Thinking Mobile? If You Build It, They Will Come

Thursday, 4th February 2010 in Mobile by Simon | No comments

Smartphone applications are predicted to overtake the desktop software market. So who will win the multi-billion-pound [dollar] application economy, and what are the new rules?

In January 2010, Apple announced to great fanfare that they had recently sold their 3 billionth iPhone application. Of course not all these applications are paid-for, but with a 30% levy taken on each and every paid-for application, Apple are taking a significant share of the revenue from the application pie. However, as a distribution channel, the AppStore is second to none, whilst the iPhone uptake is staggering, with a majority share of the smartphone market in many regions of the world. There is a significant opportunity for any developer to make a huge return on investment, assuming the idea is a winning one.

iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile, Blackberry, Nokia and now the larger form factor iPad and Kindle support the idea of applications, or will do in the near future. So what do you need to do to design and build your first application?

  1. Familiarise yourself with the rules
    Whether you’re going to build applications for the iPhone OS, Android OS or any other of the mobile platforms, you will need to familiarise yourself with how each operating system does things. Smartphone development is different from the development we are accustomed with on the Web. Reading the user interface guidelines for each platform will go a long way to developing your first application. Smartphones are personal devices and know where you are almost all the time through GPS. They have rotation detectors, compasses and multitouch screens with gestural interfaces. Only once you know what is possible with each smartphone platform can you begin to design your application.
  2. Brainstorm the issues
    This is the creative part of your application development process. You have a basic idea, but you need to take it forward into something that has features and benefits. Will the application be paid-for or free? Will it provide a service or be a marketing channel? Will it be standalone or link closely with other online presences and networks? Smartphone applications, unlike ordinary websites, invariably need to actually do something. There is an element of artificial intelligence at play, whereby the phone can actually know where it is in the world and it’s orientation, whilst the user interface is remarkably different from that of simply a mouse and keyboard. Smartphone applications can’t simply be flat catalogues, they need to do something and do it well. Whether this is booking and accessing a car as with StreetCar, buying something from eBay, paying with PayPal, creating music with RjDj, drawing pictures with Brushes, price comparison with RedLaser, reading the latest news from the Guardian, video casting with Qik or planning your journey with Tube Deluxe your app needs to be compelling.
  3. Create a prototype
    You have your compelling idea; create a proof-of-concept prototype. This prototype is used to test some or many aspects of the intended design without attempting to exactly simulate the visual appearance, content or intended interactions. Such prototypes can be used to “prove” out a potential design approach such as range of motion, mechanics, sensors, architecture, etc. Making paper prototypes, for example, is a great way to test the application rather than creating low or high fidelity wireframes and hoping for the best. Doing this also provides a perfect opportunity for people around you — friends, colleagues and family members — to try out the prototype with little fuss. Only once you’re happy with the design should you begin any form of coding.
  4. Submit early
    You have your application working. You have conducted a number of usability tests and all is looking great. It’s time to submit it to the appropriate application store. Apple has its AppStore, Android its Market Place, Nokia its Ovi Store and so on. Each store has its own nuiances, but if you’re considering an iPhone application, Apple has been know to drag its feet when approving applications for release. Apple has a much discussed approval process, with the possibility of rejection commonplace. Don’t make plans that depend on Apple. It is better to silently release the application, rather than creating a huge fanfare.
  5. Iterate often
    Once your application has been launched your work is nowhere near over, indeed it has just begun! As you gain more and more users, improvements will suggest themselves not only from within your team, but more often, from your users. Here is where you go back to stage two and start brainstorming again. Version 2 may include bug fixes, but also major feature updates. For the latter, your brainstorming will decide what is most important for the next iteration. When your next iteration is complete, the AppStore, for example, makes upgrades far easier to achieve than for normal desktop software.

If you’re planning an application that could disrupt one of the smartphones capabilities, such as Google Voice for the iPhone, it may be worth considering whether building an application specifically for that particular operating system is worthwhile. Google Voice was neither approved nor rejected by Apple for the iPhone, but has now been replaced by a fully featured HTML5 web-based application; circumventing the Apple approval process. Of course this now means that the same web-based application can be used for not just the iPhone, but other smartphones.

