These are my random notes from Gavin Bell's session: "The Long Tail Needs Community" I didn't include all of the book-centric stuff, and instead tried to keep it to the universal truth of web sites and online communities. Funny aside, the opening lyrics of the song that came on at the end of Gavin's presentation were "Wake up everyone" from the song "Make it mine" by Jason Mraz I am loving this irony! Well done Ollie the sound guy, who was the one who picked it. In my role as production coordinator for previous sessions, I lived for finding poingient and ironic songs to play at conferences.
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Music always gets listened to. Who has an unlistened to album? Who has an unread book?
You can't do the last.fm data modeling for books like you can do for music.
Digital is easier. It can be remembered, annotated and stored. Then we can process it. The tools in one area, however don't always work in other areas.
Making reading work harder. It changes them when they read a book. We need to get their opinions and reactions etc.
We can help our readers by scaffolding the experience and making it social. ... We can go more in-depth than book groups.
Will we be able to get the reading data from ebooks?
We're in danger of getting disintermediated with things like PDF. This post-sale data is really valuable.
I hope we can create an open-ended platform for book reading.
The clever data capture tools for ebooks will be slow to come to print books.
How do we know an out-of-print book will be in demand?
We can take a popular book and harvest the interest from the people who read it. People are keen on annotating the books they've already got.
By publishing books you're creating a community. The people who bought the first-hand run never get the errata back to them.
What can reader themselves bring?
Recommendations, but we need to build tools to facilitate their interactions.
How can we extend the interaction?
Putting content online is a good first step.
Put reviews on the site. For bad reviews, engage with them, like Kodak does.
If you're hoping for a deeper reaction than a 3 line review, you need to know what activities people are up to.
Look deeper into Flickr for example. There are long-term deep relationships there. The same thing with Twitter. On the inside there are connections to real people and their real lives.
There's not a single social model for all book interactions. All have different needs. Travel is different than photography etc.
The community creates other objects, which will be the basis for other applications, all connected to the content you originally published.
Understanding the interactions between fellow readers. Publishers don't need to be the focus of the conversation.
Analyze the things that come from conversations about your books.
It's important to think about the social life of each social object.
You need to look at the things people create that come from your books.
Every activity we do is social in nature. (Check out the Acting with technology series from MIT press)
The people who read your book are not all the same. Make sure you recognize them as individuals. They don't want to have to create new accounts for everything you create. Understand when they come from different devices, they are still the same person.
**The role of community manager will become vital** (Aside, you should hire my wife Erin Capellman ... end of plug - Chad ;-)
People don't come to a restaurant because the tables are yellow.
Building websites is like running a bar. They come to a bar to have a good interaction with other people who are there. As a community manager, you must ensure this environment and deal with issues quickly.
You shouldn't launch a site with no budget for maintaining it, just as you wouldn't do that with an actual restaurant launch.
Make your content discoverable and that's relevant to the user. Flickr calls it "interestingness"
You want to showcase the things people are creating when they create them on your site.
Building an API is fundamental when building a social web service.
Summize built a search based on Twitter's own API.
If you're not doing this, you're missing out on orders of magnitude of activity.
And if you do, make sure you support open standards and allow connectivity. We're not building islands anymore.
What we're moving to is a role where we're brokering relationships.
Many publisher brands are generally anonymous. What does MacMillan mean as a brand? I can't really tell you.
Create a brand that has a way of interacting with people.
TAKEAWAYS
Build meaningful relationships
Think about long-term projects not just book sales.
Engage with the activities of your community, not just the people in them.
--------------------------
Music always gets listened to. Who has an unlistened to album? Who has an unread book?
You can't do the last.fm data modeling for books like you can do for music.
Digital is easier. It can be remembered, annotated and stored. Then we can process it. The tools in one area, however don't always work in other areas.
Making reading work harder. It changes them when they read a book. We need to get their opinions and reactions etc.
We can help our readers by scaffolding the experience and making it social. ... We can go more in-depth than book groups.
Will we be able to get the reading data from ebooks?
We're in danger of getting disintermediated with things like PDF. This post-sale data is really valuable.
I hope we can create an open-ended platform for book reading.
The clever data capture tools for ebooks will be slow to come to print books.
How do we know an out-of-print book will be in demand?
We can take a popular book and harvest the interest from the people who read it. People are keen on annotating the books they've already got.
By publishing books you're creating a community. The people who bought the first-hand run never get the errata back to them.
What can reader themselves bring?
Recommendations, but we need to build tools to facilitate their interactions.
How can we extend the interaction?
Putting content online is a good first step.
Put reviews on the site. For bad reviews, engage with them, like Kodak does.
If you're hoping for a deeper reaction than a 3 line review, you need to know what activities people are up to.
Look deeper into Flickr for example. There are long-term deep relationships there. The same thing with Twitter. On the inside there are connections to real people and their real lives.
There's not a single social model for all book interactions. All have different needs. Travel is different than photography etc.
The community creates other objects, which will be the basis for other applications, all connected to the content you originally published.
Understanding the interactions between fellow readers. Publishers don't need to be the focus of the conversation.
Analyze the things that come from conversations about your books.
It's important to think about the social life of each social object.
You need to look at the things people create that come from your books.
Every activity we do is social in nature. (Check out the Acting with technology series from MIT press)
The people who read your book are not all the same. Make sure you recognize them as individuals. They don't want to have to create new accounts for everything you create. Understand when they come from different devices, they are still the same person.
**The role of community manager will become vital** (Aside, you should hire my wife Erin Capellman ... end of plug - Chad ;-)
People don't come to a restaurant because the tables are yellow.
Building websites is like running a bar. They come to a bar to have a good interaction with other people who are there. As a community manager, you must ensure this environment and deal with issues quickly.
You shouldn't launch a site with no budget for maintaining it, just as you wouldn't do that with an actual restaurant launch.
Make your content discoverable and that's relevant to the user. Flickr calls it "interestingness"
You want to showcase the things people are creating when they create them on your site.
Building an API is fundamental when building a social web service.
Summize built a search based on Twitter's own API.
If you're not doing this, you're missing out on orders of magnitude of activity.
And if you do, make sure you support open standards and allow connectivity. We're not building islands anymore.
What we're moving to is a role where we're brokering relationships.
Many publisher brands are generally anonymous. What does MacMillan mean as a brand? I can't really tell you.
Create a brand that has a way of interacting with people.
TAKEAWAYS
Build meaningful relationships
Think about long-term projects not just book sales.
Engage with the activities of your community, not just the people in them.
