Supplementary materials are also available, including a bibliography, at To comment or ask technical questions about this book, send email to: bookquestions@oreilly.com For more information about our books conferences. Resource Centers and the O'Reilly Network, see our website at: http://www.oreilly.com How this book came about This book came into being thanks to Simon St Laurent. He approached me after Ispoke at the O'Reilly Tools of Change 2007 conference in San Jose, California. The following weekend at Foo Camp 07, over a couple of glasses of wine, we decided that the pre sentation should grow into a proper book. From there through the book proposal and on into the writing, he has been a great help. There were lots of books that described the technology side of creating products for the Web, but a lack of books on making social products. I hope this book goes some way toward addressing that need worked in many places while i wrote this book: The British Library, my home, on the London Underground, on various Virgin Atlantic flights, in hotel rooms in San Fran- cisco, Austin, Boston, and New York, and in a number of London cafes There is a lot of Gavin Bell in this book. This book is about social applications, which includes personal profiles and information Rather than impinge on my friends, I've used a lot of examples from my own usage of social applications. I hope you'll understand Acknowledgments Thanks to all the speakers whose talks I' ve sat in on and the authors whose books I've read I' m sure you will find some of your ideas in here. Forgive me if I 've not credited you directly hanks to the many people with whom I discussed the ideas in this book. You all influenced the shape and scope of this book in many ways: Matt Biddulph, Matt Jones, Tom Coates, Ben Cerveny, Matt Webb, Simon Willison, Tom Armitage, Chris Heath cote, Adam Greenfield, Tim O'Reilly, Dan Saffer, Meg Pickard, Jeremy Keith, Gavin Starks, Edd Dumbill, Kevin Anderson, Leah Culver, Steve Ganz, Adrian Holovaty, Larry Halff, Simon Wardley, Leslie Chicoine, James Governer, Lane Becker, Kevin Marks, Paul Hammond, Artur Bergman, David Recordon, Chris Thorpe, Kathy Sierra Blaine Cook, rabble, Kellan Elliot-McCrea, Chris Messina, Jyri Engestrom, and James Duncan davidson Preface xxi
Supplementary materials are also available, including a bibliography, at: http://www.gavinbell.com/bswa/ To comment or ask technical questions about this book, send email to: bookquestions@oreilly.com For more information about our books, conferences, Resource Centers, and the O’Reilly Network, see our website at: http://www.oreilly.com How This Book Came About This book came into being thanks to Simon St.Laurent. He approached me after I spoke at the O’Reilly Tools of Change 2007 conference in San Jose, California. The following weekend at Foo Camp ’07, over a couple of glasses of wine, we decided that the presentation should grow into a proper book. From there through the book proposal and on into the writing, he has been a great help. There were lots of books that described the technology side of creating products for the Web, but a lack of books on making social products. I hope this book goes some way toward addressing that need. I worked in many places while I wrote this book: The British Library, my home, on the London Underground, on various Virgin Atlantic flights, in hotel rooms in San Francisco, Austin, Boston, and New York, and in a number of London cafés. There is a lot of Gavin Bell in this book. This book is about social applications, which includes personal profiles and information. Rather than impinge on my friends, I’ve used a lot of examples from my own usage of social applications. I hope you’ll understand. Acknowledgments Thanks to all the speakers whose talks I’ve sat in on and the authors whose books I’ve read. I’m sure you will find some of your ideas in here. Forgive me if I’ve not credited you directly. Thanks to the many people with whom I discussed the ideas in this book. You all influenced the shape and scope of this book in many ways: Matt Biddulph, Matt Jones, Tom Coates, Ben Cerveny, Matt Webb, Simon Willison, Tom Armitage, Chris Heathcote, Adam Greenfield, Tim O’Reilly, Dan Saffer, Meg Pickard, Jeremy Keith, Gavin Starks, Edd Dumbill, Kevin Anderson, Leah Culver, Steve Ganz, Adrian Holovaty, Larry Halff, Simon Wardley, Leslie Chicoine, James Governer, Lane Becker, Kevin Marks, Paul Hammond, Artur Bergman, David Recordon, Chris Thorpe, Kathy Sierra, Blaine Cook, rabble, Kellan Elliot-McCrea, Chris Messina, Jyri Engeström, and James Duncan Davidson. Preface | xxi
Thanks also to Derek Powazek, Matt Haughey, Leisa Reichelt, danah boyd and Clay Shirky, Mark Earls, Steve Souders, Toby Segaran, Jesse James Garrett, Micheal Lopp, Tim Berners-Lee, and Steven Pemberton for helpful presentations. I'd also like to thank the authors of the books I've referenced; there is a bibliography on my website. Additional thanks go to Timo Hannay and my colleagues at Nature: Louise morton, Mat Miehle, lan Mulvany, Euan Adie, and Alf Eaton. Matt Jankowski from ThoughtBot has been an excellent development partner. Timo let me take time off one day a week to work on the early part of the book; the book is much better for it. Thanks also to Timo for giving me freedom to explore my ideas at Nature Thanks to the many people who commented on the public chapter outlines on my blog, http://takeoneonion.organdviaTwitter-inparticularTerryJones,PaulMison,and Brendan Quinn. I'd also like to thank Simon Batistoni, Joshua Porter, and Elizabeth Churchill in particular for excellent feedback on drafts I'd like to thank my editor, Simon St Laurent; my development editor, Robyn Thomas; ind my technical editor, Matthew Rothenberg. They have caught and corrected many errors and stray thoughts. Any that remain are my own responsibility. My production team: Audrey Doyle, copyeditor, and Loranah Dimant, production ed itor and proofreader; Karen Montgomery, who designed the cover; David Futato, the interior designer; Robert Romano, the illustrator; and Lucie Haskins, who created the ndex. They all deserve my thanks; there is a lot of work that goes into making a book as i've learned My parents, Arthur and Doreen, gave me the support and encouragement to explore what I' ve wanted to do in my life, which I've really appreciated My wife's parents, Tom and Vivienne, have been really supportive and helpful throughout Finally, thanks to my wife, Lucy, and my sons, Oscar and Max, who put up with my regular absences while I was writing this book. i could not have written it without the love and support of lucy, nor the smiles and encouragement of my two b Preface
