JonMountjoy.com

Do you solicit explicit customer feedback? We’re all learning about using social media to mine implicit feedback (for example, by scanning twitter or blogs), but how about the explicit kind?

My MacBook Pro died last week (fried logic board). Apple replaced it on the same day, and the next day I got this simple email from them:

No demands, short (and explicit!) time requirements, and a picture of what looks almost like the venue I was in (would be even better if it was).

Now look at the above picture (taken from the website). This was the first page I hit. There was no logging in, no tedious filling in of silly details. I’m a community member (okay, a customer) - they have all that recorded and integrated with this web property. Awesome. Now I want to fill it in - after all I just had to push one button to get here. Nice touch in having the Genius name there too.

As you can see the form is pretty straightforward, easy to fill in, reasonably clear, and short.

I like the addition of the free text entry. Sometimes you want to vent. Sometimes you want to praise. This lets you do it.

Finally the goodbye. Short and sweet. It felt good to take this survey. It was simple to initiate, simple to engage, and didn’t look or feel like the spam we too often see these days.

This was a great lesson for me - I’m now going to look at a few of my other ventures and ensure they have a way of providing this kind of feedback experience. An email address just doesn’t feel nearly as good.

I’ve just returned from my first BarCamp Scotland. It was great fun, and I met some interesting local folk. This included:

• the kilt-wearing Ewan Spence who demoed Qik and seesmic. Live streaming from his phone was pretty cool.
• hypernumbers, whose Erlang-implemented system allows you to assign a URL to each cell in a spreadsheet, which you can then surface wherever you like (such as on a web page). Think “spreadsheet cells as a service.” Their website provides a little more details, but rather curiously doesn’t have a blog.
• Dave McClure, who gave a great talk on Startup Metrics and Business Models for [Scottish] Pirates, filled with solid advice. For example, don’t build features for features sake - think conversion - does that feature increase conversion?; and build a trust relationship before you push for referrals. Lots more in the linked presentation.
• Skyskanner, who were not only interesting because they did a splendid job sponsoring the drinks. Their website actually solves a problem I have: find me a flight leaving this city on this day across all airlines. Most travel sites can’t solve that problem - they always demand a destination, which doesn’t allow for much spontaneity now does it! And you’ve got to love their price isobar graph.

I also gave a talk on online communities and some of the ways in which to grow them. All in all, a good two days - thanks to the sponsors and organisers.

Technorati Tags:
barcamp, barcampscotland, erlang

Writing about the scarily named Blog Council, Robert Scoble says:

Visit a Best Buy store. Now imagine that store without ANY human beings inside. What do you have? A bankrupt store.

So why when I visit BestBuy.com don’t I see any people? Hear any conversations? Is there any wonder why Amazon has a P/E ratio much higher than Best Buy?

While I’m giving this a different tack here, I think this is a great way to think about a community web site. In a recent talk I gave I spoke about the difference between managing a successful website (rising page views, etc.) and a successful community. They aren’t the same thing.

Many so-called community websites are simply websites. They are empty—devoid of life. Lacking any human beings, as Robert says.

So:

If you’re managing a community website, you need to surface that community on the website. Not only should you enable conversations, but you should highlight those conversations, and the people doing the talking. Show potential community members that you’re a website with real people having real conversations.

How

Some ways in which this can be done:

• Have the community manager call out great conversation that occurred that day/week on his/her blog/newsletter and so on
• Select a few conversations to be highlighted on the home page
• Provide mechanisms that allow your community members to flag great content, and highlight that
• Go semantic. Some sites have great metadata. If a forum message on the forum called “TopicX” is related to blogs on “TopicX”, and your community flags a message as 5 stars, how about highlighting that forum message in the side bar of blogs on that same topic?
• Invest in MVP programs (Microsoft have an interesting MVP program)

Caveats

Sometimes you find websites that do surface the conversations on websites. However, the result is a webpage with dozens of topics and reams of writing. Nobody is going to read all of that.

When doing some of this, keep a few things in mind:

• Think about usability, about how people read websites
• Provide some editorial. Have a community manager select great conversations, perhaps massage descriptions (to read better, shorter - not skew the message) and so on.
• Don’t overdo it. Think about the value you are providing to your audience.

Technorati Tags:
community

Google and others just launched Android. I’m more interested in how they bootstrapped their community though—it’s obvious that they really thought this through and put a lot of effort into creating a viable platform on which a community can be built. This is in contrast to Apple and its iPhone Developer Center, which has no community support at all.

Android: Overview

• Type of Community - This is a developer community, and they have an audience of developers.
• Website - clean, clear, wonderfully free of annoying copyright, trademark and other company logos, a touch of graphics. Google is mentioned only once, discretely in the footer, and I think that’s just because it’s hosted on code.google.com. Emphasis is on what matters: Getting Started, the blog, the forums.
• Features - website, documentation, APIs, code samples, videos, downloads, blog, multiple forums (with email subscription and feed support), some identity, SSO
• Lures - a $10 million contest

iPhone: Overview

• Type of Community - This is a not a community site, it’s a resource site for developers
• Website - clean, clear, a touch of graphics. Emphasis is on what they think matters: getting resources into developer hands, not on building community.
• Features - website, documentation, APIs, code samples, SSO, “connect to the experts” tech talk videos
• Lures - Listing in Apple web apps directory

Android: Purpose and Business Goals

The business goals are, I imagine, to support the adoption of Android among developers, and in so doing help the Open Handset Alliance Project succeed.

