Building a web application that attracts and retains regular visitors is tricky enough, but creating a social application that encourages visitors to interact with one another requires careful planning. This book provides practical solutions to the tough questions you'll face when building an effective community site -- one that makes visitors feel like they've found a new home on the Web.
If your company is ready to take part in the social web, this book will help you get started. Whether you're creating a new site from scratch or reworking an existing site, Building Social Web Applications helps you choose the tools appropriate for your audience so you can build an infrastructure that will promote interaction and help the community coalesce. You'll also learn about business models for various social web applications, with examples of member-driven, customer-service-driven, and contributor-driven sites.
If your company is ready to take part in the social web, this book will help you get started. Whether you're creating a new site from scratch or reworking an existing site, Building Social Web Applications helps you choose the tools appropriate for your audience so you can build an infrastructure that will promote interaction and help the community coalesce. You'll also learn about business models for various social web applications, with examples of member-driven, customer-service-driven, and contributor-driven sites.
- Determine who will be drawn to your site, why they'll stay, and who they'll interact with
- Create visual design that clearly communicates how your site works
- Build the software you need versus plugging in one-size-fits-all, off-the-shelf apps
- Manage the identities of your visitors and determine how to support their interaction
- Monitor demand from the community to guide your choice of new functions
- Plan the launch of your site and get the message out
Gavin Bell
Gavin designs social web applications for the Nature Publishing Group. He is an interaction designer, community advocate and product manager. Since the early 90s, he has been writing and designing for the web. Large scale web applications covering identity, on-demand media, geolocation and social software have been the main focus of his work at NPG and previously at the BBC. He has worked in academia, advertising, publishing and developed multimedia software. He lives in London with his wife and two sons. Find out more on his personal site gavinbell.com and his blog take one onion.
Gavin designs social web applications for the Nature Publishing Group. He is an interaction designer, community advocate and product manager. Since the early 90s, he has been writing and designing for the web. Large scale web applications covering identity, on-demand media, geolocation and social software have been the main focus of his work at NPG and previously at the BBC. He has worked in academia, advertising, publishing and developed multimedia software. He lives in London with his wife and two sons. Find out more on his personal site gavinbell.com and his blog take one onion.
1.
Chapter 1 Building a Social Application
1.
Building Applications
2.
The Distributed Nature of Seemingly Everything
3.
Summary
2.
Chapter 2 Analyzing, Creating, and Managing Community Relationships
1.
Analyzing Your Users’ Relationships
2.
Analyzing the Essence of Your Community’s Needs
3.
Summary
3.
Chapter 3 Planning Your Initial Site
1.
Deciding What You Need
2.
Building a Web Application
3.
Choosing Who You Need
4.
Planning the Life Cycle
5.
Communicating During Development
6.
Managing the Development Cycle
7.
Collecting Audience Feedback
8.
Summary
4.
Chapter 4 Creating a Visual Impact
1.
Dynamic Interactions
2.
Design First
3.
Copywriting
4.
Summary
5.
Chapter 5 Working with and Consuming Media
1.
Media Types Affect Consumption Styles
2.
Media Evolves and Consumption Styles Change
3.
New Services Respond to Evolving Needs
4.
Summary
6.
Chapter 6 Managing Change
1.
Resistance
2.
Internal Workflow
3.
Community Managers
4.
Summary
7.
Chapter 7 Designing for People
1.
Making Software for People
2.
Interaction Design
3.
Identify Needs with Personas and User-Centered Design
4.
Common Techniques for UCD
5.
Running Interaction Design Projects
6.
Using Agile and UCD Methods
7.
Beyond UCD
8.
Learning to Love Constraints
9.
Including You, Me, and Her Over There, Plus Him, Too
10.
Moving Quickly from Idea to Implementation
11.
Don’t Let Your Users Drown in Activity
12.
Implementing Search
13.
Understanding Activity and Viewpoints
14.
Twelve Ideas to Take Away
15.
Summary
8.
Chapter 8 Relationships, Responsibilities, and Privacy
1.
We Are in a Relationship?
2.
Personal Identity and Reputation
3.
Handling Public, Private, and Gray Information
4.
Privacy and Aggregate Views
5.
