Buying Options

Digital List Price:	$23.99
Kindle Price:	$14.39 Save $9.60 (40%)

Enter a promotion code or Gift Card

Share <Embed>

Community Building on the Web: Secret Strategies for Successful Online Communities by [Amy Jo Kim]

Follow the Author

Amy Jo Kim

Community Building on the Web: Secret Strategies for Successful Online Communities Kindle Edition

by Amy Jo Kim (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

39 ratings

See all formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Kindle

"Please retry"

$14.39

—

Paperback

"Please retry"

$2.07

$65.95

$2.07

What's the point of creating a great Web site if no one goes there-or worse, if people come but never return? How do some sites, such as America Online, EBay, and GeoCities, develop into Internet communities with loyal followings and regular repeat traffic? How can Web page designers and developers create sites that are vibrant and rewarding?

Amy Jo Kim, author of Community Building on the Web and consultant to some of the most successful Internet communities, is an expert at teaching how to design sites that succeed by making new visitors feel welcome, rewarding member participation, and building a sense of their own history. She discusses important design strategies, interviews influential Web community-builders, and provides the reader with templates and questionnaires to use in building their own communities.

Print length

352 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Peachpit Press
Publication date

July 19, 2006
File size

21400 KB
Page Flip

Enabled
Word Wise

Not Enabled
Enhanced typesetting

Enabled
See all details

Due to its large file size, this book may take longer to download

Customers who bought this item also bought

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

David Spinks
66
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $18.00
Richard Millington
76
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $8.99
Amy Jo Kim
51
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $9.99
Jono Bacon
107
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $12.49
Bailey Richardson
185
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $9.99
Carrie Melissa Jones
39
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $11.99

Customers who read this book also read

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

Amy Jo Kim
51
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $9.99
Charles Vogl
245
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $9.99
Jono Bacon
28
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $24.49
Anika Gupta
11
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $12.99
Priya Parker
1,213
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $12.99
Carrie Melissa Jones
39
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $11.99

Amazon Business: Make the most of your Amazon Business account with exclusive tools and savings. Login now

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

There's been a marked shift in the philosophy of developing successful Web sites. The technologies (HTML, JavaScript, JavaServer Pages) no longer occupy center stage. Rather, functional objectives and the communities that grow up around them seem to be the main ingredient in Web site success. In her carefully reasoned and well-written Community Building on the Web, Amy Jo Kim explains why communities form and grow. More importantly, she shows (with references to many examples) how you can make your site a catalyst for community growth--and profit in the process. From marketing schemes like Amazon.com's Associates program to The Motley Fool's system of rating members' bulletin-board postings, this book covers all the popular strategies for bringing people in and retaining them.

Nine core strategies form the foundation of Kim's recommendations for site builders, serving as the organizational backbone of this book. The strategies generally make sense, and they seem to apply to all kinds of communities, cyber and otherwise. (One advocates the establishment of regular events around which community life can organize itself.) Some parts of Kim's message may seem like common sense, but such a coherent discussion of what defines a community and how it can be made to thrive is still helpful.

Read this book to help crystallize your thinking about community building, and to review strategies that work for real sites already. --David Wall

Topics covered: Strategies for designing Web sites around the needs of particular groups of people, attracting those people to your site, and motivating them to return frequently. Community identification, member profiling, community leadership, and organization (of information, time, and relationships) all receive ample coverage. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Amy Jo Kim, Ph.D. is a recognized expert in the field of online community design. She is the founder and creative director of NAIMA, a 21st century design studio that has designed online environments for a wide range of clients, including America Online, Adobe Systems, AT&T, CyberCash, Electric Communities, Fujitsu, Mpath Interactive, MTV, NetNoir, Nickelodeon, Oracle, Paramount, PlaceWare, Redgate, Sony, Viacom, and Yahoo. She also teaches online design at Stanford University. Her article on the fantasy game environment, Ultima Online, appeared in the May 1998 issue of Wired. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B004SHDFH6
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Peachpit Press; 1st edition (July 19, 2006)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ July 19, 2006
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 21400 KB
Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Up to 5 simultaneous devices, per publisher limits
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 352 pages
Lending ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled

Best Sellers Rank: #864,520 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #93 in Data Storage & Retrieval
- #259 in Social Aspects of the Internet
- #312 in Web Site Design

Customer Reviews:
39 ratings

Customer reviews

5 star		60%
4 star		29%
3 star		8%
2 star 0% (0%)		0%
1 star		3%

How are ratings calculated?

