Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #613662 in Books
• Published on: 2000-04-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 380 pages

Amazon.com
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.

From Library Journal
The Internet has never been about finding information as much as it has been about finding people who created the information. Kim, designer of web communities for America Online and Adobe, has written a book that will suit everyone from the beginner to the CEO wishing to bring people together, understand a community, create roles for community members, and provide leadership; for all libraries.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From the Back Cover
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.

Customer Reviews

Extremely helpful -- shame it's out of print
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.

Excellent
I thought this was an excellent book. Even though technologies change the concepts presented in this book are timeless.

An excellent design guide
I believe everyone has a heart - whether in social or business settings - and that most people warms up to sensible "human touches" in a mechanistic environment created with computer-based systems.

Amy Jo Kim's book is a strategy book written with a little humor and a great understanding of what people crave in a community (note "community" and not "transaction") - to belong, to interact and to be empowered. She gives many practical tips on how to attract and engage people in cyberspace.

At no time did Ms Kim give the impression that this book is supposed to be a step-by-step instructional manual.