-keep is necessary for this endeavor. While this is generally a true statement, I believe that for any technology-related product, a forum (at the least) is pretty much expected by the end users. With a solid amount of people spending large portions of their day on the internet, the notion that community features should be considered as an “option” just does not quite make sense. Furthermore, assuming that these websites relate to products and things that people actually care about, roles such as forum moderators or officers can easily be filled by loyal enthusiasts.
Therefore, it appears that Powazek’s discussion about the several important things to keep in mind while implementing online community features is much more relevant to site owners these days. Powazek mentions quite a few things, but the idea of providing valuable content strikes me as the most important element. One experience that I had (which might not appeal to everyone in the class) was with a site and forum set-up before the release of a particular computer game. Before the release, the specific site “obtained” the beta version of the software, which was without a question, “valuable content” to several gamers. After the official release of the software, the traffic at the site decreased as expected, but the site owner(s) and users began to use the site and forum as means to organize gaming sessions. Soon the site and forum evolved into a community where everything related and unrelated to the game was discussed. In a sense, tangible content of value was provided at first by the site owner(s), but after words, the thriving community created the content.
I agree that a forum is expected for tech-related products...
... but is it expected for the company itself to provide it? I think often unofficial forums often fill this role. I'll say more under Dustin's post because it relates to moderation as well.
Powazek Reflection - Moderation
Powazek pumps out the sort of writing that I can respect... concise and practical. At the beginning of the chapter, he discusses the "cool" and "free" factors that motivate some companies to push community features on their sites. This strikes me as a trend that frequently occurs among top level decision makers who are too far removed from the actual technology. Every new web technology inspires fanciful thoughts of "coolness" to the uninitiated, but whether it's e-commerce (yes, the bubble), web 2.0 (oh, I went there), or ecommunities, these technologies tend to have specific uses and real costs. Sure, these technologies are wonderful, but none has proved to be a panacea. This chapter is a valuable reminder that new technology should be evaluated for its net benefits, despite buzz.
I tend to agree that community tools can not simply be added, particularly to a corporate site, and be expected to yield results. For one, the amount of effort exerted in fostering the community is going to directly correlate to the size and quality of that community. As Powazek suggests, moderation is also highly important, especially to corporations, and even more so for companies with well established reputations that are beginning to establish a new web presence. Companies that have an established reputation, perhaps through brick and mortar operations, may not bring the most tech-savvy customers to their site. As a result, their customers may be more easily offended by 'interruptions' from rogue users, if not properly moderated.
The important thing to remember about users is that they will do what you least expect... and anonymity on the web reduces inhibitions. Corporations aren't in the business of democratic discourse, but rather, they're in the business of maximizing profits, and some lunatic spamming profanities across their forums won't help accomplish that goal. Of course, lunatics might not be the worst of the trouble... most rational people will acknowledge a lunatic. Even worse would be the use of your community for the purpose of advertising a competitor, in which case even rational users will welcome the comparison. Moderation is clearly important and must come at some cost.
unofficial forums as an alternative
I agree that moderation is important, indeed you make many of the points that I saw as relevant about both cost of upkeep and moderation as a necessity for such sites. To add some thoughts in another direction, I'd like to point out that it's also pertinent to take into consideration the role of unofficial online discussion places such as forums or chats.
As you described, moderation may be necessary on official product sites where a certain image and quality is expected of the company and its site's content, but it comes as a cost. Often, when there is a strong need for communication and support, unofficial sites have sprung up on the internet for the discussion of particular products and services. I feel these fill a similar role to the moderated forums, but there are a few key differences, the pramiry one being the level of freedom of content and tone is wider on an unofficial site, allowing flaming, cross-advertising such as you mentioned, and more. There is also no financial cost to the company since they do not provide the site.
Basically, companies should consider whether an unofficial site could (or already is) adequately fulfill(ing) the role they are looking to play before they leap into plans for their own form of discussion mechanism on their site.