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Kindle Customer

Applies across the board with good, practical advice

Reviewed in the United States on June 20, 2000

Verified Purchase

Amy Jo Kim has collected many online community learnings and turned them into a practical, readable, and useful book. She has distilled things down to a level where they make sense for the smallest online community, as well as for the mega-commercial sites.
So what's to like about this book? It is well-organized. Kim has built the book around her nine down-to-earth community design strategies with specific elements on how to execute those strategies. She stays on track.
It uses examples from both large and small sites which take this book from the realm of theory to one of practicality.
You can read all of it or one section and it makes sense. Chapter divisions and subheads make for a pleasant browse for inspiration or to get a specific tidbit. Graphics are used generously, but my "old" eyes had to strain a bit on the screen shots.
From a content perspective, I found myself repeatedly nodding my head in agreement with her assessments and suggestions. She pays attention to what I feel are the three main domains of a successful online interaction space: purpose, design, and social structures or interactions.
While the business models of online community may not yet be clear, the mechanisms are becoming more visible. You can save a lot of wasted time and effort by using the guidelines, pulling what is relevant, and leaving the rest for when your needs grow or change. Good book. Worth the price!
Nancy White

7 people found this helpful

Helpful

Mr Yannig Roth

One of the first books to talk about web community management

Reviewed in the United States on February 26, 2013

Verified Purchase

When Amy Jo Kim wrote the book, she was running Naima, a firm specialzied in the design and set up of web communities. A lot of the communities that she talks about in the book (Heat, Ultima Online, Castle Infinity) are (old) game communities, but she also worked with people from Adobe, eBay, MTV or Yahoo! And interestingly, a lot of the practices that she highlights to build and manage web communities still apply today.

"The focus is on teaching you how to grow a thriving community that will attract and sustain members, and on how to adress the design, technical and policy issues that will inevitably arise"

I know the following is a big chunk of text, but you migh want to skip some points… or you can still read the book :

- Purpose: It’s important to know why people join the community and what drives their participation. Ideally, a virtual community’s design and tools will be adapted to this purpose. Amy Jo Kim has a great adaptation of Maslow hierarchy of needs pyramid adapted to we communities (p.9), but she also highlights that it’s fundamental for a community to be profitable: “A successful community must attract and keep enough members to make it worthwile. It must also deliver a satisfactory ROI to whoever is funding and/or maintaining it. If either one of these standards is not met, the community will eventually fail“. On community websites like patientslikeme, you’ll understand a purpose rapidly, and it also managed to be sustainable.
- Places: It’s obvious that popular venues for communities to gather are websites like social networks, contest platforms or web forums. The book also talks about places that I know less of: mailing lists, message boards, virtual world, chats… Then, Kim gives some about growth management, design and community proximity on these venues, which is crucial to adapt to change.
- Profiles: Since “entering a new web community can feel like walking into a party full of strangers“, communities must include ways to get to know people. People want to present themselves, and similarly they want to discover who they’re dealing with. It’s important to note that not all members will be curiously browsing others’ profiles and communicating with them, but transparency is important anyway. “On the web, full disclosure is good business“, Kim says.
- Roles: Here, Kim introduces the particularly interesting concept of Membership Life Cycle. She argues that “you can help a community flourish by providing features and programs that support [social] roles“. Reserach has also shown that design features can activate community participation in innovation communities, but to my knowledge research on membership lifecycle is not extensively covered. Do you have any thoughts or papers to share on that?
- Leadership: Regarding how centralized a community’s management is, a web community needs people to take leadership roles in both animation and controling. “For games or contests, you’ll need support personnel who can resolve technical issues, and deal with reports of cheating and systems hacking“, Kim says about rather centralized management sites. Also, she has a great table that summarizes leaders’ possible roles in a community (p.163), including both official and unofficial leadership roles.
- Etiquette: When exchange and interaction is the fundamental purpose of a community (like learning-focused communities), it’s important to have a common understanding of the tone people will adopt. One example is the use of the formal you (vous in French, Sie in German, usted in Spanish…). In English the problem doesn’t arise since there is no formal you, but you must know how you talk to members: will they be offended if you have a familiar tone? Or do they expect everyone to show closeness?
- Events: According to Kim, the three types of events are meetings, performances and competitions. These types of events need to be planned thoroughly, but when they’re well-executed and well-attended, they will ty together the community by bringing them together. About contests, Kim says that “the most effective contests contribute to long-term community building [...] by reinforcing a community’s purpose, values, and brand identity“.
- Rituals: As you could see on the Membership Life Cycle illustration, there are rituals. These might mark transitions between stages of the Life Cycle (thus occuring only once), or they can be repeated: making a targetted recommendation, remembering special days, mark holidays… I particularly like Kim’s paragraph The Power of Goodbye (p.281), where she highlights that “leave-taking also offers an opportunity to ritualize the community experience“.
- Subgroups: Particularly if your community is big and has the possibility to organize autonomously, it might be valuable to allow members to form or join subgroups. Since “simply joining a large, general-purpose [...] community doesn’t give someone much sense of community identity“, people might want to be part of smaller, focused sub-groups. However, Kim stresses that this might only be valuable in later stages of communities’ evolution.