Now go forth and build it!

Resources

Smartphone User Interface Guidelines:

Application Development Frameworks:

  • PhoneGap an open source development tool for building iPhone, Android, Blackberry and other mobile apps with JavaScript
  • Appcelerator a mobile development platform for javascript developers

Mobile Web Application Frameworks:

  • jQTouch a jQuery plugin for mobile development
  • iUI an iPhone/iPod Touch user interface framework

Other:

How to Optimise Your Social Media Profile

Monday, 1st February 2010 in Social Media by Simon | 1 comment

Social media has become the new buzzword of the web. As businesses wake up to realise the power of social media and the way it can accelerate the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) process, more and more companies are venturing towards Social Media Optimisation (SMO).

Here are some tips to optimise your social media profile so that you get effective results:

  • Increase your linkability: add a blog, create white papers, aggregate content via ping.fm.
  • Make it easy: make tagging and bookmarking simple on your website.
  • Reward inbound links: include permalinks, list recent linking blogs, promote linkers with a nofollow tag.
  • Help content travel: PDFs, video files, podcasts, slideshows, articles.
  • Encourage mash-ups: open your API; permit embeds; permit RSS.
  • Add value: be a resource, even if it doesn’t seem like it will help you — provide freemium content.
  • Reward helpfulness: notes of thanks, discounts, badges.
  • Participation: create awareness, prolong buzz around your website.
  • Know your audience: research, community mapping, targeting, metrics.
  • Create content: videos, articles, podcasts, widgets, images, slides, plugins.
  • Don’t forget your roots: be humble.
  • Don’t be afraid to try new things: stay fresh, reinvent the wheel daily.
  • Develop a social media optimisation strategy: define objectives, set goals, have a desired channel or channels, track reputation, find influence, create credibility, be a trailblazer.

(via .net magazine, December 2009.)

Ultimately, the important thing is to first research how to optimise each of your social networks. You have to find a niche and decide what content and keywords you would like to optimise against. Although some of your social networking profiles and information can be found in general search engines, you are ultimately optimising to be found within that particular social network’s search engine.

Twitter, for example, until recently did not provide access to its data firehose, therefore, search engines such as Google and Bing were shut out. This has since changed, but until sites such as Twitter and Facebook fully open up to organisations and developers alike, optimising for each site is a necessity.

Google’s 5 Privacy Principles

Thursday, 28th January 2010 in Technology by Simon | No comments

In honour [sic] of International Data Privacy Day today, 28th January 2010, Google has published their own guidlines on privacy.

The timing of this is quite intriguing following the recent hacking attack, supposedly orchestrated by the Chinese authorities, on Google, Yahoo, Adobe and some 20 other major international corporations; whilst there is also the ongoing concern from many quarters about Google is too dominant in many aspects of our online lives.

But less of the cynicism, the five principles are:

  • Use information to provide our users with valuable products and services.
    Focus on providing the best user experience is the first tenet of Google’s philosophy. When users share information with us, it allows us to build services and products that are valuable to them. We believe that focusing on the user fosters both the products and privacy-enhancing features that have fueled innovation and built a loyal audience of users online.
  • Develop products that reflect strong privacy standards and practices.
    Our ambition is to be at the leading edge of technology, including the development of tools that help users manage their personal information in a simple, accessible manner without detracting from a valuable user experience. We comply with privacy laws, and additionally work internally and with regulators and industry partners to develop and implement strong privacy standards.
  • Make the collection of personal information transparent.
    We strive to show users the information used to customize our services. Where appropriate, we aim to be transparent about the information we have about individual users and how we use that information to deliver our services.
  • Give users meaningful choices to protect their privacy.
    People have different privacy concerns and needs. To best serve the full range of our users, Google strives to offer them meaningful and fine-grained choices over the use of their personal information. We believe personal information should not be held hostage and we are committed to building products that let users export their personal information to other services. We don’t sell users’ personal information.
  • Be a responsible steward of the information we hold.
    We recognize our responsibility to protect the data that users entrust to us. We take security issues seriously and work together with a large community of users, developers and external security experts to make the Internet safer and more secure.

