Kim presents an e-commerce-oriented view of online community development. Sites such as Slashdot are only mentioned cursorily.

The focus on designing a community with a predefined purpose or goals contrasts with Oldenburg's view of third places as not having been designed as such. The chapter doesn't address the pros and cons or the necessity of an online community, which Powazek does. 

Kim presents a technical overview of the need to understand the what, why, and who in developing online communities, with a focus on the evolving needs of users over the lifespan of the community.

The first thing to understand in addressing the community members’ needs is what type of community one wants to develop. Communities may be geographic, demographic, topical, or activity-based in nature. For instance, Wellman touches on the use of online community as a bridge in a physical neighborhood to solving social and political dilemmas. As the community grows, it may break down further into subcommunities or subtopics that meet the more specific needs of the evolving demographic. By understanding who is actually making use of the community, developers will be able to respond with improvements to the interface to support these breakdowns, such as through an information architecture that resonates with the user group.

The author refers to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as a method of evaluating needs of an online community. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs states that people are first and foremost driven to fulfill their most basic human needs for livelihood, such as food and shelter. They do not fulfull the higher level needs until these basic needs have been met. The author provides a comparison between offline and online needs according to this hierarchy: for instance, the most necessary physiological need in the online world is to maintain privacy and personal identity.

The author continues with a discussion of goals for the community to achieve. Whether time, money, expertise, or another commodity is invested, something must be received in return to make it worthwhile. An activity is presented in which developers may compare and prioritize the respective goals of the audience and the owners of the community to create a master list of goals. The author suggests running focus groups and/or surveys to gain a strong understanding of the audience’s demographic makeup, professional and personal interests, and habits.

Further, obtaining a vision for the online community is necessary to ensure that it actually attracts the right audience and fulfills the right needs. The vision refers back to the “what, why, and who” of the community as a whole. Two vision statements should be written: one to lead the programming, marketing, and other technical development aspects of the internal team; and one to present to the general public that might be read to help them decide if they belong there. Moreover, a tagline may help create brand identity and may draw in participants to the community to whom the tag is meaningful. Both the vision and the tag can and SHOULD evolve over time, as more is known about the audience, as the audience matures, or even as the audience and goals shift entirely. Writing down the history of the community may be a good supplement by providing the equivalent of an oral history to the members.

The vision statement is also helpful in developing branding for the community. This includes color, verbiage, layout, and features. This can, again, help to weed through visitors and attract the specific audience by appealing to their aesthetic and functional preferences.

Critique
This article presents a fairly instructional overview of developing a community from a technical standpoint. The focus is very slanted toward the HCI motto, “know thy users,” by pointing out the myriad things that need to be known about community members before and during the launch of an online community.

Connection
There is a strong connection with Wellman and Powazek; both focus on the community as proving grounds for serving specific, longer-term needs of a user population, making a clear distinction from random online encounters such as IM. Kim goes a step further by discussing methods of learning about users (focus groups, surveys, and an eye toward continual re-evaluation).

Kim struck me with her idea of “backstory” as a good way to develop a strong online community. I sat back and thought of the backstory's for my online communities:

• Slashdot, founded by two students at a small, private libral arts college in Michigan, whose membership has increased to much that almost any web site posted on the site will quickly succomb to the too weight of so many simultaneous hit—The Slashdot Effect—and other typs of subculture.
• Mozilla.org—founded by Netscape and released to the people, it has become a place where anyone* can contribute to products that are changing the Internet.
• Flickr...well...so I don't know anything about Flickr. I just know it's a great place to host and see other people's photos.
• Del.icio.us—I guess that's the same way.
• The numerous Flash developer sites? I don't care how they came about, just whether or not they have the code I need.

Turns out I don't really communicate with anyone from the last three sites, and use them only for their functionality to me, whereas with the first two, I actively contribute and feel some attachment to them. I also noticed how this manifests itself in real life; most religions have a whole bock (or many books) filled with backstory, and are, arguably, the strongest communities in the world.

Kim does not support her assertion that backstory helps develop communities. She moves from "A strong, mythic backstory can help a culture thrive" to "Given the good community-building power of a good backstory..." with only and example in between. I'd like to suggest that a strong “backstory” helps create a shared identity amongst community members, and encourages community members investing in the community, instead of simply taking. Backstory contributes to the authority of the existing members of the group as well as the group itself, and creates a greater feeling of stability.

Kim notes that the needs of a community will evolve over time, but that designers can still foster their growth if they take time from the start to identify the needs and goals of members and owners, and how they might support or contradict one another.

Clarity of purpose is crucial for creating a successful community. The designer must craft a strong mission statement in two versions: an internal statement to guide the design team, and an external statement to explain to visitors exactly what needs the site and its community are trying to fulfill. A good tagline, and a compelling backstory can round out a site's (and a community's) 'brand personality.'

