Case in point: I was reviewing Adobe’s live docs for Flash Media Server 2. There wasn’t a SINGLE comment on any of the docs I viewed. I’m not talking about a discussion, I’m talking about someone saying something.

Guy Kawasaki, an evangelist turned VC, lists 8 simple bullet-points for community building:

1. Create something worth building a community around
2. Identify and recruit your thunderlizards — immediately!
3. Assign one person the task of building a community.
4. Give people something concrete to chew on.
5. Create an open system.
6. Welcome criticism.
7. Foster discourse.
8. Publicize the existence of the community.

Being the marketing guy that I am, I immediately want to start from the back – there’s no such thing as bad publicity, right? It does make sense to start at 1. Building a community around something great will help you beat the one-percent rule of contribution.

A company that’s doing great in the community business (though it isn’t exactly a smooth ride) is Blizzard. Their community system has come a long way since the Diablo 2 days. Back then, if you wanted a community, you were better off at some of the Diablo fan sites. With World of Warcraft, however, it’s a lesson learned. There are professional community managers, webmasters, etc. and their forums are much, much livelier. (Rumor: Blizz will be unveiling Diablo 3 soon. Could even show up on Playstation 3!)

Tags: API, building, community, contribution, guy kawasaki, publicity

API, building, community, contribution, guy kawasaki, publicity

Cases in point: Diablo’s Hellfire expansion and Counter Strike (based on Half-Life engine). CS became so big that eventually the company behind Half-Life bought the team that was working on it. (Blizzard are rumored to work on Diablo 3 for Playstation!)

The question about user-generated content is a closely watched one because it paves the way for an engaging experience at reduced costs to the game developer. In a way, this reflects the fascination with reality TV shows. When the cost for developing a game reaches tens of million, developers are looking for ways to cut costs.

BBC recently aired an interview with Will Wright, the creator of The Sims. He praised user-generated content but readily admitted the vast majority of it was junk. Based on the one-percent rule of contribution, I figure that 99% of the users never created anything anyway. According to Will, 95% of the creations were junk.

That’s some pretty dismal statistics. I believe it was Warren Buffet who said, however, that a cigarette butt found on the street doesn’t offer much but when you consider the price, it’s an amazing deal. Same thing with user-generated content: if it costs you nothing, how can you complain about the quality?

P.S. You can view the BBC interview with Will Wright here (requires Real player).

Tags: 80:20, anarchy, content, contribution, democracy, paretto, web2.0

80:20, anarchy, content, contribution, democracy, paretto, web2.0

I’ve been trying to incentivize people

Out of the millions of visitors to the Wikipedia in June 2005, only 68,682 actually clicked the edit button and contributed in some fashion. There’s core group of about 3,000 editors who make over 100 edits per month.

It all seems downright worrying until you consider the fact that if you want to grow a community, you don’t need to focus on millions. You just focus on your 1%.

The caveat is based on my personal experience with the Wikipedia. I spent a lot of time editing articles in the first month that I found the site. In fact, my first edit was a vandalizing one – I deleted an article, just to see what happens. So the $1,000,000 question is whether the 1% of active contributors are the same people month to month? If it’s a revolving door, then we’ll definitely have a problem catering to the top 1% because they’ll prove rather elusive.

Update: Seth Godin talks about a possible future for Digg based on the 1% rule.

Tags: 80:20, anarchy, content, contribution, democracy, paretto, vidize, web2.0, wiki

80:20, anarchy, content, contribution, democracy, paretto, vidize, web2.0, wiki