Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: How do you create a successful community from zero?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 96 posts

Re: Ask HN: How do you create a successful community from zero?

#71

Post by gweinberg »

Malcx wrote: post #59
andreasklinger wrote: post #21

I helped building producthunt.com and overclockers.at (and other less successful ones) Here a few learnings: 1. the community already exists, you just create a communication platform for it 2. make it clear what the community is about [positioning/marketing] 3. make sure the communication/content is interesting [quality] 4. make sure there is enough engagement [perceived critical mass] (encourage people to post, post…

> the community already exists, you just create a communication platform for it That gave me a minor epiphany, it flipped my understanding of communities and their relation to tech. Thanks

Does it really though? The individuals with a common interest exist already of course, but if they don't meet in some common physical or virtual space, how is there a community?

Re: Ask HN: How do you create a successful community from zero?

#72

Post by TheSmiddy »

officemonkey wrote: post #69
KhalPanda wrote: post #5

I've launched and grown/run a few forums over the years and the key for me was to always seed it with as much quality content as possible. Fake it until you make it. I believe reddit did the same.

If I recall correctly, Reddit benefited significantly from some minor mishap that caused people to leave Slashdot back in 2006. I recall checking out Digg and Reddit and deciding that Reddit was superior. Welcoming new members from other sites is always a good move.

Same thing happened in 2010 with digg. I was aware of reddit and primarily using digg, then digg completely changed the way you could submit content in a way which favoured big publications and there was a huge exodous to reddit.

Re: Ask HN: How do you create a successful community from zero?

#73

Post by wuliwong »

gweinberg wrote: post #71
Malcx wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the community already exists, you just create a communication platform for it That gave me a minor epiphany, it flipped my understanding of communities and their relation to tech. Thanks

Does it really though? The individuals with a common interest exist already of course, but if they don't meet in some common physical or virtual space, how is there a community?

I think this is interesting. Since the original comment was from a producthunt perspective, I was thinking that in that case there was a community. Maybe a strategy is that there is a community that communicates already but this communication is spread across various mediums and not efficient?

Re: Ask HN: How do you create a successful community from zero?

#74

Post by aewens »

gweinberg wrote: post #71
Malcx wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the community already exists, you just create a communication platform for it That gave me a minor epiphany, it flipped my understanding of communities and their relation to tech. Thanks

Does it really though? The individuals with a common interest exist already of course, but if they don't meet in some common physical or virtual space, how is there a community?

Depends on how you look at the word "community". One definition of the word, "a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals," can dictate that a community can exist among those who have not yet met, but are of the same community through a shared interests / goals.

Re: Ask HN: How do you create a successful community from zero?

#75

Post by sidwyn »

andreasklinger wrote: post #21

I helped building producthunt.com and overclockers.at (and other less successful ones) Here a few learnings: 1. the community already exists, you just create a communication platform for it 2. make it clear what the community is about [positioning/marketing] 3. make sure the communication/content is interesting [quality] 4. make sure there is enough engagement [perceived critical mass] (encourage people to post, post…

> 2. make it clear what the community is about [positioning/marketing]

Could you give some examples on communities with successful positioning/marketing?

Re: Ask HN: How do you create a successful community from zero?

#76

Post by sky_rw »

arkitaip wrote: post #30
werber wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I religiously follow producthunt now because of the Devo extension ( https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/devo/elkhalpmbmbae... ), but have noticed that the forum portion tends to be mostly pats on the back. With other endeavors have you been able to create a space where people are more critical?

Product Hunt isn't a real community as it's a very explicit marketing platform, hence the pats on the back, astroturfing, etc.

As somebody who has suffered through "networking events" I can assure you, what you described is a very real community.

Re: Ask HN: How do you create a successful community from zero?

#77

Post by adventured »

CM30 wrote: post #70

Okay, as someone who's run quite a few forums in the past and has written more than a few articles about community management, my experience here is that successful forums tend to have a few things in common: 1. A topic that hasn't been tapped into that much, but which has an existing audience just waiting to get involved. This was the case with Wario Forums, which had no competition whatsoever when it launched, and…

I agree with most of what you said, except I'd increase this:

> and willing to put in potentially weeks of unpaid work getting the site off the ground.

To a minimum of six months as an assumed grind. Anybody going into building a community should regard that as the absolute minimum. Sometimes you get lucky and lightning hits, however more often you're going to struggle along for many painfully dry months trying to get a self-sustaining momentum rolling.

Re: Ask HN: How do you create a successful community from zero?

#78

Post by brailsafe »

As many condo developers would probably deny, communities cannot be created, they can only be destroyed ;)

All joking a salad, communities imo just occur, though their concentration can perhaps be affected or enabled. Conceptually similar to a market I think.

Re: Ask HN: How do you create a successful community from zero?

#79

Post by NoodleIncident »

tonystubblebine wrote: post #54
paulpauper wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so you were involved with twitter from day 1. what happened to odeo then. I remember reading a story about early employees being bought out and later regretting it when the company became worth billions.

Re: Odeo. It got sold to some guys who tried to roll it up with other small acquisitions. It's dead now. Re: regret. People misunderstand the regret of not continuing to have stock. Twitter was nothing when we left. I didn't even bother to exercise my options. Then Odeo's CEO bought out all the investors and that return on their money was way more than whatever Twitter was worth at the time. Those investors were all…

> To me, the game changer was the way Biz managed to start making Twitter part of the media landscape and something everyone heard about on every half hour segment of cable news.

I've always hated those segments. It makes me strangely happy to hear that the cause and effect here was indeed backwards; cable news didn't start reading those tweets because twitter was important, twitter became important because cable news started reading those tweets!

Re: Ask HN: How do you create a successful community from zero?

#80

Post by ethiclub »

sidwyn wrote: post #75
andreasklinger wrote: post #21

I helped building producthunt.com and overclockers.at (and other less successful ones) Here a few learnings: 1. the community already exists, you just create a communication platform for it 2. make it clear what the community is about [positioning/marketing] 3. make sure the communication/content is interesting [quality] 4. make sure there is enough engagement [perceived critical mass] (encourage people to post, post…

> 2. make it clear what the community is about [positioning/marketing] Could you give some examples on communities with successful positioning/marketing?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mumsnet

- PR and relationships with (governmental or other) organisations

- Intelligent positioning

- (Arguably good timing in the market)

- Community well targeted, needs catered for well.

- Appropriate (simple, fast) technology, little barrier to entry

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_News

- Two way beneficial relationship with YC

- Careful / Aggressive (depending on situation and feature) moderation

- General (although arguably slipping into Eternal September) maintenance of a niche community but with steady growth

- Appropriate (simple, fast) technology, little barrier to entry

Post reply on HN