In order to understand the membership, a designer can conduct surveys, focus groups, and interviews. The designer must expect to be surprised by what he might find out from these efforts, and should be open to the possibility that the needs of the membership might change over time.

 Critique

Kim's chapter seems very direct and helpful as far as it goes. I would like to see a longer discussion of surveys and focus groups given how challenging they can be to do well. I do question whether an online focus group would encourage members to be honest. It seems they might just as likely use their relative anonymity in the opposite way, and a moderator will not have the benefit of body language, etc. to interpret what members of the focus group say. But the low cost of an online focus group at least puts this resource within reach of more designers.

Like Powazek, and to some degree Preece, Kim makes the needs of members a crucial factor in the success or failure of online communities.  Trek may be right to say there may be no way to plan for a large audience, but this may also be a reflection of how difficult it can be to get people to say what they truly want.

I kinda feel that this was a high level overview with the target of undergrad or mabye engin students.  The concepcts to me at least seemed very clear cut.  Yes, you should seek user input, Yes you should know who your aud is.   Yes, just because something is cool, does not mean you should do it

Kim's book so far strikes me much like Powazek's because they both seem to be written in a style that slightly gets on my nerves (I have no idea why - they just do - but it beats reading the typical pretentious style of academic writing ).

Kim starts out with similar questions to Powazek. What type of community am I building? Why am I building it? Who am I building it for? Before moving into types of communities (Geographic, Demographic, Topical, and Activity Based).

I enjoyed Kim's analogy of Maslow's Hierarchy (even if it is just a bunch of pyschobabble) because I think it solidifies and nicely categorizes the discussion of about users needs and goals into something tangible (and even looks like it could work as milestones for a development plan).

I really appreciated Kim's insistence listening to users and using objective methods tried by impartial third party experts.

Kim presents two heuristics for building successful communities: 1) maintain a clear purpose for your users and 2) make sure that investors are getting a return on their investment. Kim also recommends focusing on unmet user needs. Don't reinvent the wheel; don't try to build a community if users already get that community somewhere else. (Along this vein, I would add that if you can make a more specific, focused version of an already existing community then you may have some success.) I appreciated the author's recognition that communities will change. Having a clear purpose for your community means also being able to iteratively evaluate that purpose over time.

I'm curious how we will go on to use Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs in various contexts. I found the Ultima Online example very useful in this respect: the development team used the guiding concept of Maslow's Hierarchy to organize user needs. (Customer support first, community connections second.)

While it may seem introductory, Kim makes a strong overall point (along with Powazek) that designing a strong community site must start with putting user needs and goals into writing. bkerr points out that this may just be due to the workbook nature of the texts, but I can't help thinking that writing down design goals for an online space is a good idea.

Critique, Connections
Kim's "Articulate Your Vision" section at the end of the article seems widely applicable. I was frequently reminded of my history in the nonprofit sector, where the organization in which I worked had strong branding, backstory and a mission statement which they stuck to tenaciously. Does this create community, or is it just good marketing? Is there a difference?

Description

The message of this paper might be summarized as “Communities must serve a clear purpose in the lives of its members and meet the fundamental goals of its owners”.

Summary of arguments:

- Members determine if a community is successful or not.
- What type, why, and for whom are big questions for an online community.
You need to know your reason, purpose and audience. Moreover, these might change over time. These values might be reflected in mission statement.
- Communities evolve to keep pace with the changing needs of members and owners.
- Communities can be categorized as geographic, demographic, topical, and activity-based. A community might belong to more than one category.
- Enough members and satisfactory ROI (not just financially) is necessary for a community not to fail.
- Find a balance in between the needs of members and the goals of owners.

Critique

There isn’t much to discuss here. The style is most instructional, and the article is a part of a roadmap for building your online community.
I found it odd at first that members and owners are clearly distinguished. Somehow, I thought everyone in the community has the same goals but this is not necessarily the case.

Connection

I felt the same ‘guidebook’ feeling in Powazek. He also talks about the importance of knowing your audience being realistic about expectations.

…and master of none. This article gives some guidelines and tips on how to build a successful community. Kim puts much emphasis on designing a community around Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

I’m really not a big fan of this article. I think that Kim tried to talk about this issue from too many angles. Aside from the psychology perspective of the pyramid, he tried to sprinkle in bits and pieces of business tips like branding and surveying using incentives. I wish he focused more on how Maslow’s Pyramid applied. For example, it would’ve been helpful if Kim said something like “In facebook, stages 4 and 5 of the pyramid was met through…”

This article complements Preece’s on what is an online community and also Oldenburg’s article. It focuses on the need issue. Basically, why people seek 3^rd places and online communities. 

This article can apply to study why people join certain online communities.