Whether these principles can be fully adhered to by Google is an important question, but they do serve to calm the fears of many about what they’ll do with our data. If nothing else, they do serve to highlight the need for data privacy to be taken seriously by anyone considering building web applications.

If you’re interested in more of Google’s privacy stances, they’ve got an entire portal dedicated to them.

Optimise Your URLs for Web Crawlers and Indexing

Thursday, 8th October 2009 in Search by Simon | 2 comments

Many questions about website architecture, crawling and indexing, and even ranking issues can be boiled down to one central issue: How easy is it for search engines to crawl your site?

The Internet is not simply a big place it is a huge place; new content is being created all the time. Google, Yahoo and Microsoft each have a finite number of resources, so when faced with the nearly-infinite quantity of content that’s available online, their various crawlers are only able to find and crawl a percentage of that content. Then, of all the content they’ve crawled, they’re only able to index a portion. Of course with the cheapness of storage, the search engines are able to index more and more content each day, but not at the pace the Web is growing.

URLs are like the bridges between your website and a search engine’s crawler: crawlers need to be able to find and cross those bridges (i.e., find and crawl your URLs) in order to get to your site’s content. If your URLs are complicated or redundant, crawlers are going to spend time tracing and retracing their steps; if your URLs are organised and lead directly to distinct content, crawlers can spend their time accessing your content rather than crawling through empty pages, or crawling the same content over and over via different URLs.

So, what can you do as a website developer or owner to reduce that labyrinth of URLs and helping crawlers find more of your content faster? Below are a few ideas:

  • Remove unnecessary query string details from the URL.
    Parameters in the URL that don’t change the content of the page–like session IDs or list sort orders–can be removed from the URL and put into a cookie. By putting this information in a cookie and 301 redirecting to a clean URL, you retain the information and reduce the number of URLs pointing to that same content.
  • Stop infinite pagination in, for example, lists and calendars.
    If you have a calendar with infinite past and future dates or a list with infinite pagination you have what is described as an infinite crawl space, which is a huge burden on crawlers. To resolve the calendar issue, you can add no-follow attributes to links to dynamically created future calendar pages. When creating pagination links, disable previous and next links when the first and last pages are reached and redirect users to an appropriate page if the query string in the URL is hacked (this may be a page not found static page).
  • Utilise the robots.txt file to prevent actions the web crawlers can’t or shouldn’t perform.
    Using a robots.txt file, you can disallow crawling of login pages, contact forms, shopping carts, and other pages whose sole functionality is something that a crawler can’t and shouldn’t perform. This lets crawlers spend more of their time crawling content that they can actually do something with.
  • Prevent duplicate content.
    An ideal scenario for crawlers is a one-to-one link between content an a URL. Each URL leads to a unique bit of content and each piece of content can be accessed by a unique URL. The closer your site can get to this scenario, the more streamlined your site will be for crawling and indexing. If your CMS makes this difficult to achieve, you can use the canonical tag to indicate a preferred URL for duplicate content.

More information on this topic can be found on the Google Webmaster Central Blog.

Canonical URLs – What Are They All About?

Wednesday, 7th October 2009 in Search by Simon | No comments

Google announced as long ago as February, in their official Webmaster Central Blog a new canonical URL tag:

Carpe diem on any duplicate content worries: we now support a format that allows you to publicly specify your preferred version of a URL. If your site has identical or vastly similar content that’s accessible through multiple URLs, this format provides you with more control over the URL returned in search results. It also helps to make sure that properties such as link popularity are consolidated to your preferred version.

But what do they mean by canonical? One of the definitions of canonical is reduced to the simplest and most significant form possible without loss of generality.

What this means is that if you have a page–let’s take an e-commerce product page–and the simplest URL that you want it accessible by is:

http://www.site.com/category/product.html

you can add the canonical tag to that specific product. Google, Yahoo and Microsoft use this tag to tell their search engines which URL it should have for the current page.

Now, let’s say that the particular software you use also allows you to access the same product using:

http://www.site.com/company/product.html

and

http://www.site.com/different_category/product.html

Perhaps this one product is in multiple categories. With this tag in place when any of the alternate pages are loaded this tag notifies any search engine that this is really the same product as the page you defined in the canonical tag. So, you are still allowed to have the content available as generally needed (by categories, tags, or some other organisation system) and still avoid having the content duplicated and penalised.

