

Ask HN: How To Build a Community? - Andrew_Quentin

I do not suppose there is anything else harder to do on the internet. So how do you think a community like hn or reddit or digg or facebook or any other can be built?
======
trevelyan
Suggestions that have worked for me on a smaller scale:

1\. Assign users meaningful names on signup. I pull them from the email
address (whatever precedes @ if the username isn't already used in the
system). This works out much better than assigning names like "user14132"
because it makes casual participants seem more involved than they otherwise
would.

2\. Also, there's a huge difference in site engagement between burying
comments after a splash page and putting them on the front page sidebar. There
is a trade-off between getting people into your funnel and encouraging casual
participation. If you're building community it will come at a cost.

3\. Send out email notifications on direct replies in community areas (but be
careful not to open your systems to spamming). People love getting
automatically notified whenever someone replies to them.