On a sidenote regarding other types of online communities that may not be as discussion-based, I think that the cost/benefit analysis of these should be even more careful and detailed since they are generally more experimental. We have seen even in the case of Notes.net's discussion-oriented site that a site needs careful planning or else the flexibility to redesign based upon user response.
Secondary users also matter
Some of Powazek's assertions reflect their relevance for antiquated eras, but his main thesis still applies to the modern times (when adding online communities is only a matter of expending few extra person-hours to web projects.) Even if modern communities are not developmental- or maintenance-costs-heavy, companies should still employ them with caution. The reading is an indirect, and valuable, pointer to the fact that even if a cool, fashionable accessory is available (today) at a low cost, every company or a website shouldn't wear it unless it really suits the demands of it's occasion.
On a different note, he raises a particularly intriguing design problem whereby Notes.net community became the victim of its own success. Users began posting comments and questions so frequently that the comments only lasted on the homepage of the community area for a brief time. The very purpose of creating great content was defeated by the creation of great content itself.
The design remedies that he suggests, particularly for the secondary target audience (experts answering developer's questions), points us yet again to the importance of understanding users' needs. His solution tells us what the server logs or usability reports could not easily reveal: A relatively smaller, but critical, user base also sometimes needs better user experience. For the experience of these small number of users could affect the experience and relevance of site for a larger, primary, user base.
Overall, a simple but thoughtful reading!
Web communities and Web 2.0
The first chapter (following last week’s preface) to a book about designing web communities. She outlines the benefits and pitfalls of adding web community elements to any site. Of two bad reasons, people often think it’s merely cool and/or that they’ll get free content, but as she says, “when users post to your site, it isn’t a gift from them to you; it’s the beginning of a very real relationship between you and the user” (3). She then lays out three things to consider before adding community elements: knowing your audience (7), creating valuable content (10) including “giving your user something to talk about, and they will reward you with high-quality conversations” (11), and community (11) including the different between synchronous and asynchronous communication. She ends the chapter by asking a series of question that anyone (including me) should ask before setting up a community.
I agree with nearly everything the author had to say here, especially her initial caution of adding a community function in order to generate content. I'm very interested in Web 2.0 communities and user-generated content, but the author here brings up a good point that unless the relationship between designer/user is honored the content will dry up or become irrelevant. I think this ties into the preface from this book last week in that the best communities are volunatry and serve a purpose for the users even if it seems arbitrary or trivial to non-users.
Community = How you want your users to respond
In light of our conversation about community metaphors last week, I found Powazek's brief discussion under the community heading interesting. She actually doesn't ever use the word "community" in her discussion of "Community." Instead, she talks about what communication behavior is enabled by the community feature.
I found this to be a very practical definition of community on the web. Community is how your users are able to respond to each other.
Comments on Chapter 1
Powazek's first chapter provides a good introduction into basic principles that have to be considered before creating a community. Some points seem to be common sense but are extremly valuable listed together. I had quite a few aha! moments, where i found myself thinking about communities that i have dwelled through recently while reading this chapter. I liked especially the interview part at the end of the chapter that involves the reader and let's him apply the learned objectives right away.
Age old system development advice
John Blair
The chapter was right to the point and I think a great way to start a book on the subject of web / community development projects. I've seen countless projects fail because they didn't heed the simply advice noted in this chapter. It's not an easy process to understand the audience and address their needs. it takes time and effort as the author also notes - which is most likely why projects fail in this respect, the project team didn't have time to execute these foundation steps effectively.
A short and simple advisory from someone whose obviously witnessed a few disasters. While the article itself may be considered dated in some respects, the wisdom provided certainly is not.
It is cool ! -- That's true
Interesting! CEOs are sometimes ... Well, the good and bad reasons for establishing a community that are brought out at the beginning of the article are realistic and still worth thinking about more deeply. Overall, it also tells us a general lesson, never runs after something simply because it seems cool and popular, always think whether it fits your specific needs and will be benefcial in the end.
