Howto create a successfully virtual community
Virtual communities are web pages where its visitors can contribute and interact among them generating new content on the site.
Virtual communities are very valuable cause the high volume of quality trafic they attract.However, create successfully communities is not an easy work. It depends of different factors like the community topic, its virality, marketing, and so on.
I’m going to describe the first steps in order to do it. I’ll not tell you the topics you must choose or the marketing plan you’ll should follow, the target of this article are the people that owns a virtual community or is building one and wants to turn it into a succesfull community. We’re integrating these features into moneytrackin.com
1. Customization
Provide tools to your user in order to allow them to customize his entered data (avatars, foot signatures, links to their blogs/websites, …). The aim is to provide a sensation of property, that the user feels that the data he’d entered like his own.
2. Ranking
Everybody likes the competitions, mainly if you’re the champion. Provide a public hall of fame with figures of the most active users can be a great incentive for the users to do more effort on the site.
3. e-mail bulletins
Monthly bulletins are also a great tool to get the attention of inactive users again. You must generate a custom bulletin for each user and show them some information of their interest to catch its attention. A great example are Xing’s bulletins, they always accomplish that I login to the service again, even when I forgot it completely ;)
4. In search of micro-elites
You don’t need thousands of people contributing to a topic, you just need 5 or 10 people who really understand it deeply (source). Try to find this micro-elite and incentive it in order to participate in the community. The results will be better and sure their contributions will attract the big crowd.
These are my opinions, of course they can be wrong/incomplete and I hope that you help me to complete this article in the comments. Help me to turn this blog in a successfully virtual community! ;)
HOWTO Listen your mp3 from any computer with FON Gspace
At FON Labs we’ve upgraded the Gspace player (in Player mode) with a better one that allows to create playlists with mp3 files of your account.
Combining the new Gspace and FONBackup you will have an mp3 library of 4GB avaliable from any computer, anywhere in the world. Here are the steps:
1.CREATE A NEW GMAIL ACCOUNT
You can also use your Gmail personal account, but exists cases of blocked accounts for 24 hours (system abuse). I recommend you to create a new account at http://mail.google.com/mail/signup
2.DOWNLOAD FONBACKUP AND SYNC YOUR MP3 WITH GMAIL
Download FONBackup and configure it in order to sync your music folder with the new gmail account. You shold remain that nowadays gmail has a capacity of 4Gb aprox and a maximum file attachement of 20MB. If you upload mp3 files bigger than 19MB you won’t be able to listen them.
Also be careful with the name of files and folders. Don’t upload folders with length names (>30 chars) because Gspace cannot handle them.
Be prudent. I guess gmail may block your account if you send 500 emails in one day (FONBackup and Gspace sends one mail for each file/folder uploaded to gmail) of if you transfer more than 1GB in one day.
3.INSTALL LAST GSPACE VERSION
Download Gspace version 0.5.8 or above (http://www.getgspace.com), or upgrade your extension.
4.LISTEN YOUR MP3
Log into your Gmail account with Gspace extension, select Player mode and enjoy listening your music. You can add files and folders to the playlist.
Important: If you have installed Adobe Flash 9 plugin, first time you open Gspace you have to grant it in order to access remote files (mp3 files in gmail). There is a manual here
Help needed to build “Money saving world map”
moneytrackin.com needs help to build the “Money saving world map“, a website where everybody can mark its own places for save money, for example:
- A store where to shop for the best bargains
- Gas stations with best rates of the city
- Restaurants with best quality/price
- …
All this community effort surely helps other people to discover new places in his area or guide they to get best rates while travelling.
See it in action at http://www.moneytrackin.com/map and help moneytrackin’ community entering your own places
FONBackup - Sync your documents from any computer
Yesterday at FON Labs we’ve launched the new utility FON Backup.
FONBackup is a multi-platform application (Windows/Mac/Linux) that allows you to sync one of your computer folders with your Gspace account. The application will download all your Gspace files missing on your computer and upload all your local files missing in your Gspace account, creating an identical copy on your computer and in your Gmail account.
FONBackup is especially useful if you work on various computers or operating systems. You can synchronize your directory with a simple double click and ensure that your important files are always available to you at all times, everywhere. Of course, you can still use the “I lost the file” excuse, but with FONBackup your important stuff can be safely backed up or portable in your Gmail account.
We’re waiting your comments and suggerences to improve the app!
How to enable history in Google Maps API (Browser’s Back/Forward buttons)
Here is a tutorial to enable browser’s history when using Google Maps API, like in panoramio or moneytrackin’.
Once the tutorial will be completed each time we modify the position of the map it will be saved in browser’s history, and we’ll can go back/forward with browser’s buttons.