To implement the canonical URL tag in your web application, you simply need to do the following inside the <head> section of the duplicate content URLs:

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.site.com/category/product.html" />

As Google mention, this tag is a hint that they honour strongly. Google will take your preference into account, in conjunction with other signals, when calculating the most relevant page to display in search results.

The Ten Commandments of Social Media

Monday, 3rd August 2009 in Social Media by Simon | 8 comments

If you’ve ever wondered how to go about the whole social media thing, Lon Safko, author of the Social Media Bible suggests 10 commandments that go a long way to embracing the phenomenon:

Commandments 1. Thou Shalt Blog (like crazy)

Blogging, although possibly now considered old school is a first priority. Set up a blog, a personal blog, a business blog, says Safko, It’s easier than you think. There are a multitude of Blog providers and software for self-hosting. My clear favourite is WordPress, which provides a hosted solution much like Blogger.com or GoingOn.com, or in my case, the software to setup and manage your own blog.

Commandments 2. Thou Shalt Create Profiles (everywhere)

Create profiles on the websites that interest you; do it now before someone else takes them. Once they are gone, they are gone forever. That’s commonly called cyber squatting. So get out there. If you have a personal brand, set up all the profiles you can against that brand, alternatively just use your name. For example, You can see my Google and Facebook profiles, the later of which has allowed me my own distinct URL. You can see more of my profiles via the links in the footer of my website. For the technically-minded, you can use Open Social to make filling in your profiles as easy as a click of a button.

Commandments 3. Thou Shalt Upload Photos (lots of them)

Upload photographs. You’ve got them, afterall you probably own the latest and greatest digital SLR from Canon or Nikon. Don’t upload the one with you with a lampshade on your head, that’s somewhat counter-productive; but other photographs? Absolutely; show your creativity and interests. Customers want to see and participate. You want to give people a face to go with your company. Sites such as Flickr, known for hosting some stunning photographs, are regularly used as a private area through which not only photographs, but product designs can be discussed and developed with clients. Photobucket is another example, albeit more consumer orientated.

Commandments 4. Thou Shalt Upload Videos (all you can find)

Safko, like many others, sees videos becoming an important part of business interactions: You all have got videos. I don’t care whether it’s training videos or customer videos, grab your video camera and go interview some of your customers. What’s better than seeing your customer’s smiley face on your Web site? And it doesn’t cost anything. Fortunately, much like the plethora of photo sites, there are some really great video websites out there. My favourite is Vimeo, but you could also use the more familiar and popular YouTube.

Commandments 5. Thou Shalt Podcast (often)

In my opinion this is a tricky one, much like video. Safko suggest if you’re too cheap to get a camera, use the free audio software that’s in your computer. That’s what I did. I created 48 audio podcasts. If you take the podcasts I did for my book and played them back-to-back, they run 24 continuous hours of interviews. You can do that. It’s free. It just takes time. But like video, people don’t necessarily have the time, budget or talent to produce relatively decent Podcasts. If you’re going to create decent Podcast, however, put them on iTunes where they can easily be found. If you have a smart phone, you could also try the AudioBoo and Qik, they are simply awesome at recording and publishing Podcasts and Videocasts respectively.

Commandments 6. Thou Shalt Set Alerts (immediately)

Set alerts. People are talking about you. You probably need to know what they are saying and you want to participate. A simple approach would be to use Google Alerts or Technorati and the soon-to-be-released Twitterati. If you have a greater concern, companies like Brandwatch dedicate their lives to spidering the web and garnering what they call company sentiment based upon conversations.

Commandments 7. Thou Shalt Comment (on a multitude of blogs)

Commenting is like going to a cocktail party says Safko, You wouldn’t walk into a networking event, walk up to a group of people talking, and tell them your name and what you do in your business. That would be rude and unacceptable. Listen first. Read the blogs and add comments. You can be controversial, that’s okay. But participate. Get involved. Many blogs allow comments and there is also a 3rd-party services, such as Disqus, that help you keep track of all your comments.

