Pages 43-79 of Design to Thrive
describe the significance of remuneration in the building of an online community.
According to Howard, remuneration is “the commonsense observation that
individuals remain members of a social network when there is a clear benefit
for doing so.” In other words, when an individual is building a social network
or online community, he/she must concentrate on developing a positive user
experience.
As the chapter continues, Howard details a list of techniques that online
community builders can use to help ensure that users of the community help
remunerate the group. Such techniques include adding emoticons, using a
subscription application form, seeding the discussion, ranking the value of
members’ messages, and creating a regular event. As I was reading about each
individual technique, I immediately realized that Twitter utilizes the “Seed
the Discussion” technique. This becomes evident when one visits the “Discover”
tab of the Twitter interface. Upon clicking on this tab, users are brought to a
page that provides descriptions of breaking news stories as well as trending
topics. Users can subsequently use the breaking news as topics for discussion. They
can also incorporate the trending topics into their own tweets in an effort to
add to the various discussions. For example, when Clemson was playing Florida
State on ABC Saturday night, a range of “trending topics” were directly related
to the game: “Touchdown Clemson,” “EJ Manuel,” “Tajh Boyd,” and “FSU.” After
seeing these topics, additional users would incorporate the words into their
tweets, further driving discussion about the game.
One technique that I found interesting was, “Don’t Automatically Archive.”
Before reading about this technique, I felt that it would be useful to archive
posts. Doing this would prevent the same questions and discussions from occurring
over and over again. Howard, however, brought up the point that knowledge is a process.
In other words, questions can be answered in different ways, and discussions
can take different routes. Howards closes out this particular section with a
great word of advice: “Let your members talk.” This is a great point that
causes me to look at online communities in a different way.
I think you did a great job of bringing out several key points in this chapter. Also, I think it's good that you recognized Twitter's techniques to provide remuneration. I recently have joined the world of Tumblr and they use several similar techniques. Users can "Explore Tumblr" (which provides a list of recently popular blogs), search tags to find others who are posting about similar interests, and "Find Blogs" which lists categories and most promoted blogs in each one.
ReplyDeleteI also like that you brought up archiving; I too did not consider Howard's point until reading the chapter and agree that knowledge is a process and users need to be able to communicate on their own.
I'm fascinated by Twitter's ability to not only stimulate discussion but suggest topics of discussion based on the decisions of others. This is exactly what is being referred to in that section; Twitter helps to focus and organize discussion among participants, which allows for more traffic in relevant areas. It's one of the great things about Twitter...the customizable element that makes it more for the user than the group.
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