All the obvious advice compiled
This article is a great compilation of advice on how to approach designing web communities. Much of the information in this article seems a little obvious but it is probably also the type of stuff that most web designers are likely to get wrong the first time. I personally have tried to encourage employers to make mistake one and two. That made her dismantling of those arguments all the more interesting.
I also found how users repurpose others infrastructure fascinating. I for one would have never guessed that pantyhose fetishist would have used a L’eggs website as an improvised confessional and meeting spot. The story does provide a very memorable parable about what we are possibly inviting when we open our doors to web communities.
I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.
-Jorge Luis Borges
Obvious or intuitive?
I also thought the advice in this chapter seemed obvious, though it's always helpful to start from the basics. But, maybe instead of obvious I should say intuitive, given the amount of time (I assume) we spend online as well as the relative age of the book. Also, Powazek gives good enough reasons to avoid features just because they're cool, but despite his warning I suspect coolness, even for the best of us, will always be oh, so tempting...
Quality content from users
Most things Powazek talked about in chapter 1 are obvious. However, I have one question. Powazek said that "Give your users something to talk about, and they will reward you with high-quality conversation." This is certainly true and important to all kinds of websites, but some websites or forums are mainly used for social communication, without obvious topic/theme of the sites. In these cases, there may not be "main" content other than the conversations between users. I am thinking that maybe some other social mechanism could be incorporated into the design to help the generation of high-quality contents from users, rather than the owners, to produce high-quality conversation.
Powazek - Chapter 1
In Chapter 1, Powazek efficiently summarizes cost-benefit considerations for creating Web communities. She outlines resource costs (people, hardware) (p2) and reciprocity costs (if users add value to a product or service, they'll expect benefits in return) (p3). Further, if a community isn't controlled, people may act in ways that negatively effect a product or service. For example, any teenage gathering place has the potential to attract sexual predators. (p4) One benefit of adding community features beyond product support is emotional support. (pp5-6)
To make informed cost-benefit decisions, Powazek suggests three criteria. 1) Understanding the target audience allows community developers to prioritize features that most benefit the majority of intended members. (pp7-9) 2) High-quality content may inspire insightful conversations, site loyalty, and an improved reputation (pp10-11). 3) Synchronous modes of communication are engaging but aren't optimally suited for well-thought conversation, while asynchronous modes of communication lack immediacy but are more flexible. (pp12-13)
Summary and user-geneated content question
This chapter first introduces two pitfalls to implement community features for organizations and firms, the first one is to go with the stream or only hunt for fancy title, the second one is to expect user generated content for free, on the other hand, we need to know the cost and benefits of adding community features. After measuring the prons and cons, there are three questions we need to ask ourselves as a web designer: who is our audience, what content we expect and how we want users to respond.
My question in this chapter is about the user-generated content. What’s the difference between this kind of content and other kind of content, such as knowledge/news/information on the portal websites? For me, user generated content are more prolific and quickly updated and transmitted through the web, however, they are less organized and reliable as it is more difficult to verify their correctness. In addition, I am wondering people’s search behavior when they want to know something, they will first go to google or directly go to related online communities? What’s their separate advantage and disadvantages?
audience, content, interaction
Powazek lays out his opposition to two motivations for creating online community: 1) because it is cool, and 2) because our users will generate content for us.
He makes in important point about when the community will come to lead you instead of you leading them. This is a bit overstated. In political theory it is an open debate as to when/where/how the community should lead vs. when the elites should lead (and they often do).
Nevertheless, Powazek is still on track when he reiterates that community interaction is not content, but conversation, and that understanding that conversation and promoting it means sometimes having to be selective about community features.
I like his point that we should always expect surprise. In the 19th century, the Vienna coffeehouses were created primarily as a place for professionals to discuss trade, but they took on new forms of activity and ended up as places where people had all kinds of conversations and interactions.
