Building a web application that attracts and retains regular visitors is tricky enough, but creating a social application that encourages visitors to interact with one another requires careful planning. This book provides practical solutions to the tough questions you'll face when building an effective community site -- one that makes visitors feel like they've found a new home on the Web. If your company is ready to take part in the social web, this book will help you get started. Whether you're creating a new site from scratch or reworking an existing site, Building Social Web Applications helps you choose the tools appropriate for your audience so you can build an infrastructure that will promote interaction and help the community coalesce. You'll also learn about business models for various social web applications, with examples of member-driven, customer-service-driven, and contributor-driven sites.

• Determine who will be drawn to your site, why they'll stay, and who they'll interact with

• Create visual design that clearly communicates how your site works

• Build the software you need versus plugging in one-size-fits-all, off-the-shelf apps

• Manage the identities of your visitors and determine how to support their interaction

• Monitor demand from the community to guide your choice of new functions

• Plan the launch of your site and get the message out

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 3 Ratings

A Vital Book For Anyone Involved In Social Web Development - 2009-12-09
Reviewer Rating:
Gavin Bell's "Building Social Web Applications: Establishing Community at the Heart of Your Site" is an absolutely vital guide for anyone involved in the development of a social or collaborative web site--whether they are a UX planner, Information Architect, Software Developer or if they are involved involved in the Business Implementation of the Site. It successfully provides guidance in making the external behavior, appearance, application design, and community building efforts congruent with the Social and Collaborative goals of the site's users and implementation team. Like the best sort of User Experience guide, it does not offer a cookie-cutter by-the-numbers approach to all sites' development. Rather, it provides tools and a from the Goals and Audience definition-based approach to defining the appearance, programmatic behavior and recruitment activities necessary to make a site which meets and exceeds the expectations of user's and that will fully support their desired activities. It is a conceptual book which requires the designer/analysts thoughtful participation but all of the tools necessary to planning a Breakthrough Social/Collaborative Web Site are here.

My only quip with this outstanding handbook is that the title and publisher publicity do not (in my opinion) do an adequate job of explaining the intent, approach and richness of this volume. I would have titled it something more like, "A Complete and Thoughtful Handbook to Make A Social Web Application that is Exactly Suited to Your Target Audience and Their Activities"

--Ira Laefsky
IT/HCI Researcher and Consultant

Technological How-To Served with Social Context - 2010-01-28
Reviewer Rating:
Gavin Bell's experience in technology and social networking software applications is wonderfully presented and organized. The book is targeted to the system designer rather than the coder - offering practical advice with a healthy dose of theory to explain why some interactions work and others don't. It is so rich in content, the reader will wear out his or her highligher in no time. The writing is clear and well organized with examples at every step. The author includes good graphics, references to interesting websites, chapter summaries and other tools to make the subject approachable to the reader. Anyone contemplating starting or adding a social web application will benefit from this excellent book.

The advice you can get from this book is platform agnostic - 2009-12-22
Reviewer Rating:
If you are looking for and how-to guide, with code listings and practical examples you better pick another book. Gavin Bell covers the topic from an architect/designer point of view, he also tends keep in mind the business side of things, something I appreciated. This means the content will be valuable for a long time, since languages, tools and frameworks come and go, while the advice you can get from this book is platform agnostic. Don't get me wrong, this isn't a book with just dry theory, it's based on solid experience both from first-hand experience by the author and the way some major social applications have been build and evolved

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