If new community members can’t start contributing quickly and easily, most of them aren’t going to bother. Getting users to adopt a new way of collaborating is never easy. They have to want to contribute to the community. Maybe they think they have something to offer everyone else. Maybe they feel obligated to give back to the community they’re learning from. Let’s look at a usability experience I mentioned in my last post:
This week I decided to update my avatar on this and several other sites. That meant I had to take a big photo, crop it into a square, create a zillion different versions of it … and then hunt around the web finding my last avatar and squishing it.
One service helped ease my frustrations – Gravatar. They’ve got a straightforward system: I post something to your site and include my email address in the contact field. Your site asks Gravatar what the face behind the email looks like. It’s like an OpenID? for your face!
Why don’t we take that model and spread it around the web? There’s a similar theme behind the DISQUS comment system in play at this site and others. My central DISQUS profile is carried with me whenever I comment on any site that uses DISQUS comments. It’s nice for people to be able to mouse over your face and see what I’ve been saying this week – it gives them some instant perspective on my thoughts. Next time you look to choose a community-building platform, give some thought to what your target users are already comfortable with. Are they all using Facebook already? Give them the ability to link to their FB profiles from your site. They’ll appreciate it, and your tools will be more appealing due to the association with a trusted provider.
