Building Social Web Applications: Establishing Community at the Heart of Your Site

by Gavin Bell

Overview

Building a web application that attracts and retains regular visitors is tricky enough, but creating a social application that encourages visitors to interact with one another requires careful planning. This book provides practical solutions to the tough questions you'll face when building an effective community site -- one that makes visitors feel like they've found a new home on the Web.

If your company is ready to take part in the social web, this book will help you get started. Whether you're creating a new site from scratch or reworking an existing site, Building Social Web Applications helps you choose the tools appropriate for your audience so you can build an infrastructure that will promote interaction and help the community coalesce. You'll also learn about business models for various social web applications, with examples of member-driven, customer-service-driven, and contributor-driven sites.

• Determine who will be drawn to your site, why they'll stay, and who they'll interact with
• Create visual design that clearly communicates how your site works
• Build the software you need versus plugging in one-size-fits-all, off-the-shelf apps
• Manage the identities of your visitors and determine how to support their interaction
• Monitor demand from the community to guide your choice of new functions
• Plan the launch of your site and get the message out

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781449379414
Publisher:	O'Reilly Media, Incorporated
Publication date:	09/17/2009
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	434
File size:	14 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Gavin Bell designs social web applications for the Nature Publishing Group. He is an interaction designer, community advocate and product manager. Since the early 90s, he has been writing and designing for the web. Large scale web applications covering identity, on-demand media, geolocation and social software have been the main focus of his work at NPG and previously at the BBC. He has worked in academia, advertising, publishing and developed multimedia software. He lives in London with his wife and two sons. Find out more on his personal site gavinbell.com and his blog take one onion.



Photo © James Duncan Davidson

Table of Contents

• Dedication
• Preface
• Chapter 1: Building a Social Application
• Chapter 2: Analyzing, Creating, and Managing Community Relationships
• Chapter 3: Planning Your Initial Site
• Chapter 4: Creating a Visual Impact
• Chapter 5: Working with and Consuming Media
• Chapter 6: Managing Change
• Chapter 7: Designing for People
• Chapter 8: Relationships, Responsibilities, and Privacy
• Chapter 9: Community Structures, Software, and Behavior
• Chapter 10: Social Network Patterns
• Chapter 11: Modeling Data and Relationships
• Chapter 12: Managing Identities
• Chapter 13: Organizing Your Site for Navigation, Search, and Activity
• Chapter 14: Making Connections
• Chapter 15: Managing Communities
• Chapter 16: Writing the Application
• Chapter 17: Building APIs, Integration, and the Rest of the Web
• Chapter 18: Launching, Marketing, and Evolving Social Applications
• Colophon