I do take issue with the idea that you can know your audience however. Goffman's work on presentation of the self, which uses theatrical metaphors, also has this focus, as does the Kim readings ( http://si684w08.cms.si.umich.edu/node/21 ), but one of the key problems in the internet age is that you can never really know your audience. If the material is public, then many audiences will view it, and even if it isn't, your audience may transport the material out of your walled-garden and out to elsewhere, where it will replicate and flourish. These are challenges to be navigated.
I like the triad: audience, content, interaction. It seems a handy way to frame the work to be done.
--------------------------------------------------------
PHartzog@umich.edu
--------------------------------------------------------
The Universe is made up of stories, not atoms.
--Muriel Rukeyser
Great advice
I found Powazek's tips in this chapter to be very sage advice for those of us who might someday manage online communities. With buzzwords like 'web 2.0' and 'user-generated content' flooding the web, it's easy to get caught up in the hype and believe that adding these community tools will automatically make a site successful. But, I like Powazek's more practical approach, which urges us to step back and evaluate why a site needs community features and what the community is for. This is pretty standard software development advice, yet I feel it's important to be reiterated since at many companies it is all too quickly forgotten. Powazek's stories about the company that wanted the 'cool' chatroom, or the non-smoking campaign that wanted the chat and forums were some great, vivid examples of this.
I personally liked Powazek's advice of being selective when applying community features - and using things like soliciting user stories or allowing comments after posts or news items, instead of chat rooms or discussion boards. In the right circumstances, these can yield richer stories and discussions than otherwise possible, stay more on-topic, and have less flaming. Are there others who are also in general not fans or participants of chat rooms and discussion boards?
It takes efforts
Powazek’s First chapter reminds us to step back to think about pros and cons of new features when we intend to add new ones. I agree Powazek’s points that before adding community features, three elements we should consider: audience, content and community.
I especially like her views regarding content. High quality content won’t be generated automatically. It takes time and effort to create an environment where valuable conversations may be elicited.
Is a dead forum better than no forum?
I thought the advice in this chapter was useful, but I think the author missed an important point.
Having spent money on a forum or chatroom, there still needs to be people who will use it! Many times in the past, I've gone to a company's forums only to see that it's been left stagnant for months or even years!
A dead forum reflects worse on a company than no forum at all. If there is no audience for the feature then the features themselves are worthless.
summary points
Two bad reasons to start an online community:
Big three issues to start an online community:
(Questions/inspirations are listed in the Blog)
Golden Practical Advices
I pretty much like this article although it is old. But it is right. I am not sure if there is study on the bad effect of unnecessary design would add onto a system. People get hard time to realize that bad/inappropriate thing can actually cost you even it is free itself.
I have been recently helping my friend to amend an online-shopping system which was bought from some code-developer company. It is very cheap like less than one thousand bucks but includes everything like online payment and a forum. I was looking at many other similar websites to get ideas how the design should be. In the Chinese websites, I found there are several websites are using the exactly same template as the one I am changing. I could not understand how people could use the same templates when they are selling totally different things. I spent much more time than I expected because I wanted it to be what I figured out for this particular website. But it is far from what I will be satisfied with.
In addition, I had asked my friend that I want to turn off the forum function but he was surprised and said NO. This article gives me some ideas to convince him again.
I like practical ideas. For this one, it is also the old lesson that subtraction is more difficult than addition. And, building a community is not equal to add an online forum; in format, it can be less; in the substance, it is definitely more.
Getting a community to be self-sustaining
It is the dream of all community developers to have their online community to be self-sustaining in a good way, and virtually low or free maintenance cost.
