Background info: This article was originally written as background material for a workshop where I spoke. It was published several places in 1999 and early 2000, only one, though, with permission from me. On february 10th, 2001, a new version was published by the Norwegian site e-guiden. This time in Norwegian.

Creating killer online communities, the outline

What is inside a good community? How do you build one? How do you pay your bills by doing so? What more is in it for you if you succeed?

Please don't let me mislead you into thinking that this article will give you the answers. They are not invented yet. The deal is that my article takes you a part of the way, and your thoughts along with some practice will take us both the rest of the way.

This whole article is based on the fact that you have some experience from the web sites I mention, and that you follow it up with a bit of web exploration.

To show you parts of what I am thinking, I have taken a peek into one -- in my terms of definition -- successful web community, having the kicks, though lacking the income. I have also looking into another web community, seriously challenging my means of quality, yet having the user database. After that, we will take a quick look into two of the money makers in the arena, explaining why I think they just might be community wannabes. After the little ultra-quick tour of these, I try to sum up into a conclusion, one that hopefully will make you feel that reading this article was not a total waste of time.

Peek 1: A guide to earth

The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a well-known concept, and a good start of an online community. At h2g2.com the community is developing fast. The concept is giving the users an encyclopaedia-like guide to life on earth. The users build everything. For free. Here is the h2g2 staff's version of how they attract people:

"First and foremost, h2g2 is cool. It's a fun place to hang around, it's unique and it's a vibrant, constantly-changing community where everyone can find their niche and make friends."

"The concept behind the original Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy was a hand-held guide to life in the Universe, and the concept behind h2g2 is an online guide to life on Earth."

Pretty ambitious, given the fact that you have to do it all on your own. A few hundred people could spend the rest of their careers making a guide to earth, but h2g2 has found a way. Here is what it took to get it started, described by the founders:

"A half-dozen guys, a couple of towels, some sophisticated digital equipment, and most importantly a lot of dreams."

Sufficient, given that the user knows the story itself, namely the book by Douglas Adams, published in 1979. More books in the series came, and today h2g2 is "a trilogy in five parts". The thing about the towels is a joke sounding pretty fluffy unless you have read the book.

Of the roughly 70.000 users, most people have read all five parts of the trilogy. Some of them twice, few of them less than that. The forums are swarming with internal jokes originating from the books, but an increasing number of users fail to understand these. They have not read the books; they just like the atmosphere of the community.

The staff consists of a full time employed team of 18, three editors, seven programmers, three artists and five "others", working on management, public relations, research and such. In addition to the staff, there is a crew of twenty-two sub-editors, going through posted entries for the guide, approving or rejecting them.

h2g2 is not a money machine. Yet. The ads posted are for non-profit organisations and networks, and are probably not paid for. h2g2 have its own explanation on the money issue:

"Well, all right, it doesn't make money yet, but we have a business plan and the idea is, one day, to turn in a profit. The web site you see before you now is the start of a whole community and commercial venture that goes under the banner of h2g2, with the h2g2 Guide at the centre of the whole plan. One thing, though, that we are absolutely adamant about is that we will not let your personal details out of our sight: we are not in the business of collecting data from our registration process and then selling on that information. We promise that, despite our intentions to turn h2g2 into a commercial success, it will not be at the expense of trust in our community. If you'd like to read more about this, then you might like to check out our privacy statement.

Those of you who are wondering how on earth we are going to make money should probably take a look at other Internet companies and wonder if it's actually necessary to make money to, er, make money. Welcome to the wonderful world of Internet start-ups..."

Sounds like a foggy business plan, but with a few jokes removed, and replaced with difficult Wall Street terms, I am sure this would look just as good as any Internet start-up business plan. And I am also quite sure there is a real business plan locked up deep inside a vault inside the offices of the h2g2 community.

The h2g2 have a lot of development areas. Their technology has to be even more stabile; their interactivity functions should constantly improve and increase by number, without losing the simplicity of the whole community. The editorial process has to be even faster, in order to secure a constant growth. The entries should be arranged in more clever information architecture, such as continent-country-city-bar, or director-movie-character-actor, the possibilities are numerous.

Peek 2: Sixdegrees -- lousy site with a killer story

The Six Degrees Theory is a fascinating one. The story goes like this: Every single person on earth is connected to every other person on earth, through six degrees. Degrees, as in friend of acquaintance of brother of wife of co-worker, and so on. So, you are connected to Bill Clinton and Saddam Hussein, through someone you know, knowing someone who. I believe you are getting the point.

