Encouraging Activity | Start a Social Network

14Mar10

In previous posts I offered some suggestion for streamlining the sign-up process. But often an easier sign-up means skimpier profiles, at least at first.
So how do you encourage new members to build out their profiles?
Well, when we meet someone new, we tend to ask questions as a way of finding out more about them. Profiles [...]

1Mar10

“Mad Libs” Style Form Increases Conversion 25-40%

Great post by Luke Wroblewski on how some marketers have been trying out a narrative approach to web forms–he dubs it “Mad Libs- style.”
Technically, these forms work like any other form, but they’re presented as a fill-in-the-blanks narrative.
Here’s one example, from the audio sharing site, Huffduffer:

Another site did A/B testing on their forms, and have [...]

23Feb10

Simplifying the Sign-Up Process

Once you get people to visit your site, you obviously want them to join. So it’s crucial that you make the sign-up process as simple as possible.
Even if you want your members’ profiles to include their eye colour, favorite bird, and their zip code, you don’t always have to gather the full information on the [...]

16Feb10

Generate Buzz (and Traffic) by Understanding Your Community

A great article in the NY Times explains how dating site OKCupid uses data gleamed from their site about how their members interact to fuel their new blog. Those blog posts, in turn, generate tons of publicity and traffic to the site:
“A [single] post last month that set out to debunk conventional wisdom about profile [...]

23Nov09

Got Lists?

I recently did a great interview with Efe Cakarel, founder of The Auteurs, and wanted to share an insight he had.
“As we near the end of the 2000s, people are creating more and more “Best of the Decade” lists. It really came home to us how important keeping track of and ranking your favorite films [...]

26Oct09

Listen to your users: they know what they want.

In the next several weeks, Twitter users will discover two new features, Lists and Retweets, that had the same user-generated beginnings.
via Twitter Serves Up Ideas From Its Users – NYTimes.com.
Brilliant way of letting users define the tools and features they want. Users will often hack your existing features and use them in new and interesting [...]

23Oct09

Foursquare’s Virtual Rewards

foursquare, a location-based social network, gives away so many points and “badges” to users that their personal pages can start to look like Boy Scout sashes.
It may seem over the top at first, but it’’s a powerful way to encourage certain behaviors. In the Online Community Research Network’s recent report Key Factors Establishing an Online [...]

19Feb09

Voyeurism, narcissism, and vanity — in a good way.

Good post on building social networks that talks about voyeurism, narcissism, and vanity as drivers of user behavior. Add to this the fact that people love to evaluate, criticize, and pass judgment on others, and you have the High School Model of social networking.
That’s not a criticism, by the way. It’s crucial to understand these [...]

17Jan09

The Dangers of Ignoring Your Audience

Clive Thompson has a great piece on Wired called Social Networks and the Wrath of Moms, which outlines what happened when UrbanBaby.com, which was purchased by CNET in 2006, launched a redesign that didn’t take into account how their users actually used the site…

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