These principles are, as I think, very true today! If you think it’s too old to be true!

4 people found this helpful

Helpful

S. Lichtman

Best book by far for online community building

Reviewed in the United States on June 7, 2001

Verified Purchase

I'm an independent consultant on interactive technologies and web community building. I've read a number of books and articles giving advice about online communities, and none comes close to matching Amy Jo Kim's. Her book is the most exceptional in integrating human and technical considerations; describing how sites can launch, expand and evolve; giving lots of first-hand examples; and being an easy, fun read. I get the sense from her Naima company site that she's on the leading edge for design and technical approaches.
I'm personally working now with communities for performing artists and software developers. This book is the only one I'm willing to carry with me on all my customer consulting visits.

20 people found this helpful

Helpful

Kindle Customer

Glad I read this; lots of good info

Reviewed in the United States on February 12, 2015

Verified Purchase

an intelligent, thorough snapshot of community building in corporate and business environments in 2006. While dated in some ways, many of the principles for designing and building communities are evergreen, being rooted in the multiple realities- social, political and financial- that control the philosophy of communities.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

E M Dalton

Extremely helpful -- shame it's out of print

Reviewed in the United States on November 27, 2005

Verified Purchase

I borrowed this from my local library and found it so helpful that I hunted down a used copy. It's not a technical reference, but it provides a great overview of the elements of online community, with authentic examples from existing communities (some of which, sadly, are now gone, but this was written before the bubble burst). Highly recommended if you are responsible for developing and supporting an online community, or if you are just interested in how thinking in online communities has been developing in the early days.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Bruce Horst

Classic book, a 'must have' for serious web entrepreneurs.

Reviewed in the United States on June 6, 2010

Verified Purchase

I've heard this book quoted at numerous conferences. When I started quoting it myself I knew I needed my own copy. The book is 10 years old, yet its principles are just as relevant today. In the fast changing World of the Web, what does that tell you?

What fascinates me about this book is the fact that so much of it applies to offline community building as well.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Chris Huxley

One of the best introductions to building online communites

Reviewed in the United States on August 30, 2013

Verified Purchase

Online communites exist in many forms. I'm particulalrly interested at the moment in the development of MOOCs - the cMOOC type in particualr - and building community is a vital part of the enteprise. In her book Amy Jo Kim demonstrates a great deal of wisdom and experience in her advice. From dealing with growth to creating presence and roles for users there is a lot of useful material here. While the recent book by Robert Kraut and company covers many of the same issues Kim's text is a better introduction for people new to community building on the web.

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

FMS / OMF e.V. - N. Sautter

wonderful book - even years after the (r)evolutions

Reviewed in Germany on June 28, 2021

Verified Purchase

also for offline community building relevant

M. Boustani

Excellent!

Reviewed in Canada on February 15, 2015

Verified Purchase

Amy Jo Kim is simply unique!
This book goes beyond the initial purpose, it engages you into the many connectors to Knowledge Management put in application through the social communities.
To read and use as a referrence