Commandments 8. Thou Shalt Get Connected (with everyone)

Get LinkedIn. Put it in your email that you have a LinkedIn account, you have a Facebook account, and that you have a Twitter account. Make it a part of your heading on your letterhead, because that’s how you propagate. That’s how you sell it.

Commandments 9. Thou Shalt Explore Social Media (30 minutes per week)

Explore social media. Safko suggests give it thirty minutes a week, that’s all I’m asking. Friday morning grab your coffee, lock yourself in your office, and give it thirty minutes. Just Google something. I promise you within the first 30 days you will be excited. You’ll be as excited as I am. You will get excited because of the ROI. I would contend that 30 minutes per week isn’t enough. Spend 30 minutes per day, exploring and keeping up-to-date with what is happening out there in the big-bad-world.

There are tools that make this a lot easier; they’re called social media aggregation or lifestreaming. FriendFeed is one of the best social media aggregation and discussion tools available, with numerous widgets and 3rd-party applications. It currently supports more than 40 social media websites. SocialThing allows you to see everything that’s going on with your friends on all of your social networks and allows you to interact with multiple sites at one time. Importantly, SocialThing interacts with the 3rd-party APIs, so data is sent to the source service, unlike FriendFeed. Alternatively, Flock is a web browser with a built in social aggregator, which allows you to interact with sites such as Facebook and Twitter. It is not as wide reaching as its online rivals, but does boast a blog editor, drag-and-drop image uploading and an RSS aggregator.

Commandments 10. Thou Shalt Be Creative (go forth and create creatively)

Safko’s final commandment is all about creativity; And the most important commandment is creativity. That’s all. It’s just creativity and having fun. But you know what, that’s what your customers want. They want to see transparency. They want to see authenticity. They want to see you having fun. They want to be able to relate and communicate.

Google’s Philosophy – Ten Things

Friday, 24th April 2009 in Strategy by Simon | No comments

One of Google’s mantras is to never settle for the best. The perfect search engine, says Google co-founder Larry Page, would understand exactly what you mean and give back exactly what you want. Given the state of search technology today, that’s a far-reaching vision requiring research, development and innovation to realize. Google is committed to blazing that trail. Though acknowledged as the world’s leading search technology company, Google’s goal is to provide a much higher level of service to all those who seek information, whether they’re at a desk in Boston, driving through Bonn, or strolling in Bangkok.

To that end, Google has persistently pursued innovation and pushed the limits of existing technology to provide a fast, accurate and easy-to-use search service that can be accessed from anywhere. To fully understand Google, it’s helpful to understand all the ways in which the company has helped to redefine how individuals, businesses and technologists view the Internet.

Ten things Google has found to be true

  1. Focus on the user and all else will follow.
  2. It’s best to do one thing really, really well.
  3. Fast is better than slow.
  4. Democracy on the web works.
  5. You don’t need to be at your desk to need an answer.
  6. You can make money without doing evil.
  7. There’s always more information out there.
  8. The need for information crosses all borders.
  9. You can be serious without a suit.
  10. Great just isn’t good enough.

The full article can be found on Google’s corporate website.

My Work Philosophy

Thursday, 5th March 2009 in Strategy by Simon | No comments

Okay, so many of the points below aren’t purely my philosophy, but ideas and principles I have picked up along the way throughout my [development] career. Some relate to the UNIX philosophy, or even the Zen of Python, but wherever they’re from, they can be applied to many other domains.

