
A few random thoughts on building communities - calebrown
http://kylewritescode.com/post/1065654202/a-few-random-thoughts-on-building-communities
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papa
"Be ready to follow the community; that is, the community might end up in a
slightly/vastly different place than you intended. That’s okay; embrace it."

Spot on with this one. If you fail to embrace where the community is pulling
you, you might miss out on a bigger business opportunity than the one you
originally envisioned.

~~~
kylebragger
Thanks so much. If I had to pick one "top" point, it'd probably be this one.

~~~
tsipo
I totally agree. I joined Forrst about a month ago, and this is one of the
things I like the most about it. I can see that you are listening to the
community. I have seen other examples (no need to get into names) when the
people who built the community think that they OWN it. That they can dictate
exactly what's gonna happen there and that the community members are in a way
puppets in their own great show.

It doesn't work like this, of course. As a community builder you can - and
should - set the rules and the guidelines. You can - and should - be proud of
it. But you don't own it. You should leave your members enough space to be
themselves, and you should listen to them and be ready to adjust your system
if you think their input makes sense.

One other thing I like about Forrst is the diversity. There are experienced
people next to high-school students. From many paradigms of web development
and design and many corners of the planet. I learned about Forrst from an NYC
tweep who asked "how can I get invited?". In the few days when my invitation
was pending (and I still didn't know anything about the community), I was
afraid that it will turn out to be a Silicon-Valley closed clique. I am very
happy to see that I was absolutely wrong!

Keep up the good work, Kyle, you and the others who work on Forrst. Many
thanks. Any my excuses for the lengthy reply :-)

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magic6435
One thing for sure is that the first people on forrst steered the creation of
the posting guidelines tremendously. There was a time when we enthusiastically
had posts showing off users workspaces but it started to get old and show that
was not the type of content people were coming to see. Very organic growth
with the community being in charge of content but you still need someone like
Kyle to put his foot down here and there.

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Andrew_Quentin
I have two, possibly three questions:

How many users are there in that "community" right now and how much time do
you exactly, roughly, spend on the "community"?

How does the time you spend now compare to the time you spent right at the
beginning?

The third optional question is, how did you actually build the community? Did
you use those techniques, like, posting through different accounts and
starting discussions with your own self and other techniques?

~~~
kylebragger
> How many users are there in that "community" right now and how much time do
> you exactly, roughly, spend on the "community"?

roughly 12,000, with ~5,000 active in the last 30 days (this only counts users
whose accounts are more than 30 days old). still very young but seeing very
healthy growth.

> How does the time you spend now compare to the time you spent right at the
> beginning?

I'd say I actually spend _more_ time on it now (~6 days a week) than I did at
the beginning; the site is almost profitable now and is my full time job, vs.
the first few months where it was only a side project.

> The third optional question is, how did you actually build the community?
> Did you use those techniques, like, posting through different accounts and
> starting discussions with your own self and other techniques?

I got friends and colleagues to join up and pestered the heck out of most of
them until the site became sticky enough that they came back (to my delight)
on their own volition. I only have ever had one account :)

~~~
petercooper
_I got friends and colleagues to join up and pestered the heck out of most of
them until the site became sticky enough that they came back (to my delight)
on their own volition. I only have ever had one account :)_

This sounds like the bowling pin technique (or whatever it's called) that was
described on HN a few weeks ago. Where you start with a very small community
that will talk to each other anyway and then grow at a trickle to keep the
overall velocity up. In this way, your invite only tactic seems to have paid
dividends vs having 10,000 people hit on day one and finding nothing going on.

 _Update: Thanks for find it where that "bowling pin" thing was, a clicky
link:<http://cdixon.org/2010/08/21/the-bowling-pin-strategy/> _

~~~
kylebragger
Haven't heard of that one, I'll check it out though. Catchy name, too. And yes
-- I think you're spot on here. It's gotten a lot of flak for being invite
only but I really believe in the model (as long as you can stay on the right
side of the elitism line).

[edit] Just checked it out; was a post from Chris Dixon. totally spot on.
Thank you sir.

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wwortiz
Do you have plans to open forrst up at any point? I don't have a portfolio and
doubt I will have a good one for quite a while (in engineering school) but I
really do enjoy looking around the design community at what people are
building and how they are doing it.

~~~
kylebragger
No plans to allow open signups, but the invites are purely meant to help
throttle the growth of the userbase & community. If you are a developer and/or
designer and are passionate about what you do, no matter how experienced or
not, that's more than enough.

~~~
minalecs
not sure if this is the right place to ask, but can I get an invite ?

~~~
kylebragger
Shoot me an email: kyle at forrst dot com.

