Building social web applications – establishing community at the heart of your site

Description

Building a social web application that attracts and retains regular visitors, and gets them to interact, isnt easy to do. This book walks you through the tough questions youll face if youre to create a truly effective community site – one that makes visitors feel like theyve found a new home on the Web. Whether youre creating a new site from scratch or embracing an existing audience Building Social Web Applications helps you and your fellow web developers, designers, and project managers make difficult decisions, such as choosing the appropriate interaction tools for your audience, and building an infrastructure to help the community gel.With this book, youll learn to: understand who will be drawn to your site, why theyll stay, and who theyll interact with; build the software you need versus plugging in off-the-shelf apps; create visual design that clearly communicates what your site will do; manage the identities of your visitors and determine how to manage their interaction; watch for demand from the commun