  • Don’t reinvent the wheel unless you really have to. Borrow code and ideas from elsewhere whenever it makes sense. The web community it great at sharing, just look at the various JavaScript libraries, the huge quantities of APIs or indeed the major players’ developer areas: Google Code, Yahoo! Developer Network, Mozilla Developer Center, Adobe Developer Connection and Dev Opera to name five I regularly refer to.
  • Things should be as simple as possible, but no simpler (Einstein). This idea is really born out of and emphasised by 37Signals’ Getting Real book. Commonly, 90% of people using an application only use 10% of it’s functionality. The key therefore is to find what people use most often and only build that functionality. If there is a requirement to add more, then sobeit. This can also apply to the code-level, the essence here being a balance between over- and under-engineering something.
  • Do one thing well (The UNIX philosophy). It is better to do one thing well, than several second-rate. This could be at the code level — think encapsulation, coupling and cohesion — or indeed at the application level — you’re never going to beat Microsoft Word, but Google and Zoho have developed compelling alternatives, but with far less features.
  • Don’t fret too much about performance — understand how to write efficient code and plan to optimise later if or when needed.
  • Don’t try for perfection because good enough is often just that. This of course is a matter for conjecture. If I were working on a personal project, I may be more stringent on perfection than say, for a client’s application. This doesn’t mean to say the client’s application would be any worse, but rather it is a question of dotting-the-is and crossing-the-ts. It also depends on your perspective and what gains can be made by aiming for perfection.
  • (Hence) it’s okay to cut corners sometimes, only if you can do it right later. I rarely adhere to this! It makes sense to do it right the first time, since bodge-jobs often come back to haunt you and result in double the effort!
  • Don’t fight it; go with the flow. This is somewhat clichéd, but the essence behind this is try to avoid getting stressed out. This isn’t always easy to achieve, but taking a step back from a situation and avoiding politics is important.

I often strive for perfection, which isn’t an entirely clever pursuit since it is almost impossible to achieve. However, in a realm of imperfection, the principles above have helped me to achieve a modicum of decent code throughout the years. They may also resonate and provide inspiration for you.

Adobe’s LiveCycle Powered by Amazon’s Cloud

Wednesday, 14th January 2009 in Technology by Simon | 3 comments

Adobe recently announced, in conjunction with Amazon, that they would bring LiveCycle to Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). To quote Adobe:

Adobe is now offering developers subscribed to the Adobe Enterprise Developer Program access to their own virtual instance of LiveCycle ES through LiveCycle ES Developer Express. LiveCycle ES Developer Express provides a pre-configured, virtualized installation of LiveCycle ES Solution Components in a self-contained development environment. LiveCycle ES Developer Express is hosted on the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2). AEDP members can test, build, store and develop their applications in a cloud-base environment where all LiveCycle ES applications are pre-configured and running. The Adobe Enterprise Developer Program will offer a minimum of 10 hours of runtime per month, with additional hours to be available separately.

What is cloud computing and why is it important?

The term cloud computing, as used by some commentators, refers to the use of scalable, real-time, Internet-based information technology services and resources. This somewhat nebulous concept incorporates software as a service (SaaS), utility computing, Web 2.0 and other recent technology trends. The common theme stresses reliance on the Internet for satisfying the computing needs of users, without them needing knowledge of, expertise with, or control over the technology infrastructure that supports them. An often-quoted example is Google Apps, which provides common business applications online that are accessed from a web browser, while the software and data are stored on Google servers.

The cloud element of cloud computing derives from a metaphor used for the Internet, from the way it is often depicted in computer network diagrams, and is an abstraction for the complex infrastructure it conceals.

How do Adobe and Amazon fit into the equation?

Adobe and Amazon have similar goals. They both want to gain more share of the enterprise market. Amazon needs to convince the enterprise that its version of the cloud is capable of supporting the demands of enterprise applications. On the other hand Adobe wants to convince the developers who already use AWS that LiveCycle is the platform of choice for the enterprise.

What is Adobe LiveCycle?

Adobe LiveCycleAdobe’s LiveCycle Enterprise Suite is a J2EE-based server software product used to build applications that automate a broad range of business processes for enterprises and government agencies.

LiveCycle combines technologies for data capture, information assurance, document output, content services, and process management to deliver solutions such as account opening, services and benefits enrollment, correspondence management, request for proposal processes, and other manual based workflows.

What are Amazon Webservices?

Amazon Webservices LogoSince early 2006, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has provided companies of all sizes with an infrastructure web services platform in the cloud. With AWS you can requisition compute power, storage, and other services–gaining access to a suite of elastic IT infrastructure services as your business demands them. With AWS you have the flexibility to choose whichever development platform or programming model makes the most sense for the problems you’re trying to solve. You pay only for what you use, with no up-front expenses or long-term commitments, making AWS a cost-effective way to deliver applications to customers and clients.

How do they fit together?

Essentially, Adobe has put a Red Hat JBoss J2EE stack on AWS and deployed LiveCycle on the stack. Adobe state that this platform is purely for prototyping, developing and testing applications, rather than production environments, but that is likely to change.

