Designing Online Social Networks: The Theories of Social Groups

It's important to fully understand the theories of social groups before designing online social networks - find out all you need to know!

Halabi, Lisa. Webcredible (2008). Design>Web Design>Community Building>Social Networking

Social Media Is Changing Everything

When Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwarz needs to communicate with the world, he doesn’t necessarily call a press conference, issue a press release, or even convene a webinar or videoconference. He blogs. His online diary gives him an unfiltered channel leading to the employees, customers, analysts and resellers who represent the first wave of perception formation regarding important company products and service initiatives. Sun is leading a transformation of the communication profession, as the Web transitions from an information repository to a platform of collaboration and community building.

Gronstedt, Anders. Communication World Bulletin (2007). Articles>Web Design>Community Building>Social Networking

Social Networking for Business: Measuring the Results

The online world is abuzz with talk about social networking. With companies such as Facebook seemingly constantly in the news, 2007 has been the year that social networking took its first adolescent steps beyond being the sole purview of, well, adolescents, and started to become a tool that is getting noticed in the business world. But with all the hype out there about online social networking, how can organizations begin to better understand the tangible business impact of their forays into this area?

Carfi, Christopher. Communication World Bulletin (2007). Articles>Web Design>Community Building>Social Networking

Social Networks And Group Formation: Theoretical Concepts to Leverage

Understanding the formation, evolution and utilization of online social networks becomes important. While the Internet contributes to the information overload, it also provides useful tools to effectively manage ones social networks and through them gain access to the right pieces of information.

Singh, Shiv. Boxes and Arrows (2007). Articles>Web Design>Community Building>Social Networking

Types of Social Media Measurement

Social media measurement sounds like an inherently good idea. Management likes numbers, and if we can measure it, we can manage it. So, all this new online activity should be easier to understand, once we measure it. There's only one problem: What does social media measurement mean? Like social media itself, it is an evolving term with multiple definitions based on the needs of different constituencies.

Gilliatt, Nathan. Communication World Bulletin (2007). Articles>Web Design>Community Building>Social Networking

Web 2.0: The Medium is the Message, But What's the Result?

Let's face it: These are tough times to be a professional communicator. Our audiences have taken the reins of what is indisputably the dominating mass communication medium of our era: the Internet. Web 2.0, characterized by social media applications for peer-to-peer collaboration such as YouTube, MySpace and Wikipedia is challenging all of our basic assumptions as communication practitioners. The astonishing rise of social networking structures and content is in effect challenging the very existence of the traditional corporate communication function.

Kealey, Caroline. Communication World Bulletin (2007). Articles>Web Design>Community Building>Social Networking

Facebook Groups vs. Facebook Pages

Many nonprofit early adopters of Facebook set up groups as their organizational hubs because that was the only option. Later, Facebook Pages were introduced and many nonprofits have set these up as their institutional hubs. There has been some discussion in nonprofit forums, blogs, and listservs about the pros and cons of Facebook Pages versus Groups. Below are the notes I've drafted on the topic so far.

Davies, Tim. Tim's Blog (2008). Articles>Web Design>Community Building>Social Networking

How and Why to Build an Online Community

A community has to be grown wild and organically or it will fail. Control comes with time and growth. The success of a community and its size may vary. The effort may not give expected results but the work still pays off in knowledge and experience. Community members will change and accept different roles and participate in different manners. Being user friendly and being willing to allow change to happen is most important.

Hiveminds (2008). Articles>Web Design>Community Building>Social Networking

Why Are Online Communities So Popular?

In An exploration of the internet publishing revolution, I discussed the implications of the increased self-publishing on the web. The discussion covered general concerns and possible impacts of the sudden growth, but not the reasons behind it. What has prompted the expansion of people’s voice on the web? Where have these communities of bloggers and posters come from? Why have they arisen? In this article I intend to find answers to these questions and ask: ‘What makes online communities so popular?’

