Community Building on the Web: Secret Strategies for Successful Online Communities

I'm an independent consultant on interactive technologies and web community building. I've read a number of books and articles giving advice about online communities, and none comes close to matching Amy Jo Kim's. Her book is the most exceptional in integrating human and technical considerations; describing how sites can launch, expand and evolve; giving lots of first-hand examples; and being an easy, fun read. I get the sense from her Naima company site that she's on the leading edge for design and technical approaches.I'm personally working now with communities for performing artists and software developers. This book is the only one I'm willing to carry with me on all my customer consulting visits.

Although this book is designed for those who create on-line communities, it will be equally useful to those who are thinking of establishing a community, those who would like to improve the one they have, and those who are looking for valuable communities to join. That's a lot from one book!As the author says, "This book is a strategic handbook for community builders." It espouses 9 design strategies:(1) Define and articulate your PURPOSE(2) Build flexible, extensible gathering PLACES(3) Create meaningful and evolving member PROFILES(4) Design for a range of ROLES(5) Develop a strong LEADERSHIP program(6) Encourage appropriate ETIQUETTE(7) Promotic cyclic EVENTS(8) Integrate the RITUALS of community life(9) Facilitate member-run SUBGROUPSThe book also proposes 3 design principles:(1) Design for growth and change(2) Create and maintain feedback loops(3) Empower your members over timeEach of the design strategies has its own chapter. There is also a good structure to propose questions to answer. In addition, you also will find excellent examples of existing Web sites, some of which will be new to you. Not only are the sites discussed, but they are also illustrated with many actual Web pages. I have missed that in many other books about the Internet. This one provides and makes superb use of its visual examples! I thought that the best practice examples worked, because each one was better than any other feature that I have seen at another Web site. Also, the author provides a Web site so that you can keep up-to-date with her latest insights and to share information. But to me the best part of the book were the many astute, rich comparisons of on-line communities to real world communities. Ms. Kim has obviously done a great job of thinking through important fundamental questions about what is possible on-line. Her thinking is obviously in flux. It seems to be pointing to a world where on-line and off-line will have few distinctions, as we relate to many of the same people in both modes. I liked her comparison of how we think about telephone calls compared to other communications methods. After you have read this book, I suggest you also reexamine your business model in terms of how it could be improved by merging with your customers in the kind of rich off-line and on-line communities that are described in this excellent book. These communities can be powerful irresistible forces to power your growth forward.May you find the on-line community that expands your life in many useful ways!

A friend of mine very kindly gifted "Community Building on the Web" by Amy Jo Kim to me since I am in the process of seting up a social portal in India. I shall be forever grateful to Ms.Kim not to mention my friend for having saved Me from Myself!We have all heard how Content is King! but Ms. Kim brings out clearly the integral component of any website - social or commercial is Community. Without visitors coming back to see your content, it remains useless and there are enough of high profile portals with huge content and few eyeballs! Moreover, Thanks to the numerous content providers, Website Content can be duplicated within a reasonable timeframe and if flushed with funds (?) then within an even more shorter time period. However what cannot be duplicated and hence is truly an Entry Barrier is an Existing Community around a particular website.Ms.Kim presents a well written, structured and comprehensive guide to online community building. Her simple-to-follow design principles are excellently presented and reinforce the fact that the Internet is an extension of the real world with the twin technology-based benefits of interactivity and reach. Social dynamics do not change online, strategies and tatics do! I have found the examples and references invaluable for understanding the enviable success-stories and inexplicable failures. Finally Message boards and Chat-rooms have been designed as a feature (Coz every site has it!) by many an experienced and so called knowledgeable web solution company. However "Community buiding on the Web" clearly brings out the fact that these need to be incorporated seamlessly into websites and used as community-building tools for longterm benefits and sticky eyeballs.Once again, Thank You Ms.Kim, I might have gone chasing Content spending needless time, effort and hard-to-come-by-these-days money!

"Community Building on the Web: Secret Strategies for Successful Online Communities" raises the bar in the online communities field.I've been in the Virtual Communities business for almost 25 years. During those years, everyone pretty much had to build their online communities by the seat of their pants. We were usually cursed to commit the same mistakes that so many others had encountered along the way. Many times communities would seem to run well for months, and then they would become popular, and then fail! Other times, otherwise interesting communities would languish for lack of a clear "Mission Statement" or poorly managed Terms of Service. In short, there was very little benefiting from other people's successes and failures.This book changes all of that, forever! (Thank goodness!)Amy Jo Kim brings together all of the fundamental building blocks needed to create a solid foundation for a successful web-based community. She provides the intellectual planning tools you need to help you understand what your community is about, how it will function, and how to help it grow.If you don't understand online communities, this is THE book that will help you "get it."Save yourself the first $3,000 of Community Web Site consulting, buy this book instead and use it!This book instantly became required reading at my company, Communities.com. It immediately started saving us staff training time!F. Randall Farmer Cofounder, Communities.com