Thanks also to Derek Powazek, Matt Haughey, Leisa Reichelt, danah boyd and Clay Shirky, Mark Earls, Steve Souders, Toby Segaran, Jesse James Garrett, Micheal Lopp, Tim Berners-Lee, and Steven Pemberton for helpful presentations. I’d also like to thank the authors of the books I’ve referenced; there is a bibliography on my website. Additional thanks go to Timo Hannay and my colleagues at Nature: Louise Morton, Mat Miehle, Ian Mulvany, Euan Adie, and Alf Eaton. Matt Jankowski from ThoughtBot has been an excellent development partner. Timo let me take time off one day a week to work on the early part of the book; the book is much better for it. Thanks also to Timo for giving me freedom to explore my ideas at Nature. Thanks to the many people who commented on the public chapter outlines on my blog, http://takeoneonion.org, and via Twitter—in particular, Terry Jones, Paul Mison, and Brendan Quinn. I’d also like to thank Simon Batistoni, Joshua Porter, and Elizabeth Churchill in particular for excellent feedback on drafts. I’d like to thank my editor, Simon St.Laurent; my development editor, Robyn Thomas; and my technical editor, Matthew Rothenberg. They have caught and corrected many errors and stray thoughts. Any that remain are my own responsibility. My production team: Audrey Doyle, copyeditor, and Loranah Dimant, production editor and proofreader; Karen Montgomery, who designed the cover; David Futato, the interior designer; Robert Romano, the illustrator; and Lucie Haskins, who created the index. They all deserve my thanks; there is a lot of work that goes into making a book, as I’ve learned. My parents, Arthur and Doreen, gave me the support and encouragement to explore what I’ve wanted to do in my life, which I’ve really appreciated. My wife’s parents, Tom and Vivienne, have been really supportive and helpful throughout. Finally, thanks to my wife, Lucy, and my sons, Oscar and Max, who put up with my regular absences while I was writing this book. I could not have written it without the love and support of Lucy, nor the smiles and encouragement of my two boys. xxii | Preface
CHAPTER 1 Building a Social Application “ Why are you building a community?” If you cannot answer this question after a few seconds of thought, the odds are good that no one coming to your site will be able to, either. The elevator pitch should be about value for them, not for you. What will make them stay around? Social applications come in three main types: those that focus on products, those that focus on content, and those that focus on activity. You need to decide what will be a good fit for your community or the community you want to attract, as well as under stand what is happening in related communities and sit There are many ways to visualize this. As an example, Figure 1-1 shows the areas of photography captured by various imaginary websites. The lefthand side represents the act of taking pictures, and the righthand side represents the act of viewing photos Different sites sit at different places in this process. A-D represent companies that each have a single and different product aimed at this market. Perhaps B is more focused technical advice about taking photos, while C and d are more focused on viewing a new company might want to offer something different-perhaps E positioned as shown in Figure 1-2. At one level, noting where the other products are in the market in relation to you is simple competitor analysis-finding places that arent already occupied-but there is more to it than that. To build a good application, you need to understand the flow of activity and how your project might fit into this flow
CHAPTER 1 Building a Social Application “Why are you building a community?” If you cannot answer this question after a few seconds of thought, the odds are good that no one coming to your site will be able to, either. The elevator pitch should be about value for them, not for you. What will make them stay around? Social applications come in three main types: those that focus on products, those that focus on content, and those that focus on activity. You need to decide what will be a good fit for your community or the community you want to attract, as well as understand what is happening in related communities and sites. There are many ways to visualize this. As an example, Figure 1-1 shows the areas of photography captured by various imaginary websites. The lefthand side represents the act of taking pictures, and the righthand side represents the act of viewing photos. Different sites sit at different places in this process. A–D represent companies that each have a single and different product aimed at this market. Perhaps B is more focused on technical advice about taking photos, while C and D are more focused on viewing pictures. A new company might want to offer something different—perhaps E positioned as shown in Figure 1-2. At one level, noting where the other products are in the market in relation to you is simple competitor analysis—finding places that aren’t already occupied—but there is more to it than that. To build a good application, you need to understand the flow of activity and how your project might fit into this flow. 1
Photography onsidering photography←→+ Taking picture← Viewing picture Figure 1-1. Flow of activity and corresponding web applications; each box represents a potential so pplication for photography Photography Figure 1-2. How your product(E)might fit into the flow of activity 2 Chapter 1: Building a Social Application
