Online communities gather people around common interests and these common interests can include brands, products, and services.
There are three parts to building an online community: starting the online community, encouraging early online interaction, and moving to a self-sustaining interactive environment.[34] When starting an online community, it may be effective to create web pages that appeal to specific interests.
Online communities with clear topics and easy access tend to be most effective. In order to gain early interaction by members, privacy guarantees and content discussions are very important
According to the reciprocation theory, a successful online community must provide its users with benefits that compensate for the costs of time, effort and materials members provide. People often join these communities expecting some sort of reward.
The consistency theory says that once people make a public commitment to a virtual society, they will often feel obligated to stay consistent with their commitment by continuing contributions.
Social Media Examples
Let’s use Marketing & Branding Logic Here.
- Facebook = Social Networking Site
- Instagram = Photograph Sharing Site
- Youtube = Videos Sharing Site
- Spotify = Music Streaming Site
So now Information….
- Wikipedia = Trust-worthy Information
- Reddit =Information Engagement
Algorithms
HackerNews
- Ranking algorithm that determines which stories are on the front page, or the search algorithm that looks for the stories you want to find.
- Cluster articles together based on topics, reads, saves, shares, and daps across the entire network.
- Access all the stories we’ve curated through our topic pages (ie digg.com/tech) and our domain pages (ie digg.com/source/nytimes.com).
- Automatically determine what categories (tag:Topic) appeal to a user.
Based on the post’s score (upvotes-downvotes), reduced by a formula based on how old the post is. The score is also adjusted so that each additional upvote is worth progressively less.
- How many upvotes does the submission have divided by how long the submission has existed?
- As the submission gets older and older, the denominator there gets larger and larger and approaches zero.
- Calculates that score for every submission, sorts them descendingly (i.e. 999, 993, 991…), and then plops that down right on your page.
User Experience
See: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1K2cW_IqqibzHCje1bpocXsM7XvyH5RHFBsYg84g-vHQ/edit?usp=sharing
Users find relevant information and send it to the Dap community, who then takes that story and dap it.
One-click interaction: Retweet, reshare, reply, Like, Upvote/Downvote, or (in Facebook’s case) express an emotion, all with a single finger twitch.
Real-time usage stats: Content creation is rewarded with game-like “scores”, encouraging users to see how many likes, comments and reactions each of their interactions earns.
UI – Modal
Allow users to monitor active threads.
- I like the idea of a split view, so you can browse the frontpage while looking at a subcommunity, while seeing the comment section. Can Refresh the right pane.
- Users can have a quick look without losing their scroll position or switching tabs.
- They can go back by clicking anywhere outside the modal.
- It also updates the url so if I refresh or share the url it goes to the full page version.
If I middle click a link it still opens normally in a new tab.Brevity: Short form user responses.
User Interaction
Original UI research: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-rhHzN7HS1twxBUTypeq51TtTagtuqxoDjXfHBsCQrY/edit?usp=sharing
- Allow text posts or content links.
- Clicking on the headline takes the user to the thread 100%.
- Option to click on the link next to the headline.
- Links open in a new tab only when the user is leaving the site or leaving the thread.
- When the user hits ‘back’, they should go back to what they were looking at (i.e. the link before they clicked it).
- Having a karma point system linked with user interactions is important.
- When a user likes something, it is bookmarked into their profile and saved as an RSS feed.
- Users can save favorites, sort by subcategories, and track search history.
Moderators
By involving power users in content moderation, LinkDap can create a better experience.
Good moderation enables a self correcting ecosystem that benefits a lot of users. A good moderation system also surfaces engaging articles, incentivizing good writers/posters to stay on the platform.
HN has paid moderators, which is unheard of for a community this small (~12k comments per day last time dang shared stats)
Moderators get voted for by the sub-channel subscribers.
Comments
When you communicate, you think about what you want to achieve, you formulate a message to convince another person, you dynamically adapt what you’re doing to achieve what you want.
During debates, middle ground is reached in comments, and they are often even more useful than the article itself.
Publication speed: Response comments are published through an “Enter to send” model, versus “click to reply”.
Sorting comments based on a score but the score is not visible to anyone.
Expand posts without opening a new tab.
