Designing Social Websites

Christina Wodtke

Page about Christina

Audience question: “what do you want?” I don’t want to ask everyone to say what

they want, but here I like to ask a few folks to offer “if you don’t’ get X, will you leave

mad?YouWhat do you want?

Jargon Check

Social MediaSocial SoftwareSocial NetworkThe Social WebThe Social GraphCommunitiesWeb 2.0UGC

TwitterFacebookLinkedInMySpaceFlickr

Whatis social, really?

Credit Tim O’Reilly

The Social Webis a digital space where data about human interactions is as important as other data types for providing value

Communityis when those humans care about each other.

Social Software can be loosely defined as software which supports, extends, or derives added value from, human social behavior - message-boards, musical taste-sharing, photo-sharing, instant messaging, mailing lists, social networking.

Social XXX• Usenet• Forums• Email• Mailing lists• Groupware• Social Networks Services• Social Software• Social Media

Nothing New

Why bother?

Trebor Scholz http://collectivate.net

8 days after a video was posted showing how to pick the lock in 30 seconds using a pen Kryptonite recalled 380,000 locks

Your users have something to tell you. If you don’t give them a way to communicate, they will find one.

Trebor Scholz http://collectivate.net

“I could go on with the benefits of building relationships rather than SEO campaigns, such as:– Longevity and customer retention,

not to mention repeat customers – Bug tracking and community

policing (ie. Flickr’s ‘Flag this photo as “may offend”?’)

– Amplified word of mouth – Built in market research – Buying ads is bloody expensive”Tara Hunt

Joshua Porter

“HOLD ON A SEC...are social features economically viable?

1. Direct contact with people who make you successful

2. Amplify customer opinion3. Data, data, and more data4. Reduce support costs5. Engender Trust to form lasting

relationships”

Whendo I have to do something about all this?

When?

Are you waiting for Web 4.0?

Credits: Tim O’Reilly’s The Facebook Application Platform and compete, a a site for web metrics

Howdo you design social?

B=f(P+E)

- Lewin’s Equation

Behavior is a function of a Person and his Environment

The Social Web is built here, from love and esteem

O’Reilly Report on Facebook

The Facebook Application Platform

Motivation for hours(and hours and hours)of work

Kollock’s 4 Motivations for Contributing

1. Reciprocity2. Reputation3. Increased sense of efficacy4. Attachment to and need of a group

Reciprocity

What's the motivation of behind these people actually interacting and

participating? … people want to share with the community what they believe to be important …. and they want to see their name in lights. They want to see their little icon on the front page, their username on the front page, so other people can see it.

Reputation

Increased sense of efficacy

Attachment to and need of a group

The New Third Place?

“All great societies provide informal meeting places, like the Forum in ancient Rome or a contemporary English pub. But since World War II, America has ceased doing so. The neighborhood tavern hasn't followed the middle class out to the suburbs...” -- Ray Oldenburg

205 Structure Follows Social Spaces

ConflictNo building ever feels right to the people in it unless the physical spaces (defined by columns, walls, and ceilings) are congruent with the social spaces (defined by activities and human groups).

ResolutionA first principle of construction; on no account allow the engineering to dictate the building's form. Place the load bearing elements- the columns and the walls and floors- according to the social spaces of the building; never modify the social spaces to conform to the engineering structure of the building.

36. Degrees of publicness

Conflict: People are different, and the way they want to place their houses in a neighborhood is one of the most basic kinds of difference.

Resolution: Make a clear distinction between three kinds of homes―those on quiet backwaters, those on busy streets, and those that are more or less in-between. Make sure that those on quiet backwaters are on twisting paths, and that these houses are themselves physically secluded; make sure that the more public houses are on busy streets with many people passing by all day long and that the houses themselves are exposed to the passers-by. The in-between houses may then be located on the paths halfway between the other two. Give every neighborhood about an equal number of these three kinds of homes.

Identity

Activity Relationships

SocialSpace

Sign-

upInvitations

Distribution (Viral)

TOWNS

The language begins with patterns that define towns and communities. These patterns can never be designed or built in one fell swoop - but patient piecemeal growth, designed in such a way that every individual act is always helping to create or generate these larger global patterns, will, slowly and surely, over the years, make a community that has these global patterns in it.

BUILDINGS

We now,start that part of the language which gives shape to individual buildings. These are the patterns which can be "designed)' or "built”- the patterns which define the individual buildings and the space between buildings; where we are dealing for the first time with Patterns that are under the control of individuals or small groups of individuals, who are able to build the patterns all at once:

Identity

Activity Relationships

SocialSpace

profile

reputationpresence

Share

ConvosCollab

Contacts

AttentionGroups

Sign-

upInvitations

Distribution (Viral)

StrategizeExercise 1: brainstorm a

new feature or site area that brings a appropriate community to your website.

Things to think about:

• Business goals: how does this community further the needs of the company?

• User goals: what makes this community attractive in a time when they have a hundred other places vying for their attention. What is the personal worth of the tools?

• What if no one shows up, can it still have value?• Community nature: will this be a true community, or will this

be a collective wisdom tool? Think about the spectrum.• Approach to Creation: can you partner. rather than build?

Identity

profile

reputationpresence

1.) If you were going to build a piece of social software to support large and long-lived groups, what

would you design for? The first thing you would design for is

handles the user can invest in.