A glorious story for a web community. A bunch of people set up some very sophisticated database technology, and got started. A quick glance at their site, situated at sixdegrees.com, tells me that they found database building being a lot of fun, but the site around it a drag. The infotecture is ghastly, the whole site is a mess, and blinking ads are all over the place.

But I believe these people make money. And they have 2,85 million registered users. Thousands are in every day, and they spend a lot of time in there. They are implementing a yellow pages-function into it, and there is a lot more they can do to the community to make it a very interesting thing.

The punch line, however, is: The solution and structure is awful, but the story is wonderful. That does the job for the users. What would happen if the rest became just as wonderful? For one, I would probably buy some shares in Sixdegrees.

Peek 3:Amazon -- breaking the barriers

What is Amazon? It's a bookstore. Only you have to give them your credit card number, enabling them to ruin you in a vile way. You don't get your books with you instantly. You don't even get to touch them.

True enough. Somehow Amazon sells more books than most of us can imagine. They have put a lot of work into branding, and the result should raise envy in most book-selling communities. Needless to say, the stock market prices Amazon beyond the clouds.

An Amazon customer gets an added value. That makes the book worth waiting for. Amazon customers join a web community. How?

Personal recommendation: Very sophisticated database technology takes a look at what you've bought, and based on that recommends you a list of books.

Background: The customer gets a vast set of background material. Reviews, user reviews, as well as links to sites about the author, the book itself or even the subject of the book. Amazon also has a function where the author can submit his/her own comments.

Information architecture: Books are easily browsable in numerous ways. You can view them by sales rank, by author, by topic, by cathegory, and a pile of other ways. Just browsing is fun, and you don't have an old lady telling you not to make finger marks inside the books. You can hang around Amazon for some time without actually buying something.

Peek 4:CDNow -- a scent of honey

Honey bears in it a sweet smell. And it is sticky. CDNow is in many ways the same as Amazon, only they sell CDs. So does Amazon, but that is another blood-dripping story. What CDNow has done, is to dig a wee bit deeper into the stickiness question. You can browse CDs, and find lots of information about them. You can even listen to parts of them. You can browse your way to sites of the artist and the labels, and you can find related information in connection to each item.

CDNow discovered that numerous users hung around CDNow just to browse CDs they already had, partly getting information from CDNow itself, and partly using it as a portal towards biographical and other info about the artist. CDNow implemented a function where you can tag CDs you already own. What's in it for you? Not much yet. For them? The Amazon thing, they can use the info to give you killer recommendations. Where is the stickyness part? CDNow can pull this further, and enable you to make a database of your own CD collection. Many of us have spent hours and hours making Excel dbs of our CDs, discovering it is a lot of work. If CDNow had your CD database, you would surely hang around there a lot.

And when CDNow told you what was missing in your collection, you'd sure buy it.

Web convergence?

CDNow and Amazon are bookshops, starting as nothing more than PO companies with a website and no printed catalogue. They have developed in high-speed. The new interactivity they have developed makes them look a little bit like the non-profit communities, probably to add value to the user experience, and to explore the new world of stickyness. By the way, stickyness is a high-fashion word in web marketing. Use it a lot in web communities, along with "proactive", "permission marketing" and a few others. Doors will be opened for you.

Will we see the day when communities and online shops converge completely?

The recipe

The fact that you have read this article down to this point, tells me one of two things: Either you are fond of reading a lot of blah-blah, or you have a strong faith in my ability to make useful conclusions. The following is pretty close to the best I can do, at least for now.

The backbone forget-me-nots of successful web communities

• Access

  Free of charge, instant membership.

• Kicks

  User experience.

• Usability

  No training needed, logical functions.

• Interactivity

  Possibility to interact with server and with other participants.

• Infotecture

  Logically structured information, presented in an instantly tempting way.

• Growth

  New info is added all the time.

• Stickiness

  Make it hard to leave the community.

The six forget-me-nots of continuous growth

• Story

  What is your community about? Share your vision.

• Trust

  Define the truth, and prove that you have it.

• Trigger

  Let the ultimate sequence in your infotecture be submitting.

• Quality

  Never let anything less than perfect in.

• Reward

  Take good care of the submitters.

• Status

  Canonize the submitters and the sub-editors in front of the users.

Apart from this, you will need just the right people, each knowing exactly what to do. That is another story, and we will look into it later.

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