The Next Web

Why people participate in online communities

Written on May 24, 2008 – 3:05 am
Ayelet Noff, Next Web WebTipr Israel

My dear friend Yaniv Golan, CTO of Yedda, had given a brilliant presentation regarding Incentives In Online Social Communities a few weeks ago at The Marker COM.vention and since it’s unfortunately in Hebrew, I wanted to translate it, include some of my own additions, and share it with you.

Online community participation

Yaniv Golan

Let’s start with the obvious question….Why?

Why do users comment? Why do they write blogs? Why do they upload pics to Flickr? Why do they send links to friends?

What are the motives behind user participation in social communities? Understanding why users participate can lead us to understand further how to engage users and increase their participation in online communities. Let’s first learn a bit more about our users.

(more…)

I hope you like that post!

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Amy Jo Kim, flickr, israel, Online Communities, participation, Ross Mayfield, virtual community, yaniv golan

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Walk around in a visual representation of the web

Written on December 11, 2007 – 2:28 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

According to the makers of Yoowalk, ‘surfing alone is so sad’. They’ve just pitched their project during the Start-up competition of Le Web 3. In exactly seven minutes they had to impress the jury with a talk about their target audience, revenue plan, market etcetera.

Yoowalk converts the World Wide Web into 3D flash-based villages (I’m sure McLuhan likes the idea). It’s a combination of the WWW, virtual worlds and social networks.

Users can walk through streets and visit houses and rooms. For example, there’s a YouTube house with a room showing the most viewed videos of last week as paintings on the wall. Also, RSS feeds of news sites are shown in frames. (I wish they made up a more creative visual metaphor for that.)

You can in addition create your own room, representing your blog or site. Make it as comfortable as you want, and don’t forget to pick your favorite music.

Main advantage is the possibility to create a 3D avatar and surf with others. I assume that it can be quite interesting to see your visitors walking around ‘in’ your blog. If you’re really impressed by the number of people walking around in your room, you can make a screenshot and embed it in your blog. A really smart move by the creators of Yoowalk, since it will probably generate a fairly good buzz.

During the presentation, Yoowalk seemed pretty simple to use, making it relevant for a large group of people. Unfortunately, there aren’t much screen shots available yet. However, I did subscribe for the private beta, which will launch early 2008. So more about this cool start-up soon.

leweb307, virtual community, yooweb

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