Building Social Web Applications by Bell, Gavin -- Read -- Imperial Library of Trantor

Index

Building Social Web Applications

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Design As the Primary Approach Who This Book Is For Who This Book Is Not For What You’ll Learn How This Book Is Organized Typographical Conventions Used in This Book Safari® Books Online We’d Like to Hear from You How This Book Came About Acknowledgments

1. Building a Social Application

Building Applications The Distributed Nature of Seemingly Everything

Real-Time Services APIs and Their Importance Collective Intelligence: The New Artificial Intelligence

Summary

2. Analyzing, Creating, and Managing Community Relationships

Analyzing Your Users’ Relationships

Relationships with Baby Boomers to Gen-C’ers Behavior and Interaction-Based Relationships

Customer-service-driven Publisher-driven Member-driven Contributor-driven

Pros and Cons of Different Relationship Types

Analyzing the Essence of Your Community’s Needs

Apple and Its Many Communities Determining Your Site’s Purpose Creating and Nurturing Relationships

Summary

3. Planning Your Initial Site

Deciding What You Need Building a Web Application Choosing Who You Need Planning the Life Cycle

Expecting to Evolve with the Community

Twitter Flickr

Keeping Your Application Simple Avoiding the Line Item Approach Getting to the Core Quickly Taking Time to Plan

Iterating Showing it off Figuring out the verbs

Communicating During Development Managing the Development Cycle

Feature Prioritization and the Release Cycle Choosing a Development Methodology

Collecting Audience Feedback

Why Would People Continue to Visit Your Site?

Summary

4. Creating a Visual Impact

Dynamic Interactions

The Power of Partial Page Reloads Designing Around Community-Generated Internal Pages Visual Design and Navigation

Design First

Page Types Designer Roles and Team Approaches

Visual design approach Software design approach Wireframes approach Sketching approach

Copywriting Summary

5. Working with and Consuming Media

Media Types Affect Consumption Styles

Analyzing Consumption Patterns Collecting Consumption Data

Media Evolves and Consumption Styles Change

“comment is free” Amazon: Reader Reviews Encourage Purchases

New Services Respond to Evolving Needs

Music Photos Video

Summary

6. Managing Change

Resistance

Schema Theory

Congruence Adaptation Rate of change

Web Communities and Change

Internal Workflow Community Managers Summary

7. Designing for People

Making Software for People

Waterfalls Are Pretty to Look At

Interaction Design Identify Needs with Personas and User-Centered Design

Talking with Potential Users Naming Influences Perspectives

Common Techniques for UCD Running Interaction Design Projects Using Agile and UCD Methods Beyond UCD

HCI and Information Architecture The Craftsman Approach

Learning to Love Constraints

Keeping Experiments Quick Figuring Out the Social Aspect Subjects, Verbs, and Objects

Including You, Me, and Her Over There, Plus Him, Too Moving Quickly from Idea to Implementation

Explaining to Others What You Are Doing Creating Service Functionality Documents Calculating Content Size

Don’t Let Your Users Drown in Activity Implementing Search

Member-Specific Search Advanced Search

Understanding Activity and Viewpoints

Recipe Books: An Example Remembering the Fun

Twelve Ideas to Take Away Summary

8. Relationships, Responsibilities, and Privacy

We Are in a Relationship? Personal Identity and Reputation Handling Public, Private, and Gray Information Privacy and Aggregate Views See But Don’t Touch: Rules for Admins Private by Default? Setting Exposure Levels Managing Access for Content Reuse, Applications, and Other Developers

Content Reuse Don’t Give Away Too Much Power Licensing Content

Summary

9. Community Structures, Software, and Behavior

Community Structures

Publisher-Led Interest-Led Product-Led

Supporting Social Interactions

Non-Text-Based Social Interaction Competition: Making Games Social Content Creation and Collectives Social Microblogging

Who Is Sharing, and Why?

Competition Between Peers Skews Interaction Talking About Things That Are Easy to Discuss

How Are They Sharing?

Being Semiprivate Lifestreaming and Social Aggregation Overfeeding on Lifestreams A Simple Core for Rapid Growth

Social Software Menagerie

Blogging

Community blogging Creating a blogging system

Commenting Is Not the Same As Blogging

Groups

Group Formation Group Conversation

Conversing on message boards Making message boards

Group Aggregation Tools Collaboration Tools for Groups Social Platforms As a Foundation Ning and White Label Social Software Growing Social Networks

Summary

10. Social Network Patterns

Sharing Social Objects

Relationships and Social Objects Determining the Right Social Object

Published Sites Expect Audiences Deep and Broad Sharing Capturing Intentionality Cohesion Filtering Lists by Popularity

Filtering Lists to Show Recent Content Calculating Popularity Across a Site

Commenting, Faving, and Rating

Commenting Faving or Marking As Favorite Rating

Internal Messaging Systems Friending Considered Harmful Sharing Events Summary

11. Modeling Data and Relationships

Designing URLs Getting to the Right URL Permalinks Putting Objects on the Internet

Issuing Identifiers Identifying People Using Data-Driven Site Design Handling Containment Changing Identities and Linking Content Identity and Context-Dependent Views Exploring a Video Example

Aggregating Data to Create New Content Exploring Groups

Handling Groups and Privacy Handling Privacy and Scaling Issues

Making the Most of Metadata Connecting the Relationship to the Content

Modeling Relationships Entering the Geoworld Becoming “Brokers of the World”

Considering Time Implications Looking Beyond the Web Summary

12. Managing Identities

Existing Identities Forms of Identification

Email Real Names Versus Aliases and Screen Names OpenID Tips for Account Registration and Verification