See But Don’t Touch: Rules for Admins
6.
Private by Default?
7.
Setting Exposure Levels
8.
Managing Access for Content Reuse, Applications, and Other Developers
9.
Summary
9.
Chapter 9 Community Structures, Software, and Behavior
1.
Community Structures
2.
Supporting Social Interactions
3.
Who Is Sharing, and Why?
4.
How Are They Sharing?
5.
Social Software Menagerie
6.
Groups
7.
Summary
10.
Chapter 10 Social Network Patterns
1.
Sharing Social Objects
2.
Published Sites Expect Audiences
3.
Deep and Broad Sharing
4.
Capturing Intentionality
5.
Cohesion
6.
Filtering Lists by Popularity
7.
Commenting, Faving, and Rating
8.
Internal Messaging Systems
9.
Friending Considered Harmful
10.
Sharing Events
11.
Summary
11.
Chapter 11 Modeling Data and Relationships
1.
Designing URLs
2.
Getting to the Right URL
3.
Permalinks
4.
Putting Objects on the Internet
5.
Aggregating Data to Create New Content
6.
Exploring Groups
7.
Making the Most of Metadata
8.
Connecting the Relationship to the Content
9.
Considering Time Implications
10.
Looking Beyond the Web
11.
Summary
12.
Chapter 12 Managing Identities
1.
Existing Identities
2.
Forms of Identification
3.
The Need for Profile Pages
4.
Activity Pages
5.
Invisibility and Privacy
6.
Summary
13.
Chapter 13 Organizing Your Site for Navigation, Search, and Activity
1.
Understanding In-Page Navigation
2.
Connecting People Through Content
3.
Providing Activity Pages
4.
Filtering Activity Lists and the Past
5.
Who Stole My Home Page?
6.
Providing for Site Navigation
7.
Summary
14.
Chapter 14 Making Connections
1.
Choosing the Correct Relationship Model for Your Social Application
2.
Information Brokers
3.
Notifications and Invitations
4.
Social Network Portability
5.
Spamming, Antipatterns, and Phishing
6.
Address Books, the OAuth Way
7.
Changing Relationships over Time
8.
Administering Groups
9.
Summary
15.
Chapter 15 Managing Communities
1.
Social Behavior in the Real World
2.
Starting Up and Managing a Community
3.
Trolls and Other Degenerates
4.
Separating Communities
5.
Encouraging Good Behavior
6.
Gaming the System
7.
Membership by Invitation or Selection
8.
Rewarding Good Behavior
9.
Helping the Community Manage Itself
10.
Balancing Anonymity and Pseudo-Anonymity
11.
Summary
16.
Chapter 16 Writing the Application
1.
Small Is Good: A Reprise
2.
How Social Applications Differ from Web Applications
3.
Agile Methodologies
4.
Deployment and Version Control
5.
Infrastructure and Web Operations
6.
Designing Social Applications
7.
Your App Has Its Own Point of View
8.
How Code Review Helps Reduce Problems
9.
Beyond the Web Interface, Please
10.
Bug Tracking and Issue Management
11.
Rapid User Interfaces
12.
Scaling and Messaging Architectures
13.
Implementing Search
14.
Identity and Management of User Data
15.
Federation
16.
Making Your Code Green and Fast
17.
Building Admin Tools and Gleaning Collective Intelligence
18.
Summary
17.
Chapter 17 Building APIs, Integration, and the Rest of the Web
1.
“On the Internet” Versus “In the Internet”
2.
Making Your Place Within the Internet
3.
Why an API?
4.
Being Open Is Good
5.
Arguing for Your API Internally
6.
Implementing User Management and Open Single Sign-On
7.
Designing an API
8.
Comparing Social APIs
9.
Reviewing the APIs
10.
Managing the Developer Community
11.
Create an API?
12.
Summary
18.
Chapter 18 Launching, Marketing, and Evolving Social Applications
1.
Loving and Hating the Home Page
2.
Financing Your Site
3.
Marketing
4.
Achieving and Managing Critical Mass
5.
Evolving Your Site
6.
Establishing the Rhythm of Your Evolving Application
7.
Summary
1.
Colophon
