Context Is King: Lessons from Online Communities

Context is King Lessons from Online Communities October 14, 2008 F. Randall Farmer

1: The part of a text or statement that surrounds a particular word or passage and determines its meaning.
2: The circumstances in which an event occurs; a setting .

“ Content is King” Bill Gates Jan, 1996
“ [User Generated] Content is King” c. 2003+
“ Context is King”
vs. “Attention”

Collective action – the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Sense of place – The community is said to exist apart from any individual member.
What causes the transformation from a web site (or online game) to a community?
User Generated Content in Context

Community Platforms are
Not intended to create uniform communities
Not a “menu” of random mix & match choices
But are tools for building per-context custom communities in the quickest possible way
There is no “one-size-fits-all” community solution

Organized around an individual
Autocratic (I am in control)
Purpose: Self-expression
Generally small
Members are the focus
Autocratic (owner in control)
Purpose: Sense of belonging, membership
Generally large
Organized around a subject
Democratic (i.e. all in control)
Purpose: Knowledge Base
Community Size
Profile, Blog
Avatar, Karma
Me “ Who I Am” We “ Where we Connect ” It “ What we Talk About” 1 <100 > 1000
Social Network
Groups
Message Boards
Ratings & Reviews
Polls, Chat, Tagging

A person/user
A group of people/users
An network entity
A collection of entities
A “site” [or group of them!]
Language?

News Feeds
Reverse Chronological List of Events
Blogs
Reverse Chronological List of Posts
Intuition
We could combine these into one stream to make it easy for the user!
Context Error!
The context for a blog post is “What I think is interesting enough to share for comment with my [context]”
The context for a news feed is stuff I did on the network
Example: A set of photos from a trip vs. a single photo
User research indicated customer discomfort with this idea
Solution: Don’t cross the streams!

Yahoo! Sports
Considering a blog posts surfaced everywhere by tag-search approach
Example
News item mentions two sports clubs and a specific player injury with all UGC posts generated appearing surfaced by auto-generated tags
Context Error
There is no global sports context for UGC
Posts are written assuming a specific audience

… continuing the sports example…
The correct context for the post is one of:
The specific team page chosen by the user
The specific player page
The user’s blog/email client
Or my fantasy sports league list or group
Best Practice
Provide a way for the user to address UGC
Tagged content is like email’s Subject: line
We need to make sure postings have an equivalent To:

US TV Redesign
TV had not been updated since initial launch.
PM had previously run Y!Movies US
Strategy
Assertion: TV is like Movies because the media are similar
Plan: Treat each program much like a movie, featuring ratings and reviews UGC
Result: The page of 1,000 stars
Context Error
TV is not like Movies – users want to talk to each other about their favorite episodes, characters. They want to create their own extensions to TV content
Instead of Ratings and Reviews, the correct platforms would be Message Boards and/or Wikis

Best Practice
Match user desires with the correct platforms configured in the correct contexts and test with the customers
The Bad News
It is easy to get context Wrong
The Good News
Leverage these tools to get it mostly right
Consulting with social media experts
Review competitive designs/sites
Customer research

Consumers Producers Provider (You!) Maximized value creation

Me We It

Focusing on some of the ‘bad’ ones (Those that harm your desired quality of service)
Personal advantage or social position
Financial gain
Ego gratification/Status
Malice against another user
Spite your site
Boredom/Personal Challenge

A group of metropolitan electronics merchants conspire to rate their online stores “five star”
A movie PR firm plants positive user reviews and ratings for new movies online
TODAY WITH JUST AN HOUR OR SO LEFT. WHO DID THE DUMB PEICES OF SHITMKT MAKERS THINK THEY WERE DOING HOLDING IT AT 43.60 MOST OF THE DAY 43.70., THEN THEY TRIED TO HOLD IT AT 43.20, THEN 42.80 AND 42.90. DAY SHORT POSITION JUST HAD TO WAIT THE SCARED PUSSIES OUT. PANIC SELLINGGGGGGGGGGGGGG ISSSSSSSS GREATTTTTTTT. – Msg 466840 on YHOO Message Board
Chess players open multiple browsers (or create robots) to play against themselves to advance their rating

Don’t believe you can design the community content quality problem away at all the Product, Engineering and UED level
You’ll need the help of your users
There are more of them then there are of us
Collectively, they’re smarter and faster than us
The customers aren’t always playing the same game we think they are
Design as lightweight as possible and for modularly, to quickly adapt to emergent use patterns

. com == .world
Most users understand the difference and choose .com or .local on purpose per available service.
For example: 360.yahoo.com was huge in Vietnam before there was a localized version. This significantly changed the migration plan.
As some American’s see BBC World Service as “international news”, those outside the US see Yahoo!/Google News (and other services) much the same way.
Don’t cross the .com and .local streams: .local content on the .com front page confused and even upset non-US users.
.local == specific value
Many international users create .com email address on purpose – making an affiliation to the global community.
Do you have a .us email address?
.local addresses provide nation and/or cultural affiliation.
Don’t assume you know better and auto-redirect users.

Don’t cross the streams.
Correct context is critical to your success.
Use the right tools/platforms for the right job.
Context is hard.
Even when you have the tools and expertise to manage community context you often fail to leverage them fully.
Build in the right order.
Start with your users where they are and build out advanced functionality just-in-time as their engagement increases. Don’t present advanced features to novices.
Be nimble.
The users set context more often than we do.
Iterate often.
International contexts aren’t limited to .locals.
- Consider language as a context.
Win, win, win.
Or go home.

F. Randall Farmer
[email_address]
http://www.habitatchronicles.com
http://randy.thefarmers.org

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Context Is King: Lessons from Online Communities

by F. Randall "Randy" Farmer on Oct 14, 2008

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Context Is King: Lessons from Online Communities — Presentation Transcript