Introduction
We humans are social creatures by nature. One of the greatest things the web
has to offer is its ability to bring people together from many backgrounds and
experiences in order to share common hopes, dreams and interests. Web sites that
are designed to foster this are known as virtual communities. A good virtual community
web site is fluid and dynamic and adapts according to the needs and interests
of its community of users. Many commercial, governmental, or non-profit web sites
can benefit from the incorporation of elements of a virtual community. In this
article, we will explore the elements of a good virtual community how your web
site might benefit from incorporating some of its features.
How Commercial Web Sites Can Benefit From Virtual Community Building
So how can I use the elements of a virtual community to benefit by commercial
web site? You need to focus on the common interests and needs of your customers.
Successful virtual communities on commercial web sites most certainly are customer
centric. Probably the clearest way to demonstrate successful virtual communities
on commercial web sites is by example. Lets look at two companies that have very
successfully developed virtual communities for there customers: Amazon.com and
Macromedia.
Case Study: Amazon.com
Amazon.com has made very good use of elements of virtual communities. Amazon
was one of the first web sites to allow users to review and rate products. Here
are some of the things that Amazon does to help foster a virtual community.
- Customers can rate and review books and other products.
- Customers can rate the product reviews as being helpful or not helpful.
- Reviewers with high approval ratings get recognition by having a little award
placed by their names such as “Amazon Top 500 Reviewer”.
- Customers can create a personal profile that can be viewed by other customers.
They can restrict certain parts of their profile only to their friends or family.
- Customers can create wish lists of items that can be viewed and purchased
for them by friends, family and others.
- Amazon has created an on-line auction site where customers can buy and sell
items. These items are often featured on Amazon’s main site as an alternative
to their regular products.
- Customers can create lists of books that they feel are significant in various
subject areas. Other customers can view these lists and view the customer’s
public profile.
Amazon’s brilliant strategy is to engage customers into discussing their
opinions on books and other products while at the same time adding a tremendous
amount of free and useful content to their web site. Amazon has made their site
more intimate and engaging by allowing customers to find more about each other
and learn from each other’s recommendations. People are generally willing
to listen and be open to opinions of like-minded peers. This, no doubt, helps
to breakdown barriers and creates sales for Amazon.
Case Study 2: Macromedia.com
Macromedia.com is one of the premier producers of commercial web development
software. Macromedia is the creator of Flash. Flash enabled animation is now standard
in all new Windows computers and is built into both Netscape and Internet Explorer
browsers. Macromedia is also the creator of Dreamweaver software for web page
development. Macromedia claims that Dreamweaver is now used by over 70% of professional
web site developers.
Macromedia has helped to foster virtual communities for their products by providing
on-line discussion groups for each of their products. Many Macromedia products
are extendable by third party add-on software. Macromedia has setup an area on
there web site where users of their products can exchange these add-ons for free.
Users can rate each add-on and write comments about them. In addition, each add-on
can have its own discussion group.
Macromedia has used this strategy to allow customers to add value to their
site with little or no maintenance. Here are some of wins realized by Macromedia’s
virtual community strategy.
- Users do their own technical support. On-Line forums allow expert users to
help less experienced users. The on-line discussion groups handle many questions
that would normally require a technical support specialist.
- Discussion groups provide valuable customer feedback. Macromedia technical
and marketing specialist monitors the Discussion groups and forums. They gain
valuable insight into what customers like and dislike about their software. Since
the information is extremely valuable for future product development and focusing
in on the customer’s needs.
- Free Exchange Area Adds Value to Macromedia Products for Little or No Cost.
Free third party add-ons are created by and for customers. Customers are adding
value to Macromedia products without it costing Macromedia any engineering effort.
In addition, Macromedia can also study what add-ons are most popular and use this
to help guide their future product development strategy.
How Governmental Web Sites Can Improve Community Out Reach with Virtual Communities
Federal, state, county, and local governmental web sites can develop virtual
communities to help promote community outreach programs and foster citizen participation.
On-line discussion groups or forums are a great way for the public to discuss
ideas about a particular governmental proposal or program.
In addition, public comments or rating of informational articles on governmental
web sites is a great way to gauge whether the particular information is helpful
and also lets the citizens know that the government is responsive to their needs.
Using Virtual Communities to Help Build Your Non-Profit Organization
If you have a non-profit organization, building a virtual community is a great
way to encourage public involvement and interaction with your organization. The
virtual community model has been well proven in the open source software community.
For example, Linux, which was originally created by Linus Torvalds, has developed
and matured by a community of talented software developers who are all interested
in building a solid and free Unix operating system for the PC. Linux has proven
to be far more reliable than Microsoft’s Windows NT and Windows 2000.
Many non-profit organizations can benefit from community building elements
like on-line discussion groups, free classifieds for members and even moderated
chat sessions for sponsored events.
For example, National Public Radio (NPR) has on-line discussion groups for
their nationally broadcast show, Talk of the Nation. This on-line discussion group
is used to build community among talk of the radio listeners and allow more people
to be involved in the show’s topic of discussion than would ever be possible
from just call in listeners.
Anther good example is the virtual classroom environment now being tried at
many public universities. Students can sign-up for and attend live classes, retrieve
class assignments, turn in their work, and attend virtual study sessions all from
the comfort of their own home. In many instances, virtual classrooms have allowed
students to participate in classes that would be impossible for them to attend
otherwise.
Hazards of On-Line Communities
Like most things, on-line communities are not without their hazards. In this
section, we will look at the hazards and what actions can be taken to circumvent
or minimize their impact on your community.
Spammers: Spamming is the practice of sending unsolicited e-mail in
mass and is considered very poor manners on the web. Spammers of course want to
get valid e-mail addresses that are relevant the product or service they are trying
to hype. Often they will buy mailing lists or create their own by harvesting real
e-mail addresses from news or discussion groups. Spammers will also try to post
advertisements on your discussion groups.
Inappropriate Behavior: There are many ways people can behave inappropriately.
The most common is for one participant in a discussion group to hurl vindictive
insults at others in the group. Another is to pose as a participant, only to latter
solicit their products or services to members of the group.
Here are a few guidelines for dealing with these problems:
Your discussion groups or chat rooms need to be private. To participate, people
must create a username and password. One way to authenticate users is to require
a valid e-mail address. You send them an initial password by e-mail that they
are then free to change to whatever they want after they log on for the first
time. If you do this, make sure to have a clearly written privacy policy that
assures participants that the e-mail address is used for authentication only.
Have a clearly stated code of conduct. Participants should agree to a simple
code of conduct that states what constitutes appropriate and inappropriate behavior.
Retain the right to ban participants that break this code of conduct. Note that
there is a big difference between destructive behavior and negative comments.
We are advocating civility not content censorship. A good virtual community is
a free flowing discourse where all members respect each other.
Conclusion
Many web sites can benefit from having a virtual community. Almost every web
site can benefit from some type of user participation. The most important thing
to remember is to focus on the needs of your target audience. Here are key points
to remember:
- A virtual community is not a collection of interactive features such a chat
rooms, discussions groups or user feedback put haphazardly on a web site.
- A virtual community is deliberately designed to help foster human interaction
and add genuine value to your customers.
- Virtual communities, correctly designed, will allow customers to add their
own value to your web site.
- Be prepared to adapt your web site design to the needs of your virtual community.
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