{"id":32,"date":"2007-03-12T12:41:05","date_gmt":"2007-03-12T18:41:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techory.com\/sxsw\/?p=32"},"modified":"2007-03-12T12:47:31","modified_gmt":"2007-03-12T18:47:31","slug":"scaling-your-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/techory.com\/sxsw\/?p=32","title":{"rendered":"Scaling Your Community"},"content":{"rendered":"

Monday, March 12th @ 11:30 am<\/em><\/p>\n

Matt Mullenweg<\/a> Founder, WordPress <\/em><\/p>\n

Problem in scaling community<\/strong>
\nforum w\/out anyone in it – a bunch of empty rooms
\na blog w\/no comments “hey, what do you think?”
\nfriendster
\nno comments available blog
\nslashdot traffic decline<\/p>\n

What is scaling?<\/strong>
\nbe as useful fot the last 100k ppl as the fist 100k ppl<\/p>\n

have the same experience as a large concert as a half filled room<\/p>\n

1. Good Foundation<\/strong>
\nStart as simply as possible (big party small room)
\nconstitution vs. federal register 900pgs
\nbreak down to the simplest thing you can reasonably articulate
\n“everything that is currently free will always be free”
\n“we will never sell your email address”
\nDon’t just promise, visualize<\/p>\n

2. Bootstrap<\/strong>
\nBe your most passionate user!
\nmust be crazy about what you’re doing because nobody else is
\nTalk to people – get outside to do it.
\nCaterina of Flickr used to manually introduce people to each other when Flickr was just started out
\nPre-moderate before things get bad<\/p>\n

3. Let go<\/strong>
\nyour fans know your better than you do – your fans know you (or what you’re doing) better than you yourself
\ni.e. wordpress ideas – form to put in ideas and vote on them – 487 ideas and 28000 votes
\npattern for gathering feedback
\n*April 23rd WP2.2 release*<\/p>\n

4. Open Source<\/strong>
\nabout a process and involving ppl, the community<\/p>\n

5. Embrace & Extend<\/strong>
\nLook at what ppl are doing – watch their behaviors – embrace and extend it
\n“it’s like the shout feature on dodgeball.com”
\ntake a small subset of a successful service<\/p>\n

6. You can’t do it yourself<\/strong>
\nhey, is anyone out there?
\ncreator can’t let go of control.
\nmotivation and delegation<\/p>\n

7. Personalization<\/strong>
\nPeople want to be unique – let them
\ncustomization is more appropriate – take something and make it your own
\nevery action a user does is sacred – they tell you what they love – every tag, every click
\nFilter! once it hits a certain size there is too much info to take in – ways are needed to filter out the good\/bad
\nKeep it fresh – blogs of the day on wordpress.com – keep it new
\nAllow for some correction “My Tivo Thinks I’m Gay!” – you want to be giving people the willies – a little magical<\/p>\n

9. Bootstrap with popular<\/strong>
\npeople magazine – when brittany shaves her head, we’re gonna look!
\nFollow the sites that tell you what is cool and new<\/p>\n

10. Respect your users’ time<\/strong>
\nyour community\/software is a means to an end, they don’t want to use your software make it easy!<\/p>\n

Big Questions<\/strong>
\nSome things have all the right ingredients, but never take off
\nHave MySpace Livejournal, etc. peaked?
\nWhy do some standards and APIs never take off?
\nWhere is the traffic?
\nWhere is the money?<\/p>\n

What is the best scaling software ever?
\ne-mail – “all software expands till it reads email”<\/p>\n

What is killing it?
\nSpam! – biggest threat to web 2.0<\/p>\n

Bonus things<\/strong>
\nInvest in infrastructure – speed is a feature – youtube has speed as a feature
\nBe transparent – involve your community in the process – let them know what your problems are – someone can probably help you out.
\nDon’t believe your own press – you want people at one extreme or the other love\/hate
\nHave fun! – you can tell the flickr ppl had fun when they did it<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Monday, March 12th @ 11:30 am Matt Mullenweg Founder, WordPress Problem in scaling community forum w\/out anyone in it – a bunch of empty rooms a blog w\/no comments “hey, what do you think?” friendster no comments available blog slashdot traffic decline What is scaling? be as useful fot the last 100k ppl as the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/techory.com\/sxsw\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/techory.com\/sxsw\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/techory.com\/sxsw\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techory.com\/sxsw\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techory.com\/sxsw\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/techory.com\/sxsw\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/techory.com\/sxsw\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techory.com\/sxsw\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techory.com\/sxsw\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}