31–40 of 43 posts
For what it's worth, anyone who liked this post would probably really like this book: http://www.amazon.com/Building-Successful-Online-Communities...
They would like a book that hasn't been released yet?
Very cool! What happens if a group just does not show up?
It's extremely rare (see above), but when it does happen we do everything we can to make it up to the other group (free drinks, free Groupers, profuse apologies, etc.) and lay down the law on the other group (including removing them from the community).
Not sure how you'd do it except perhaps as an exit question for people leaving your community.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They would like a book that hasn't been released yet?
All the chapters are available for free on Bob Kraut's website, I didn't realize that the book hadn't come out yet.
I've visited the website and I'm confused: are Facebook-less creatures unable to partake in the service? Wouldn't that be kind of weird?
I rarely upvote things to boomark them, but this is exactly the kind of thing that I like to read about. We are building a platform for groups of people come together, kind of like grouper does for 3 guys and 3 girls, but a different approach. And psychology is a huge part of it! Making people want to do what you want them to do, or not want to do what you don't want them to do, is an art. But it is also a science, a…
Here is what I can tell you without getting in trouble. People take action because of emotional reasons, and justify that decision with logic and "objective" reasons to defend their decision to others.
Every single thing you want your users to do is causing them pain. They do not want to click... Before they do even the simplest thing possible, they will rack their brain for excuses to not do it and avoid the pain you created for them. Your job is to make it MORE PAINFUL NOT TO TAKE ACTION!!!
There are two ways to do this. (you should do both) 1. Make the process as painless as possible. 2. remind them and aggravate the pain that led them to your app in the first place.
Make sure your messaging not only hits on the emotional triggers at play and focuses on the benefits, not the features... (People buy the hole, not the drill) but more importantly gives them the tools to defend their action to their friends and everyone else who they need to defend the decision to. ------------
You should read Napoleon Hill's book "Think and Grow Rich," if you read it carefully, you will see it is literally a bible of understanding human nature and the world, etc...
Here is a slightly relevant excerpt and list from the book, "The 10 Mind Stimuli. The stimuli to which the mind responds most freely are:
1. The Desire For Sex Expression 2. Love 3. A Burning Desire for fame, power, financial gain, money... 4. Music 5. Friendship between either those of the same sex or those of the opposite sex. 6. A Master Mind Alliance based upon the harmony of two or more people who ally themselves for spiritual or temporal advancement. 7. Mutual Suffering, such as that experienced by people who are persecuted. 8. Autosuggestion 9. Fear 10. Narcotics and Alcohol.
I hope this helps... Good Luck!
Hahaha! I love the "don't click the hook" image on your web site. Brilliant! Did you guys create that yourselves or is that some sort of plugin?
Ha thanks! We hand-rolled it with jQuery and a hook image from iStockPhoto (what can we say, we couldn't avoid the the easy fish pun), but if people are interested we could release it as a jQuery plug-in.
This is so smart! A lot of tech is awesome but lets never forget that its humans with actual psychologies using the technology. These users face social pressures to be upstanding and responsible like we all do in real life - being online is not an excuse for bad behavior - this is a great example of the merger b/w virtual and real lives. Seems like LinkedIn pioneered this, HN also does this to a great degree, but now…
Thanks, Abbas! We're actually soon going to roll out a big, new feature that will take this notion to the next level. We're really excited about it. Stay tuned...
I've visited the website and I'm confused: are Facebook-less creatures unable to partake in the service? Wouldn't that be kind of weird?
Sorry, @weff. Right now we require Facebook, because we heavily rely on the graph to match groups while requiring minimal work from our members. For instance, we want to make sure the two groups don't already know each other, and we haven't figured out a good way to replicate this functionality without Facebook (e.g. "tell us all the people you know!") If you have any ideas, though, we'd love to hear them.
Hahaha! I love the "don't click the hook" image on your web site. Brilliant! Did you guys create that yourselves or is that some sort of plugin?