My experience was in setting up a community site for K-12 kids (not in
US). The site's purpose was financial education at an early age. While
the content was "good", the community portion was not. Admittedly, we
had many goals, not focused. We had "Ask Aunt Sally"-kinda thing, we
had open forums or predetermined forums, but getting the kids to
contribute was hard. We found out they prefered myspace. The only
measure of success we could be proud of was the new members, even that
was from membership drives done at schools. It was not sustainable. (u
may visit duitsaku.com)
Powazek told us we can get it done if we have good content and reputation built up front before the community features come in. Technical support (or games tips) sites that involves highly-demanded consumer products are also more likely to become self-sustaining. So this is the easy way to get a community to be self-sustaining.
With other sites, it's hard work. Good luck!
Dated Article
Since everything else has been said by other posters, I'll play devil's advocate. I think it is time to replace this article in the course reading list unless it is being treated as an historical example. In terms of best-practices (or next-practices), it is really showing its age particularly in giving advice to businesses about setting up communities (cool??).
Companies are interested in engaging customers (and often partner, suppliers, etc.) to come up with new ideas for products, services, collaboration, value creation. Engagement platforms need to exist. Online communities are an important part of this experience and communication, but they are not the only piece, they don't exist in isolation, etc. Experiences need to be designed and developed for the physical world, for retail environments, for F2F interactions ... These need to be supplemented with online community environments. Or, the online environment can be primary, and other interactions secondary, but at this stage, people are expecting a lot more integration than is covered in the Powazek piece.
An example of a company and a product that has allowed its customers to develop a community and a very successful product extension is LEGO and LEGO Mindstorms. The community actually develops the products that LEGO later releases. This is outside of Powazek's vision, and by now, it something that many companies are trying to do. (The Ross school offers a whole class about this.)
Here's an example of some tips from a powerpoint presentation by LEGO about co-creating with their community. Note, that while these tips are not limited to the "online community" environment, every single point can be reinforced by LEGO through its design of and interaction with its online community.
Co-marketing Dos/Don'ts
Understand what is their perception of value
Interact frequently - be open and honest
Sound like yourself and admit mistakes
Encourage conversations between consumers
Find your advocates and invite them inside
Formalize what can be formalized
Participate - you get what you give
Inspire - don't "manage" your community
Don't sell - show passion and share passion
It's OK to say, "I don't know"
If you invite the public, let them in
Lisa McLaughlin
Powazek's chapter has a "back to basics" approach advocating for cautionary feature additions. Although I support the argument, and generally am fond of minimalism in site design, I wanted more nuance from the article . What I liked about the chapter most was its solution-based perspective. Instead of merely ripping apart overdone sites and over-giddy wanna-be feature adders, her perspective is solution-based.
Before reading other students posts on this text, I was planning on saying that her suggestion to "know your audience" was a good call. I do concur, though, that pinning down your audience when the medium is the internet is counterintuitive. Assigning surveillance to someone's job description also seems a waste of human resources.
When I find what I deem an inappropriate post I don't hold it against the site's integrity typically. I stumbled on one such post recently that was a long wash list of someone's gripes with a professor on a site intended to provide support as he wrestled with terminal illness. "Wrong place and time, should be removed" immediately ran through my mind.
In terms of sites gone wild, I thought the leggs example discussed in Kim was a more nuanced case, and not the best fit for the point she was making about attracting the wrong audience. If all these guys were doing is talking about their appreciation of panty hose, I think its harsh to label them as an inappropriate audience unless they were acting outrageously in the forum. I see the point (not the target audience), but the example bothered me. The vast array of human perspectives and reasons for being attracted to a site are impossible to cull in any way that doesn't ultimately lead to some artificial site where all the reviews have 5 stars and everyone's a satisfied customer.
design that provokes community?
I appreciated that Powazek cautioned would-be-community-builders to stop and think about whether or not they really have and understand a good reason for building the community. His discussion also showed a lot of awareness that building certain communication tools may technically enable community, but won't build it on their own (the non-technical challenges are something on which he and Kim expand on in later chapters of their books).
