4 ms·

Ask HN: How do you build communities fast?

3 points by adawg4 5y ago

Trying to break into the community building mindset on how to engage people, make people feel loved and even build communities around products.

mooreds 5y ago
Money, time and caring. Money for bringing people together, giving them swag and making them feel part of a community. Time for people to gel and start to care about each other. Caring because if you, the community organizer (presumably) don't care, people won't care, and the community won't form. Other things that help include an overarching mission and a way for community members to get to know each other. Suggest you listen to https://www.communitypulse.io/ https://www.communitypulse.io/ podcasts and read https://rosie.land/ https://rosie.land/ articles for more.
dredmorbius 5y ago
Community around software, or community as in a discussion platform? For software: find users who benefit by its use and champion them. Forums, mailing lists, and recognition help in that. Find an existing community, either with a communications challenge or which might want to benefit by use of a commnications platform. Usenet leveraged off universities. BBS leveraged off hobbyists. Early online services (notably AOL) leveraged off military families on oversees deployments. Slashdot leveraged off of the open source / Linux movement which was underserved by existing publishing platforms. Facebook leveraged off of universities again, starting with the most selective (Harvard, Ivys, selective-admission, ...). HN leverages off the YC community. Story I recently ran across of a dating app was that it was used in conjunction with a few Hollywood events as a cohort-seeding formation.
- Dracophoenix 5y ago
  >Early online services (notably AOL) leveraged off military families on oversees deployments. Any articles expanding on this story? >Story I recently ran across of a dating app was that it was used in conjunction with a few Hollywood events as a cohort-seeding formation. Are you talking about Raya?
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    The dating app was Tindr: https://tim.blog/2021/12/01/andrew-chen-transcript/ https://tim.blog/2021/12/01/andrew-chen-transcript/ The example comes from Andrew Chen's The Cold Start Problem https://www.worldcat.org/title/cold-start-problem-how-to-start-and-scale-network-effects/oclc/1285369929 https://www.worldcat.org/title/cold-start-problem-how-to-sta... On AOL: good question, and I'm not finding the one I had in mind immediately. What I recall was a discussion of different elements of Internet culture and what their origin stories were. Very roughly: The "mainstream" early ARPANET/Internet culture emerged largely from major research universities and had a strongly academic bent. There was a hobbyist culture that emerged largely out of the BBS and home-computer scene. The Whole Earth Catalogue and The WELL capture and document much of this. Both these groups tended strongly toward professionals and middle / upper-middle class populations. Military service members and their families were another large and fairly coherent group. Long-term deployments and frequent moves make communications a priority, and both email and text chat were natural fits for this. Esepcially in the dial-up age, when it might be possible to site a local dial-up point-of-presence at or near a military base (and free local calls). As a consequence, another generally-definable user cohort emerged: less professional, heavy on military (and subsequently law-enforcement) orientation, but also families, women, and children. My understanding is that this largely occurred during the first Gulf War (1991-92), and in assignments / actions in Somalia and the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s. That said: I'm not turning up the reference, nor am I finding mentions in either the Wikipedia page nor a 1990s Wired profile (Wired itself also being an outgrowth of the Whole Earth community). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL https://www.wired.com/1995/09/aol-2/ https://www.wired.com/1995/09/aol-2/ I'll keep looking to see what I can find.
    - Dracophoenix 5y ago
      Thank you for the reply. I'm aware of how BBSs and on-line services started (CServe, Prodigy, Genie). Most of what you've said in your earlier reply was spot on with the exception the initial audience for AOL (at least in its earliest incarnation). I later thought you might be referring to AIM, but I couldn't find any relation to your claim either. It seemed odd as to how overseas military families would have access to AOL given that: a) International dialing rates were incredibly expensive at the time. I don't know how someone would be connecting to AOL in a local network in, say, Stuttgart or Mogadishu without paying a pretty penny. b) Most online communication done by overseas military members would have been done over ARPANET/MILNET with on-premise or remote data terminals attached/networked to minicomputer or timesharing systems (e.g. Honeywell, CDC, Burroughs, etc). c) The AOL's earlier incarnation, Q-Link, was a C64 only service. AOL only became available for DOS/PCs just as the Gulf War ended (February 28 1991). d) Anything that couldn't run C/PM, Unix, or PC-DOS was considered a kids toy (an image not helped in Commodore's case with the C64 being sold in Toy's R US, but I digress). Given these factors, I would think AOL's initial audience would have been the same hobbyists and MUD players that made BBSs popular for a time. Perhaps you were talking about early flat-fee connection services/ packet networks like Tymnet, BBN Telenet, DATAPAC, Frame Relay, etc ?
revorad 5y ago
I’ve participated in many communities this year. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from the best community builders, it’s that you can’t do it fast. You need to design, nurture and grow communities patiently. Check out Rosie Sherry’s work.

