Embracing the community

Working with a community website can be a gigantic task. There are months and months of planning, when each feature is carefully discussed and made to fit into a huge puzzle of user contributions in order to maximize the time spent there. But the results can always surprise you. One has just to visit a Cybercafé in Brazil and see people using Orkut scraps like a primitive (and not particularly private) instant messaging system to fully grasp how this works.

Trying to get your idea back on rails will take a lot of work. Google tried integrating GTalk into Orkut as a way to push their own IM system and solve this issue, but as far as I can tell, the results weren't exactly perfect either (even if the move is quite clever). We ran into a similar situation at GameTV: we forgot to block CSS editing in our blogs, and soon everyone was using this trick to customize their looks. Unfortunately, the less experienced users were also supressing their own Edit button and getting stuck out of their blogs, resulting in dozens of emails complaining about it.

A producer must be one with its audience, not unlike Sam Walton made a point of checking his WalMart stores personally. There is much to be learned from your users, but to study them without influencing the results (like in a Focus Group testing) can be a herculean task - if you want an example, you have to look no further than Microsoft and their UI and original Xbox controller to show just how little users can communicate what they truly want.

So the real trick here is harnessing these needs and wants and focusing them into a product that keeps them coming back for more. I am going through a very complicated stage right now, trying to guess from other sites... but the real work will really begin once the site is live. And then, we'll see.