As a bit of a tangent - his discussion about "should you build an online community?" and the mention of mindstorms got me thinking about some other ways to provoke community among a company's customers. If you start with the assumption that building a community loyal to your brand or customers is desireable (which is, I think, in most cases a reasonable assumption*), an alternative question might be "is an online venue the right way to create that community?"
One alternative route might be designing the product in a way that supports people building a community around modifying it or getting the best possible use out of it. One example, and their are many, is the DNS-323, a networked hard drive enclosure. Users can flash the firmware and install their own, and this has helped a sizeable "community" (loosely defined) form around modifying the product to add various other features (without, as far as I know, any support from dlink). I won't presume that this was a design goal for dlink, but it certainly seems to have had some advantages for them. The groups working to unlock the iPhone or enable developers to add their own applications to it probably fall into this category as well.
* one exception that comes to mind is certain frequent flyer communities that have made an art out of squeezing every last cent out of their miles, and every last mile out of their dollar. Also consider the communities related to optimal Priceline and Hotwire bidding. It's unclear to me how much these help or hurt the companies.
Users are creating content
Users are creating content in Wikipedia, Flickr, YouTube, del.icio.us. It is easy to get allured by the successful websites and assume that users will flock to any website with their content. Sure, it is easy for users today to share their content and amount of online time is increasing rapidly. But blindly deciding to add community features is never going to work. As Kim mentioned, the successful websites met some need of the users. Without offering anything to the users, offering community features to meet business goals will not work. Powazek argues that not all websites need a community and not all communities are self managing and low maintenance. So websites have to think before taking the online community plunge.
Is there a free lunch ?
There are some good guidelines in Powazek's reading, however at times the author seems to be preaching and it's not clear how objective or founded in empirical evidence the advice his. He style of writing is such that he throws about points without actually justifying them - maybe the author does that in the later chapters though.
For example, just because someone says they want a community because its cool - doesn't mean they don't need it. He says to the insurance company, you are a company that sells insurance why do you need a chat room! His answer sounds sillier than wanting a community because it's "cool - because he assumes an insurance community couldn't need a chat room. Communities are a good way of starting a conversation with your customers. Even insurance companies need to do that. In fact as Prahlad and Venkat Ramaswamy point out transparency of information is an important factor in businesses trying to create value with their customers and provide a case study of how Progressive Insurance uses communities on their site to improve the customer experience.
There are other things like the availabliity of 'free' content which the author is so quick to dismiss with "there are no free lunches" but are issues which are not so easily resolved. There can be a reason to look at user created content as free content for various purposes and the definition of free depends a lot on how you define the value and your investments.
I'm sure the author had good intentions but the validity of his arguments is hard to determine because he provides no evidence for them and a rather biased perspective.
Stressing the common goals of a community
In his questions to the reader / potential community creator I think Powazek should have stressed to think about common goal much more!
Yes, he talked about what the reader hopes to achieve with the community and what the content is supposed to be, but in my opinion that does not stress the main point enough. I think it is most important to think about what is going to bring the people of the community together, what their common goals (aligned with your goal) are going to be.
Attention Economy
As mentioned previously, though dated there is sage advice
throughout this article.
I particularly liked his questionnaire at the end,
highlighting to the potential reader/site owner/developer what is the real
intent of creating a community.
Questions of this sort are pivotal in today’s market where so many
online communities are being launched and not particularly crystallizing their intended
target market with potential secondary, tertiary audiences.
Online communities can often mirror physical
communities. Analogous to this example
are the similarities in developers who build real estate to online developers
whose real estate is the “attention” of the public. In today’s marketplace, we could use Simon’s famous quote where
we live in a world where there is a “…wealth of information and a scarcity of
attention…” Likewise, there is a surplus of property out there and not enough buyers,
which has resulted, in part, in a fractured economy. I wonder if this will ever happen in the E-world, where we will
approach a time where our attention economy will become fractured? Or perhaps all non-used e-sites will be
relegated to a massive graveyard where they will die a slow death.
What would HAL say?