Building Resilient Software Communities

This month, we have community on our minds.

In the age of quarantine and social distancing, we’ve realized that business models with communities are particularly resilient.

Communities are groups of people who are connected on a platform and create  or derive value by virtue of their interactions with one another. Examples of communities in software include online marketplaces, open source platforms, learning platforms, video conferencing, and social networks. These communities are resilient because of low cost of distribution, network effects, low-cost leads and near zero marginal cost, to name a few. The recurring theme here is low cost, but an equally important feature is network effects. People who engage with a community with a product are more likely to be retained than people who engage with a product in isolation. Building an engaged community is truly difficult, and frequently it is a "know it when you see it" type of deal. But we can try to pin it down.

So what are the features of an engaged user community? Well, you probably already know. Of the real-life communities of which you are a part, how do they invite you in? How do they retain you? How do they turn you into a recruiter, an ambassador, a leader? Community creation, moderation, and management is not easy. But it’s fun and when it works, it works. A community is an organism, a living, breathing thing -- so it grows.

Features of an Engaged User Community

In terms of business model, at a bare minimum, there needs to be engagement with individual users.  The user becomes a discrete unit. The users need to be connected; first of all, with the value you are offering them, and then with each other (sometimes they are one and the same). At its best, the user community drives innovation, contributes ideas, and generates signals that drive platform management.

Growing and Managing Users

"When you design an experience with the underlying belief that, the moment your experience is no longer engaging, people will leave your system - you will likely create much better Human-Focused Designs." - Yu Kai Chou, Gamification

Yu Kai Chou's human-centered design framework has 8 core drivers.

Core Driver 5 is social influence and relatedness, a drive that bases its success off of our desires to connect and compare with one another. He offers some excellent and specific ideas for growing and retaining a user community:

Assign a mentor to a new community member: The mentee is less likely to quit given investment of the mentor. Mentors can be better (...and cheaper!) than customer support.

Propaganda & the Conformity Anchor: Be clear about how "this community" behaves from the get go. People want to be like everybody else, and will behave accordingly.

Brag Buttons & Trophy Shelves: When people have made a significant accomplishment, give them the opportunity to "shout it from the rooftops". This is a one-time proclamation. When people accomplish milestones, give them a digital trophy, and a place to display it.

Social Treasures: This is something of value given by friends; goats, clicks, likes, votes.

Group Quests: Frequently, when companies try to apply gamification, they jump to points, scores, and leaderboards. The problem with that is that most people don't like to be in a constant state of competition and it can often lead to burnout. Enter the group quest. Putting people together in teams and encouraging them to grow together is effective, collaborative, and reduces probability of burnout. Consider grouping users by a (benign!) attribute, and encouraging friendly competition: companies, geographies, school or sports affiliation, people who think hot dogs are sandwiches, etc.

One tenet of capitalism is that we are all individual economic units, rather brutishly self interested and only out for ourselves. History would indicate that we are actually capable of significant collaboration. Harness these better angels to encourage your user community to build something great together.

Shout out to Yu Kai Chou for his excellent book, Gamification.