Figure 1-2. How your product (E) might fit into the flow of activity Figure 1-1. Flow of activity and corresponding web applications; each box represents a potential social application for photography 2 | Chapter 1: Building a Social Application
A large part of this decision making draws on psychology as well as s marketing or advertising approaches. Mark Earls' book Herd(Wiley) e the frequent focus on individuals in social software, it is important to understand group activity, too Building applications Applications are based on the activities and behaviors of your community, but you can also borrow ideas from some of the great social applications on the Internet. I reference about 40 to 50 different sites in this book, but I focus on only a small number of well- known ones: Twitter, Last. fm, Flickr, and Dopplr. I chose these because they are pop- ular, I use them, and they represent different types of sites. Roughly speaking, Twitter is a general conversation site; Last. fm is for listening to and recommending music Flickr is for talking about photography and (personally)significant events; and Dopplr, the newest of the four sites is a service for travelers Your site needs to make sense to an individual for him to use it-he needs to gain something from his solo interaction with the tools on your site, or at least see the sense in using the application. Community then happens almost as a by-product of the users interaction with others. You cannot set out with the goal of creating a community. You can start with something that makes sense if lots of people use it, but you need to offer a core tool that makes sense when it's used alone. This acts as the scaffolding to support users returning to the site, where they will hopefully start to become part of a com- munity for themselves Modern web applications need to be social by default. The Web no longer places site owners in a position above those who use their sites. No longer is it enough to see your site as a destination and to bolt on a message board as a small token toward interactivity. There has been a shift from issuing a persistent identity, which started with webmail (Hotmail, Gmail), to recognizing the external identities of the people using your products Many people now have a place on the Internet that they call home, and they are just visiting you. Integrating the preexisting lives of these individuals with your site gives them a richer and deeper connection to it. Bear in mind that you are likely to be drawing together an existing community, as it is hard to create a new community online com- pletely from scratch. The groups you draw in will behave in a similar manner to real world groups of people; after all, they are still human beings. Imagining that you are face to face with your users is an important technique to get your site behaving Genuineness and authenticity are key values in community management. You cannot make a community, you can only encourage one. If your community efforts are shallow and commercial, you are likely to provoke rather than encourage a community. Large Building Applications 3
A large part of this decision making draws on psychology as well as marketing or advertising approaches. Mark Earls’ book Herd (Wiley) provides an excellent description of how mass audiences behave. Despite the frequent focus on individuals in social software, it is important to understand group activity, too. Building Applications Applications are based on the activities and behaviors of your community, but you can also borrow ideas from some of the great social applications on the Internet. I reference about 40 to 50 different sites in this book, but I focus on only a small number of wellknown ones: Twitter, Last.fm, Flickr, and Dopplr. I chose these because they are popular, I use them, and they represent different types of sites. Roughly speaking, Twitter is a general conversation site; Last.fm is for listening to and recommending music; Flickr is for talking about photography and (personally) significant events; and Dopplr, the newest of the four sites, is a service for travelers. Your site needs to make sense to an individual for him to use it—he needs to gain something from his solo interaction with the tools on your site, or at least see the sense in using the application. Community then happens almost as a by-product of the user’s interaction with others. You cannot set out with the goal of creating a community. You can start with something that makes sense if lots of people use it, but you need to offer a core tool that makes sense when it’s used alone. This acts as the scaffolding to support users returning to the site, where they will hopefully start to become part of a community for themselves. Modern web applications need to be social by default. The Web no longer places site owners in a position above those who use their sites. No longer is it enough to see your site as a destination and to bolt on a message board as a small token toward interactivity. There has been a shift from issuing a persistent identity, which started with webmail (Hotmail, Gmail), to recognizing the external identities of the people using your products. Many people now have a place on the Internet that they call home, and they are just visiting you. Integrating the preexisting lives of these individuals with your site gives them a richer and deeper connection to it. Bear in mind that you are likely to be drawing together an existing community, as it is hard to create a new community online completely from scratch. The groups you draw in will behave in a similar manner to realworld groups of people; after all, they are still human beings. Imagining that you are face to face with your users is an important technique to get your site behaving appropriately. Genuineness and authenticity are key values in community management. You cannot make a community, you can only encourage one. If your community efforts are shallow and commercial, you are likely to provoke rather than encourage a community. Large Building Applications | 3