3 points by adawg4 5y ago

Trying to break into the community building mindset on how to engage people, make people feel loved and even build communities around products.

mooreds 5y ago

Money, time and caring. Money for bringing people together, giving them swag and making them feel part of a community. Time for people to gel and start to care about each other. Caring because if you, the community organizer (presumably) don't care, people won't care, and the community won't form. Other things that help include an overarching mission and a way for community members to get to know each other. Suggest you listen to https://www.communitypulse.io/ https://www.communitypulse.io/ podcasts and read https://rosie.land/ https://rosie.land/ articles for more.

dredmorbius 5y ago

Community around software, or community as in a discussion platform? For software: find users who benefit by its use and champion them. Forums, mailing lists, and recognition help in that. Find an existing community, either with a communications challenge or which might want to benefit by use of a commnications platform. Usenet leveraged off universities. BBS leveraged off hobbyists. Early online services (notably AOL) leveraged off military families on oversees deployments. Slashdot leveraged off of the open source / Linux movement which was underserved by existing publishing platforms. Facebook leveraged off of universities again, starting with the most selective (Harvard, Ivys, selective-admission, ...). HN leverages off the YC community. Story I recently ran across of a dating app was that it was used in conjunction with a few Hollywood events as a cohort-seeding formation.

Dracophoenix 5y ago
>Early online services (notably AOL) leveraged off military families on oversees deployments. Any articles expanding on this story? >Story I recently ran across of a dating app was that it was used in conjunction with a few Hollywood events as a cohort-seeding formation. Are you talking about Raya?
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  The dating app was Tindr: https://tim.blog/2021/12/01/andrew-chen-transcript/ https://tim.blog/2021/12/01/andrew-chen-transcript/ The example comes from Andrew Chen's The Cold Start Problem https://www.worldcat.org/title/cold-start-problem-how-to-start-and-scale-network-effects/oclc/1285369929 https://www.worldcat.org/title/cold-start-problem-how-to-sta... On AOL: good question, and I'm not finding the one I had in mind immediately. What I recall was a discussion of different elements of Internet culture and what their origin stories were. Very roughly: The "mainstream" early ARPANET/Internet culture emerged largely from major research universities and had a strongly academic bent. There was a hobbyist culture that emerged largely out of the BBS and home-computer scene. The Whole Earth Catalogue and The WELL capture and document much of this. Both these groups tended strongly toward professionals and middle / upper-middle class populations. Military service members and their families were another large and fairly coherent group. Long-term deployments and frequent moves make communications a priority, and both email and text chat were natural fits for this. Esepcially in the dial-up age, when it might be possible to site a local dial-up point-of-presence at or near a military base (and free local calls). As a consequence, another generally-definable user cohort emerged: less professional, heavy on military (and subsequently law-enforcement) orientation, but also families, women, and children. My understanding is that this largely occurred during the first Gulf War (1991-92), and in assignments / actions in Somalia and the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s. That said: I'm not turning up the reference, nor am I finding mentions in either the Wikipedia page nor a 1990s Wired profile (Wired itself also being an outgrowth of the Whole Earth community). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL https://www.wired.com/1995/09/aol-2/ https://www.wired.com/1995/09/aol-2/ I'll keep looking to see what I can find.
  - Dracophoenix 5y ago
    Thank you for the reply. I'm aware of how BBSs and on-line services started (CServe, Prodigy, Genie). Most of what you've said in your earlier reply was spot on with the exception the initial audience for AOL (at least in its earliest incarnation). I later thought you might be referring to AIM, but I couldn't find any relation to your claim either. It seemed odd as to how overseas military families would have access to AOL given that: a) International dialing rates were incredibly expensive at the time. I don't know how someone would be connecting to AOL in a local network in, say, Stuttgart or Mogadishu without paying a pretty penny. b) Most online communication done by overseas military members would have been done over ARPANET/MILNET with on-premise or remote data terminals attached/networked to minicomputer or timesharing systems (e.g. Honeywell, CDC, Burroughs, etc). c) The AOL's earlier incarnation, Q-Link, was a C64 only service. AOL only became available for DOS/PCs just as the Gulf War ended (February 28 1991). d) Anything that couldn't run C/PM, Unix, or PC-DOS was considered a kids toy (an image not helped in Commodore's case with the C64 being sold in Toy's R US, but I digress). Given these factors, I would think AOL's initial audience would have been the same hobbyists and MUD players that made BBSs popular for a time. Perhaps you were talking about early flat-fee connection services/ packet networks like Tymnet, BBN Telenet, DATAPAC, Frame Relay, etc ?

revorad 5y ago

I’ve participated in many communities this year. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from the best community builders, it’s that you can’t do it fast. You need to design, nurture and grow communities patiently. Check out Rosie Sherry’s work.