One of negative things of AJAX technology it’s this. The history doesn’t works because we load dinamically the page’s content without reload it completely.
The tools needed for do this tutorial are jQuery javascript library and its plugin jQuery.history.
The history plugin uses the trick of generate URLs to page fragments that are supported by the browser, and then with javascript parse the text after symbol # to load dinamically the requested content through AJAX. The plugin creates a recognizable URL for the browser from a unrecognizable state of the page itself :)
In our case we wil create an URL in this format:
http://yourdomain.com/map.html#latitude/48.858205/longitude/2.294359/zoom/17
With this URL the page will load google maps and will center the view at latitude 48.858205, longitude 2.294359 and zoom level 17 (Anybody can recognize the location of these parameters? ;))
File map.html: Template of map page. Remember to include the 3 external javascript files (jquery, jquery.history.js,map.js)
<script src="http://maps.google.com/maps?file=api&v=2&key=_YOUR_KEY_HERE_" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="inc/jquery.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="inc/jquery.history.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="map.js"></script>
</head>
<div id="map" style="width:100%; height: 100%;"></div>
</body>
</html>
File map.js: Javascript code to init Google Maps API and enable browser’s history
var param_lng="-";
var param_zoom="-";$(document).ready(loadMap);
$(document).unload(GUnload);
var $j = jQuery.noConflict();
var _map;
function loadMap() {
if (GBrowserIsCompatible()) {
m = $("#map").get(0);
_map = new GMap2(m);
$.historyInit(historyChange);
if($.historyCurrentHash.replace(/^#/, ”) != ""){
var place = $.historyCurrentHash.replace(/^#/, ”).split("/");
if(place.length==6){
param_lat=place[1];
param_lng=place[3];
param_zoom=place[5];
}else if(place.length==4){
param_lat=place[1];
param_lng=place[3];
param_zoom=17;
}
}
_map.addControl(new GLargeMapControl());
_map.addControl(new GMapTypeControl());
_map.enableContinuousZoom();
_map.enableDoubleClickZoom();
_map.enableScrollWheelZoom();
if ((param_lat!="-") && (param_lng!="-")){
if(param_zoom=="-") param_zoom=17; //Default zoom level
_map.setCenter(new GLatLng(parseFloat(param_lat), parseFloat(param_lng)), parseFloat(param_zoom));
}else{
//Default map values
param_lat=40.413496;
param_lng=-3.032227;
param_zoom=1;
_map.setCenter(new GLatLng(40.413496, -3.032227), 1);
}
GEvent.addListener(_map, ‘moveend’, function() {
mapChangedListener();
});
//Disable mouse wheel page scroll
GEvent.addDomListener(_map.getContainer(), "DOMMouseScroll", wheelevent);
_map.getContainer().onmousewheel = wheelevent;
updateLinkToThisPage();
}
}
function wheelevent(e){
if (!e){
e = window.event;
}
if (e.preventDefault){
e.preventDefault();
}
e.returnValue = false;
}
function mapChangedListener(){
//Get current map parameters
param_lat=_map.getCenter().lat();
param_lng=_map.getCenter().lng();
param_zoom=_map.getZoom();
updateLinkToThisPage();
}
function updateLinkToThisPage() {
//Save map view parameters to the URL
var hash = "latitude/"+param_lat+"/longitude/"+param_lng+"/zoom/" + param_zoom;
var currentHash = $.historyCurrentHash.replace(/^#/, ”);
if (hash != currentHash) $.historyLoad(hash);
}
function historyChange(newLocation){
//Callback to set map view from URL parameters
if(param_lat=="-") return;
var place = newLocation.split("/");
if(place.length==6){
param_lat_new=parseFloat(place[1]);
param_lng_new=parseFloat(place[3]);
param_zoom_new=parseFloat(place[5]);
}else if(place.length==4){
param_lat_new=parseFloat(place[1]);
param_lng_new=parseFloat(place[3]);
param_zoom_new=parseFloat(17);
}else{
param_lat_new="-";
param_lng_new="-";
param_zoom_new="-";
}
if ((param_lat_new!="-") && (param_lng_new!="-") && ((param_lat_new!=_map.getCenter().lat())||(param_lng_new!=_map.getCenter().lng())||(param_zoom_new!=_map.getZoom()))){
_map.setCenter(new GLatLng(param_lat_new, param_lng_new), param_zoom_new);
}
}
And that’s all, easy isn’t it? Of course source code can be improved (suggerences are accepted). You can download the example files here
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- Howto create a successfully virtual community
- HOWTO Listen your mp3 from any computer with FON Gspace
- Help needed to build “Money saving world map”
- FONBackup - Sync your documents from any computer
- How to enable history in Google Maps API (Browser’s Back/Forward buttons)
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