The site has focus; it’s purpose is clear. They obviously understand that developers want code, want HTML accessible API documentation, sample applications, SDK downloads and a developer forum.

iPhone: Purpose and Business Goals

The business goals are, I imagine, to encourage developers to write applications for the iPhone. There is already a huge audience out there scratching at the walls to do this sort of thing.

The site is clearly a resource site. There is no hint of community here. I suspect they may be wanting to drive ADC registrations either - why else hide developer content links until you’ve logged in.

Android: Supporting the Audience

These guys have gone out of their way to support the audience: All the major operating systems are supported, with emulators, SDKs, code samples and IDEs. They’re going out of their way to make sure there is no excuse. If someone is even remotely interested in this thing, they will be able to write their first application and deploy it to an emulator in 30 minutes.

They’ve tried hard to remove any excuse for getting started and developing on their platform. They want you to succeed and have done a tremendous amount of work before the community was even launched to try and guarantee its success.

iPhone: Supporting the Audience

These guys have produced a rich set of resources that will allow developers to write web apps for the iPhone (SDK support is coming later). Since web applications are OS agnostic, they ostensibly support all platforms.

In contrast to Android, they have not tried all that hard to remove any excuse for getting started. There’s no clear downloads or suggestions of IDEs for example. They do have code samples, but little in the way of how to host them, how to integrate with other platforms etc.

Android: Content

The website has superb documentation. There’s a “what is”, getting started (including tutorials), developing applications, developer toolbox, reference information, sample code and FAQs.

It’s great to see the reference information online. Like most Java-based code bases, it’s all available in HTML format. That means other developers can point to it in discussion. I see so many communities try and do this with PDFs, or worse, with documentation embedded in a download. That just doesn’t work.

iPhone: Content

The website has great content and technical videos (delivered via iTunes). A full reference library documenting all the technologies and a set of sample code. The only other content is a set of iPhone Tech Talk Videos.

I find the video delivery a little distracting actually. Because they’re not embedded, I can’t just “hit play” - it lacks immediacy and means I have material scattered over a website and my iTunes. Then again, I can play them on my future iPhone…

Android: Analysis

Here are a couple of things that may improve the community:

• Integrated Identity - they have some identity. For example, David McLaughlin, who I suspect is part of the community team, has his ID surfaced as David McLaughlin, Android Advocate. That “Android Advocate” is a nice touch. The unfortunate thing is that I cannot click on David’s name and read his bio, find out what else he has written - which will lend to immediately increasing his identity, reputation and history. In fact, I can view his profile via his newsgroup postings, but they’re lacking integrated identity.
• External Resources - while a community blog post does point to external communities publishing material on Android, they don’t do a good job of surfacing this activity on the website. They could do with an article listing, perhaps community rated.
• Content experts, evangelists - while they undoubtedly have them, I don’t know who they are, where they’re speaking, what they’re doing or what they’re saying. It would be great if these folk are blogging. Of course, it’s early days yet.

iPhone: Analysis

It’s rather odd that Apple haven’t engaged the community in any way. Perhaps that will change going forward, but there’s no support for blogs, externally authored articles, or even the most fundamental in a developer community: the forum. In other words, they certainly don’t have the infrastructure surfaced on this site on which to build a community.

They also demand registration before giving developers access to the most basic of resources. A strategy by a company confident in what it’s offering and that this hurdle won’t discourage potential audience members, and a company that obviously wants developers to sign up for their developer program.

All of this may be coming later. Perhaps they’re waiting for the iPhone SDK to come out (next year). Some may ask if it’s even necessary. There’s already hoards of developers chomping at the bit, healthy discussion in external blogs, and perhaps there is a forum hidden on ADC’s forums. Having said all that, it’s hard to believe that a forum and community would not help Apple, or more importantly, these external developers. Sharing expertise, knowledge, tips, best practices—these will all help Apple in the end.

Android: Interesting Developments

Single Forum, Later Split: The community is a week old, and they’ve just split the single group (I think it was single last week) into 5 groups - beginners, developers, internals, challenge and discuss (water cooler).

What’s great is that they started with a single forum, and split it later as demand rose. So many new communities make the mistake of starting with a bunch of forums, all forlornly empty.

Stats: The beginner mailing list now (Nov 17) has 102 messages, and the developer mailing list 3791 messages. It was at 2900 two days ago - that’s a lot of growth.

Last update: 17 November

Update: Carlos Perez has a great take on the two communities.

Technorati Tags:
apple, iPhone, community, google, android

I’ve just listened to an interesting keynote given by IBM’s Irving Wladawsky-Berger. He makes the point that “the real value of open source software is that it allows communities to work together and solve problems. Those communities … need to read each other’s software … to communicate and collaborate.” In other words, spending nights gazing at open source is not where the value lies - the value lies in how the openness contributes to future collaboration. This is an unsung quality of blogs too: Open communication facilitates collaboration So, without further ado, I open this blog with it’s obligatory first post - and welcome communication and collaboration from all you folk reading it.