HN, Reddit, Stack Overflow, etc. are all established communities with users. How do you start a community when you don't have any users?
Ask HN: How are online communities established?
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Re: Ask HN: How are online communities established?
#2In the case of StackOverflow, Spolsky and Atwood made podcasts from the beginning. There is a record of the whole process. It's worth noting that StackOverflow built a very narrow channel for community activity relative to typical online communities.
StackOverflow Podcast #1 https://soundcloud.com/stack-exchange/stack-overflow-podcast...
Re: Ask HN: How are online communities established?
#3I remember reading that the Reddit founders created fake users and posted links / conversation starters in order to make the site feel like it had some level of critical mass.
Re: Ask HN: How are online communities established?
#4Lots has been written about this. There are several ways.
1. You start small ( pick a topic and be the best place to discuss that topic)
2. You can fake engagements with multiple accounts to get the ball rolling ( reddit did it, indiehackers did it etc...)
https://www.google.com/search?q=indiehackers+how+to+start+co...
Re: Ask HN: How are online communities established?
#5Online communities are basically just discussion boards, so you need something for people to talk about, people who want to talk about it, and functionality allowing them to talk to one another.
The structure of a discussion board is usually a chronological feed of discussion topics, so you’ll want a pipeline of topics to keep the discussions fresh(ish).
And of course you’ll be competing with a saturated “discuss things online” space, so there are strategic questions you’ll need to answer. Are you going to provide a place to discuss things people can’t discuss elsewhere? Are you going to provide a stream of topics people want but can’t find elsewhere? Are you going to provide a uniquely engaging discussion format? Etc etc etc.
I don’t know that anyone really starts communities, honestly. We’re already in a global one and it just breaks down into smaller ones depending on geography, beliefs, interest, etc. The thing you might provide isn’t a community, it’s a platform. Give a community that already exists a refreshing new way to connect and you’ll be in business (scale tbd).
Re: Ask HN: How are online communities established?
#6Why do you want to? So you can extract money from them? Don't. So you can have someone to control and moderate and exercise power over? Don't. So you can have the prestige and status of a community owner and/or high traffic website owner and/or successful person? Don't.
Have you noticed that HN was originally a small group of smart industry knowledgable people, and gradually they trended towards disengaging as it got too big and busy and it became a crowd of jeering Redditor plebs like me? HN is a marketing machine for YCombinator, not a real community. If what you want is really "to build a big site with lots of users", the word "community" doesn't really apply, ask what you want "how do I build a site which tempts large numbers of casual users?".
Communities stay small. If your reason is you want a place where people who like X can discuss X then become a good place for those people to do that, be present, engage all the time, invite appropriate people to it and make it interesting enough that they have reason to come back, make it about what they want (could be a mailing list) instead of what you want ("my new forum written in React with a mobile app backed by an IRC channel!"). That will likely stay small - people probably already have a place to discuss X, there's probably a Reddit about X, and the real thing they'll be interested in is who else goes there (and who is excluded), not where it is or what software it uses. There's way more community in 50 people discussing a thing than in some mega-site built for ad revenue. Not much prestige or excitement in that, though.
Re: Ask HN: How are online communities established?
#7The Reddit founders talk about this in their episode of "How I Built This":
https://www.npr.org/2017/10/03/545635014/live-episode-reddit...
At about 19:40 is where they talk about seeding the community.
Re: Ask HN: How are online communities established?
#8An estabshed community migrating to their own platform is an option. Five-thirty-eight more or less started this way.
Existing groups or constituencies (software users, professionals, academic community, sport club or fans, entertainment/music, etc.) are other options. Artificially-induced growth is another option --- several subreddits have grown from nothing to 100k+ members in a few months
Starting a generic commuity these days would likely be difficult (though see; Snapchat, WhatsApp, etc0.) Even well-capitalised firms fare poorly at this (e.g., Google+).
Likely better to have a specific community in mind. Or some idea as to what you hope to achieve.
Otherwise: good content, consistent posting, cross-promotion, and time.
Re: Ask HN: How are online communities established?
#9I remember reading that the Reddit founders created fake users and posted links / conversation starters in order to make the site feel like it had some level of critical mass.
This was a trick implementors used when starting a new MUD too. If someone logged in and saw nobody else on the who list they would disconnect and never come back. Ideally you had at least the developers and a few testers committed to actually playing and then you’d pad those numbers with fake accounts or bots.
Re: Ask HN: How are online communities established?
#10You should read the book People Powered by Jono Bacon. Has some really good insights and is a 101 course on exactly this.