Clay Shirky, A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy

http://shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html

Profile Profile• Avatar• Bio• Collections

Identity is Context Based

Facebook- Personal LinkedIN - Professional

Avatar Identity• Avatar• Profile• Activity• Collections

Collections

Presence

Presence Presence•Status•History•Statistics•Signs of Life•Company

Presence Presence•Status•History•Statistics•Signs of Life•Keeping me

Company

2.) Second, you have to design a way for there to

be members in good standing. Have to design some way in which good

works get recognized. The minimal way is, posts

appear with identity. You can do more sophisticated things like having formal

karma or "member since."

Reputation is…

Information used to make a value judgment about an

object or person…

Reputations

StrategizeExercise 2: what elements

do you need for identity?

Profile?Presence?

Reputation?

Relationships

Contacts

AttentionGroups

you have to find a way to spare

the group from scale. Scale alone kills

conversations, because conversations require dense two-way conversations.

[Dunbar] found that the MAXIMUM number of people that a person could keep up with socially at any given time, gossip maintenance, was 150.

This doesn't mean that people don't have 150

people in their social network, but that they only keep tabs on 150 people

max at any given point.

ContactsAttention Groups

Attention

Groups

Connections

StrategizeExercise 3: what kinds of

relationships will you support?

Asymmetrical Attention-Based?

Groups?Connections?

Activity

Share

CommunicateCollaborate

The AOF Method

• 1. Defining your Activity• 2. Identifying your Social Objects• 3. Choosing your Features

Courtesy of Joshua Porter. Check out bokardo.com!

Classic Question • Who are your users?

Better Question• What are your users doing?

• What do people have to do to make you successful?• What are you making people better at?• What are your users passionate about?

2. Identifying yourSocial Objects

The term “social networking” makes little sense if we leave out the objects that mediate the ties between people. Think about the object as the reason why people affiliate with each specific other and not just anyone.

Jyri Engeström

What are Social Objects?

• Social objects can be ideas, people, or physical objects.

• Social objects influence social interaction...they change the way people interact with each other.

• By interacting through/with social objects, people meet others they might not otherwise know.

• Social objects can be the reason why people have an interaction or form a relationship.

Joshua Porter (bokardo.com)

3. Choosing your Features

Conversations

Sharing

StrategizeExercise 4: what are the

social objects and what do people do?

i.e. What are your nouns and verbs?

Identity

Activity Relationships

SocialSpace

profile

reputationpresence

Share

ConvosCollab

Contacts

AttentionGroups

Sign-

upInvitations

Distribution (Viral)

SocialSpace

Norms & Caretakers

Community Management

• Who’s going to do what?– Participate in your community

• Who will handle complaints?– CRM or GetSatisfaction?

• What is the resource commitment?• What is the core functionality• What are the phased releases?• Will you learn from your mistakes?

Vilification

Veneration

Simple (hard) Steps• Have a compelling idea• Seed• Someone must live on the site

– Community manager or you• Make the rules clear (and short)

– Write a good TOS• Punish swiftly and nicely• Reward contributions• Spread the work out• Adapt to Community Norms• Apologize publicly, swiftly and frequently• Simple good software that grows with group

Does Software Matter?

Robin Miller, Cofounder of Slahdot

Joel Spolsky, Joel on Software

Probably not

Business Exercise

• Design and organizational structure and a launchplan

• Present it to the entire group

Why

• If you build it… they don’t come

• Gladwell• Duncan watts

“There was the president of the Hush Puppies company, of Rockford, Michigan, population thirty-eight hundred, sharing a stage with Calvin Klein and Donna Karan and Isaac Mizrahi-and all because some kids in the East Village began combing through thrift shops for old Dukes. Fashion was at the mercy of those kids, whoever they were, and it was a wonderful thing if the kids picked you, but a scary thing, too, because it

meant that cool was something you could not control. You needed someone to find cool and tell you what it was.”

- Malcom Gladwell

Nobody knows anything. – William Goldman

B=f(P,E)Behavior is a function of a Person

and his Environment

Some Patterns

Frictionless

At Hand

• Table setting?

Impactful

Maximize reach

Email this

Consumer

Broadcaster

Newsfeed, Network Updates

Consumer

Consumer Consumer

Consumer

Consumer

Broadcaster

Groups, Asymmetric Follow

spark

Relationship antipatternsHigh-level antipatterns

• Explicit “Will you be my friend” requests• Teach a man to be phished (adactio)• Don’t break email (do-not-reply)• Auto-faux-pas (notification of rejection / unsub /

delinking / re-follow)• Having to spam my friends…

Targeted

Features for the most useful users

Outreach

<meta name="description" content="Find cheap airline tickets, hotels, great cruise and vacation packages, honeymoon travel guides, flight information and more, with Yahoo! Travel." /> <meta name="verify-v1" content="hfk2kPTdsyPJIULFv58St5zM/BKR4WjvWpVSbgr23vA=" /><meta name="y_key" content="17f2f671d47e7697" /><title>Yahoo! Travel - Airline tickets, cheap hotels, cruises, vacations & honeymoon travel</title>

Checklist

FrictionlessImpactfulTargetedOutreach

Think about how you will pull people in…• How do people share?• With whom do they share?• Where and how many of those tools do you

place?

Distribution Exercise

Questions?

http://www.blueprintsfortheweb.comhttp://www.eleganthack.com

http://www.boxesandarrows.com@cwodtke