The future

Deploying LiveCycle on AWS has wider implications, not only for Adobe products. By setting up a J2EE stack on AWS it makes it possible to deploy any Java-based application; yes that does mean one developed in Adobe’s ColdFusion or indeed its chief rival, Railo.

The Four C’s of Community

Thursday, 4th December 2008 in Social Media, Strategy by Simon | No comments

A web community is a web site (or group of web sites) that is a virtual community. Web communities in recent times commonly take the form of a social network service, such as Facebook, Upcoming and Last.fm, an Internet forum, a group of blogs such as WordPress.com and Blogger, or another kind of social software web application.

But what makes up a web community; what makes them successful? Below I discuss the four C’s of community: Content, Context, Connectivity and Community.

Content

A current meme when organising or building a website is the catchphrase Content is King. A big shift in the web in recent years has been the way websites are constructed. Today it’s a necessity, and indeed best practice, to separate form from content. In one hand you have the compelling content, whilst in the other you have the presentation, be it in the form of HTML and CSS, Flash or RSS, amongst others.

Quality content is one way in which you can make your website stand out. It is also a great way to attract the people who are needed to form the elusive community that your brand is hoping build. When considering community initiatives, there are three questions to ask: Where will the content come from; for example community driven or syndication? Does it provide indisputable value; does it have a unique selling point (USP)? Can a regular flow of quality content be maintained? Even pre-Web 2.0 initiatives have to focus on keeping the content itself fresh and relevant.

Web accessibility and search engine optimisation are also vital, so having content completely separated from presentation means a number of assistive technologies can make better use of the content, whilst the web robots can also readily consume the information.

Context

Context means understanding how people use your website, where they are in the user-journey and serving them the right experience at the right time. Well-designed applications and functionality have great opportunities to deliver on context.

For example, FriendFeed’s iPhone version, which is simply a re-worked web interface, is perfectly designed for contextual usage on the go. Similarly, Remember The Milk updates the interface explicitly for mobile and iPhone users, whilst also syndicating the content to applications such as Google Calendar. (It is questionable whether user-agent switching is good practice, but that is a whole new blog post.) Conversely, Delicious makes no attempt at changing the user interface for iPhone or Nokia N95 users since the iPhone and N95 have full web-capabilities through their respective web browsers.

In some instances the context in which the content is displayed will require reduced functionality. For example, the Last.fm mobile site does not allow you to play music, but simply search music listings, view recommendations, events and friend listings, and edit settings. However, through its API, Last.fm is able to offer its data and platform to third party developers to aid the building of new applications and communities, thus changing its context.

Connectivity

Connectivity is the ability of a system, whether that is a web-based community or a device like the iPhone, to connect with little or no modification. In the realm of communities, the ability to easily connect to your peers is the Holy Grail of the application.

Successful communities thrive on fluid, hard-to-measure activities that are, in the purest sense, relationship-based. It’s not all about mass communications — although Twitter and YouTube are both bucking this trend — but more about the micro-interactions. Designing experiences that support thousands of micro-interactions means that the community is able to function, unhindered, almost indefinitely. Facebook lends itself expertly to micro-interactions through the user’s ‘wall’.

Companies are turning to communities as the new customer relationship management (CRM), but this requires people to mind them. Organisations such as 37Signals and WildBit very effectively use Twitter to broadcast service updates and sometimes apologies, whilst the BBC and The Guardian online use it to broadcast links to new content.

Continuity

People often don’t like change, but communities that thrive often do so though evolution to meet the needs of users. Communities need to be flexible to evolve while still providing a valuable and consistent user experience which can be sustained. Too much of a radical change will almost certainly have a detrimental impact upon visits, at least initially.

Building communities is the new marketing for a brand, whether that is through wholely-owned properties or 3rd party social media services such as Twitter, WordPress or Ning. The starting point to any community is finding a niche that is currently underserved and serving that community better than anyone else. But Brands need to know a few things before they head down the community path. The web is saturated with communities. Some are thriving, while others have come and gone. Creating a community is not like your average marketing campaign that you can ditch it is a failure. If the community is successful the four C’s of content, contect, connectivity and continuity will have to be maintained and indeed, developed.

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