Mercurytide (2006). Articles>Web Design>Community Building>Social Networking

Keep Your Web 2.0 Community Happy

Running a web community can be fun and rewarding, but you’re always reliant on the good faith of your members. So what happens when rogue elements threaten to disrupt, even destroy, the foundations of your virtual society? Derek Powazek has some suggestions

Powazek, Derek. Dot Net (2008). Articles>Web Design>Community Building>Social Networking

Twitter Is What You Make It

There’s nothing quite like Twitter. It’s a Web site where you can broadcast very short messages — 140 characters, max — to anyone who’s signed up to receive them. It’s like a cross between a blog and a chat room.

Pogue, David. New York Times, The (2009). Articles>Web Design>Community Building>Social Networking

Best Practices for Designing a Social News Website

In this article I’ll showcase some of the current top social news sites, will identify trends and patterns in their designs and suggest some best practices to follow when designing such sites. Let’s begin by looking at four popular social news sites and see how their designs compare.

Fadeyev, Dmitry. Webdesigner Depot (2009). Articles>Web Design>Community Building>Social Networking

Coaching a Community

We’ve all been part of communities since kindergarten, or earlier. Churches, schools, sports teams, and neighborhoods all satisfy basic human desires to interact with others and work toward a common goal. And yet, when these communities are online and we start to think of them as “social sites,” these concepts can suddenly feel foreign. My work in communities (primarily as the editor of community-created magazine JPG) has shown me that different sets of people are usually motivated in similar ways. Most people have an innate need to belong and feel like part of something, and successfully contributing to that something can really reinforce self-worth. Whether you’re at a company such as Yelp working with product reviews, or Threadless working with t-shirts, or in a church group working on an annual recipe book, try some of these methods to nurture great content.

Miner, Laura Brunow. List Apart, A (2009). Articles>Web Design>Community Building>Social Networking

The Elements of Social Architecture

Humans can behave in surprising ways when you bring them together. In an information space, a human’s needs are simple and his behavior straightforward. Find. Read. Save. But once you get a bunch of humans together, communicating and collaborating, you can observe both the madness and the wisdom of crowds.

Wodtke, Christina. List Apart, A (2009). Articles>Web Design>Community Building>Social Networking

Community Informatics, Local Community and Conflict: Investigating Under-Researched Elements of a Developing Field of Study    

Conflict within local communities is an under-researched theme in Community Informatics (CI). This article therefore aims to contribute to the development of CI as a field of study by analysing forms of internal conflict within Moseley Egroup – a CI initiative developed in Moseley, Birmingham (UK). Ultimately it is argued that conflict is an inherent part of local community and is important to CI for a number of reasons. Conflict impacts on the appropriation and social shaping of internet technology by local communities, and has broader implications on the extent to which CI regenerates localities and empowers citizens. In this sense conflict is identified as a productive force, shaping and reshaping both local community and internet projects mobilized in its name. Conflict also draws attention to the contested and mutable relationship that exists in CI between the online spaces that are created and the localities they are set up to serve. It is concluded that conflict and forms of social struggle within communities should form a central part of the developing CI research agenda.

Goodwin, Ian. Convergence (2008). Articles>Web Design>Community Building>Social Networking

Tragedy of the Commons

You still have to be willing to moderate comments when you are a blogger or a wiki administrator. And you have to be willing to work hard to build a community that uses the technology in a productive way.

Gentle, Anne. Just Write Click (2009). Articles>Web Design>Community Building>Social Networking

Long-Tail User Experience: How to Cultivate (or Dissolve) a Community

Websites are social creatures. Or rather, their users are. In turn, the websites you visit are tempered by the users that interact with them. Your experience with a website, say facebook.com, is directly linked to the people with which you interact on that website. But this introduces an interesting challenge for a user experience designer: do you design for the intial experience or the resulting experience?

Maier, Andrew. UX Booth (2009). Articles>Web Design>Community Building>Social Networking