Vet & Reward

Ilya Lichtenstein — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 22:01:08 GMT

A couple of years ago, I attended a launch event for Halo 2 in Chicago that drew a crowd from all over the country. As I was introducing myself to attendees, I asked: “What’s your name?; Where are you from?” I was expecting to find out where they lived. One guy attending the event answered “My name is Joe, and I’m from the SomethingAwful.com forums.”

Joe had identified with forums where he was active just as strongly, or perhaps even more strongly, than the place he lived. That is the power of community, and for SomethingAwful it translates into 94,000 people paying $10 just to be a part of their community. For anyone building a true Web 2.0 application, one that creates meaningful connections between people and ideas, building a community is extremely important. The community you construct will distinguish your site from competitors, create organic word-of-mouth advertising, and drive growth.

So how do you develop your community effectively? Like a newborn baby, the first shaky steps your community takes will play a crucial role in its development. Do you start off with an exclusive closed beta so that by the time you open your site to the public, the roots of your community are in place? Or do you simply throw open the gates of your site at launch, letting anyone in who wants to register? There are a few important things to remember when building communities:

• Control your demographics The first few beta users of your community can and will influence the direction of your community’s development. Google’s social network Orkut, one of the most popular social networks in the world with over 46 million users, floundered when it first launched in the US. Then it was discovered by a few hundred Brazilians, and its adoption in Brazil took off, with Brazilians now constituting over 50% of Orkut’s user base. By controlling the initial membership of your community through beta invitations or selective marketing, you can shape its future.
• Like attracts like Facebook became successful through tight control of its demographics. By limiting its user base to those with .edu email addresses, Facebook created a community exclusive enough that other college students wanted to join it. But technological controls are not always necessary. FoundREAD is a community–driven website were the user base is self-selected based on a common interest in entrepreneurship.
• Strength is not only in numbers Simply drawing users to your site will not suffice. Your customers are not just eyeballs; they are people with friends, likes, dislikes, goals and expectations. As with business networking, community building is more than a numbers game. You must foster meaningful communication and emotional connections between your users. This could be done by giving them the ability to post a basic profile with a picture of themselves, offering them the opportunity to engage in full-blown debates on the site, or anything in between.
• Users are not created equal This may seem counterintuitive in a democratic web, but every community will have some users who create more value for your site than others. If you want a strong, self-sustaining community, you need to acknowledge the users you value most with systems that encourage and reward active participation. Recognize top users with a karma system like reddit’s or eBay’s or a top users list like Digg’s (before it was removed to wide public outcry from top users). Give your most valuable users the opportunity to impact the entire community by appointing them as moderators/editors or showcasing their work for everyone to see like the “top blogs” list on Wordpress.com
• Use cumulative advantage The law of cumulative advantage states that things that are already popular will become more popular. More active communities will in turn engage more active users.
• Be agile As your community grows, the needs and desires of your users will change. Stay flexible enough to address their needs and adapt your community to them quickly. If your users take your community in a direction you did not anticipate, go with the flow instead of fighting them to maintain your vision.

The formula for creating successful communities is simple: Build a well-focused application that connects people, encourages individuality and responds to the needs of its users, and you will create something far greater than the sum of its parts.

Ooohs! & Aaahs?!! of Outsourcing

Ilya Lichtenstein — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 14:59:53 GMT

Instead of hiring full-time programmers, it is often very tempting to turn to outsourcing. Sites like getafreelancer.com or rentacoder.com hawk a plethora of services- everything from graphic design to PHP coding. What’s more, once you post you project, you are sure to get dozens of bids at absurdly low prices, often as low as $30, within days. Outsourcing online may appear to be the perfect way to build almost anything. There are many benefits to outsourcing some tasks online, but there are also many pitfalls. Ultimately, outsourced labor can supplement in-house developers, but it cannot completely supplant them. My first experience with outsourcing was a couple of years ago. It started with my idea for a web application that could scrape, aggregate, and analyze certain financial data. The idea was not big enough to launch a startup around it, or to hire a bunch of professional developers to build it. But it was also too big a project for someone like me to undertake--I have little coding ability. I knew that this tool could become popular in certain investing communities, but I did not want to invest significant resources in building it. Outsourcing was the perfect solution. I began by posting a simple ad detailing the project on GetAFreelancer.com. Within hours, it received dozens of bids, most of them on the low side. However, upon reviewing the bids I found that most of them were spam bids- they did not reference the project whatsoever, instead leaving a generic “Our company can take care of every web development project” type ad. These junk bids plague outsourcing sites, and should be avoided. Outsourcing companies often act as middlemen -- they decrease efficiency because all communication with developers has to go through them, and drive up costs. Instead, I opted for an individual who provided a reasonable bid, a quick timeframe, and listed previous expertise designing similar applications. I selected his bid, which estimated completion in three days and e-mailed him project requirements. I received my PHP code three days later, as promised. However, the code was incomplete-- it did not gather all of the data I wanted. A day later, the developer refined the project, but there were still problems. I had run into the biggest problem with outsourcing:it is difficult to communicate. The developer and I were in disparate time zones, and I had a busy schedule, so any kind of real-time communication was impossible. Thus, each minor change to the code took at least a day. I was in no hurry to bring my idea to life, so I waited patiently as the code was further refined. Finally, the project appeared completed to my specifications. Eager to be done with development, I paid the developer and posted positive feedback. A couple of days after, however, I discovered a major bug -- the script did not function properly in Internet Explorer. I emailed the developer, but he was unresponsive. As far as he was concerned he was done with the project -- he had been paid, the transaction was completed, and he wanted nothing more to do with the project. In the end, I had to hire another developer to go through the code and fix bugs. The project ended up being both over time and over budget. The main lesson I learned about software development from this project is that code is rarely, if ever on time and on budget. I had unrealistic expectations for outsourcing, and was punished for them by a prolonged project. I learned that outsourcing is best for small, simple tasks like design of a logo, a single static template, or even fixing bugs in existing code. Throwing a full application development project at outsourcers and saying “here, do this!” is much less effective, because any problems that come up cannot be addressed quickly. Outsourcing is not a panacea for all of your development problems. Ultimately, if you want to build a successful web application, you will need a staff of full-time developers to maintain it. However, for quick tasks that are not mission-critical, or to fill some gaps in your application, outsourcing can be a very quick and inexpensive solution. Just remember to check on progress frequently, and address any bugs or problems before the project is completed.

Found+READ: Stories by Ilya Lichtenstein

Vet & Reward

Ooohs! & Aaahs?!! of Outsourcing