The Need for Profile Pages

Profile Page Anatomy Real-World Profile Pages

Pownce Twitter LinkedIn and Nature Network Personal network member maximums

Activity Pages Invisibility and Privacy Summary

13. Organizing Your Site for Navigation, Search, and Activity

Understanding In-Page Navigation

Tagging Content Searching for People

Connecting People Through Content Providing Activity Pages

Determining Activity Page Content

Filtering Activity Lists and the Past

Using Replies to Create Conversations Allowing for Content Initiation Versus Content Follow-Up Providing for Email Updates Creating RSS Feeds

Who Stole My Home Page? Providing for Site Navigation

Creating Page Titles

Summary

14. Making Connections

Choosing the Correct Relationship Model for Your Social Application

Creating the Language of Connections Blocking Relationships

Information Brokers Notifications and Invitations

Invites and Add As Follower Requests Secure and Personal Invites Pending Invites Spam

Social Network Portability

Social Graph Importing Friends by the Book

Spamming, Antipatterns, and Phishing Address Books, the OAuth Way Changing Relationships over Time Administering Groups

Public or Private? Regulating Group Creation

Summary

15. Managing Communities

Social Behavior in the Real World Starting Up and Managing a Community Trolls and Other Degenerates Separating Communities Encouraging Good Behavior

Authenticating Through Profile Pages Rating Posts and People

Gaming the System Membership by Invitation or Selection Rewarding Good Behavior Helping the Community Manage Itself

Moderating a Community Intervention and Course Correction Premoderation and Libel Extreme Measures: Banning Users and Removing Posts Absent Landlords Lead to Weak Communities Filtering and Automation

Balancing Anonymity and Pseudo-Anonymity Summary

16. Writing the Application

Small Is Good: A Reprise How Social Applications Differ from Web Applications Agile Methodologies Deployment and Version Control

Testing Live Is Possible, but Use Conditionality Test-Driven Development Automated Builds Make Management Easier Applying Developer Tools to Social Applications Making Use of Flexible Development with Your Community

Infrastructure and Web Operations

Managing Operations

Designing Social Applications

Using Prototypes, Not Pictures Assisting Developers with Use Cases Designing in Good Behaviors

Your App Has Its Own Point of View How Code Review Helps Reduce Problems

The Power and Responsibility of Naming Being RESTful

Beyond the Web Interface, Please

i18n, L10n, and Their Friend, UTF-8

Bug Tracking and Issue Management

Tracking Tools Prioritizing Issues Differentiating Bugs from Feature Requests Handling Security

Rapid User Interfaces

Rapid Prototyping

Scaling and Messaging Architectures

Ajax Helps with Scaling Queuing Non-Visible Updates Real Time Versus Near Time Polling Versus Pushing XMPP Messaging External Processing: Scaling on the Fly and by the Batch Performance Testing Languages Don’t Scale Cache, Then Shard Fast and Light Data Storage

Implementing Search Identity and Management of User Data

OpenID for Identity What to Ask for on Registration When a User Chooses to Leave Admin Users Accessing Content via OAuth

Federation Making Your Code Green and Fast Building Admin Tools and Gleaning Collective Intelligence

Social Network Analysis Machine Learning and Big Data Sets Reputation Systems

Summary

17. Building APIs, Integration, and the Rest of the Web

“On the Internet” Versus “In the Internet” Making Your Place Within the Internet Why an API?

Exposing Your Content to Search from the Internet Running Services, Not Sites

Being Open Is Good Arguing for Your API Internally Implementing User Management and Open Single Sign-On

Integrating Other Services Lightweight Integration Works Best Avoiding Data Migration Headaches Avoiding Duplication Email Notifications: Managing Your Output from Multiple Applications Making an API the Core of the Application Handling People and Objects, the Stuff of Social Applications

Designing an API

RPC REST XMPP Response Formats

Comparing Social APIs

Tumblr Flickr Twitter

Reviewing the APIs

Writable APIs Extending and Fine-Tuning Your API Wrapping API Calls Using API Alternatives Using HTML Badges Interoperability Is Harder with Snowflake APIs Sticking with Standards Standardizing APIs Using OpenSocial Creating a Standard

Managing the Developer Community

API and Scaling Issues Allowing Integration Real Time Versus Near Time for APIs APIs Can Be Restrictive Not Just Your Own API

Create an API? Summary

18. Launching, Marketing, and Evolving Social Applications

Loving and Hating the Home Page

Your Site Launch The Soft-Launch Approach The Hard-Launch Approach Your Product Name A Friendly Invitation

Financing Your Site

Offering Premium and Freemium Models

Marketing Achieving and Managing Critical Mass

Arriving with Context Considering Contact Import APIs and Their Importance Using Tools and Services for Launch and Support Nurturing the First Few Hundred Users Encouraging Your Community

Evolving Your Site

Remaining in Beta Balancing Feature Requests and Issue Management Adding Functionality Build Something New or Refine the Old? Adding Functionality After Refining Watching for What Your Community Demands

Delicious and Boolean search Flickr printing and video Twitter and @replies

Keeping Up with the Competition (or Not) Avoiding Feature-Led Development Encouraging Data-Supported Development Making Useful Products (Experience-Led) Determining When a Bug Is a Bug Staying Focused and Coherent Planning for Redesigns and Refactoring

Establishing the Rhythm of Your Evolving Application Summary

Index About the Author Colophon SPECIAL OFFER: Upgrade this ebook with O’Reilly

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