Building Successful Online Communities: Evidence-Based Social Design

by Robert E. Kraut, Paul Resnick, Sara Kiesler (Contributor)

How insights from the social sciences, including social psychology and economics, can improve the design of online communities. Online communities are among the most popular destinations on the Internet, but not all online communities are equally successful. For every flourishing Facebook, there is a moribund Friendster—not to mention the scores of smaller social networking sites that never attracted enough members to be viable. This book offers lessons from theory and empirical research in the social sciences that can help improve the design of online communities. The authors draw on the literature in psychology, economics, and other social sciences, as well as their own research, translating general findings into useful design claims. They explain, for example, how to encourage information contributions based on the theory of public goods, and how to build members' commitment based on theories of interpersonal bond formation. For each design claim, they offer supporting evidence from theory, experiments, or observational studies.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction, Cultural Studies

309 pages, Hardcover

First published February 16, 2012

Reviews

[David Cuen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a must for anyone trying to build communities. It's not a checklist but a rather comprehensive set of design principles to apply or learn from

[Ahmed Medhat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good reference for community building

While mostly composed of common sense suggestions, it’s a good reference when building online communities. As it covers most of the stages involved in building a thriving community, and the suggestions are backed up with compelling evidence.

[Emre Ergin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great literature review, for mostly useful tips about social design on web.

As a pessimist who does not think that the current pandemic is the last, I value skills of building spaces online for socializing. Next step is learning some javascript now.

[Gregg · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's a lot of great information here. This would be useful as a guidebook while building an online community. If you're looking for general theory on growing communities, this might be a bit too action oriented.

[Victor Gonzalez · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book covers different aspects of building a community. It explores the importance of the users and how to engage them to contribute and be committed to the community. It also covers how to create a culture in the community and teach new users to adapt to them. Some of the topics can be overlap over different chapter.

I found the book to be easy read and provides a lot of different example to support the authors’ argument. Most of the communities that they use as example repeat themselves to prove different points throughout the book. The last chapter focuses more on economic theories and less empirical studies where the rest of the book shows more empirical studies to set the design claims.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really like the psychological approach of this book. It opened my eyes to all that goes into a successful community. I feel that anyone considering information management in our social world will benefit from this book. Now I feel that I can take a more informed view of the communities with which I am involved.

[Georgi Mirchev · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a great tutorial to how to build successful online communities. Every thought is backed up by solid examples which have great explanation behind them. The only thing I miss is some more structure and it would be awesome. It is a bit hard to read because of the over 100 design claims but it is a must read if you are building an idea which is serving a community!

[Joel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Useful lessons for anyone working in an even tangentially related field.

[Mariano · Rating 5 out of 5]

A bit too theoretical, but with great working examples gives you good insight into builidng successful online communities

[alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unbelievably extensive.

[Connor · Rating 5 out of 5]

v serious about werk + degree I guess