Oh YEAH! The community of programmers at the recent Drupalcon in Boston was a passionate mob of some of the best minds in web creation. They’ve built a great product, and it’s about to hit the mainstream — in a torrential flood of mass adoption.

What sites should run Drupal?

Yours.

What is Drupal? A content and community management system. In a nutshell, everything your CMS does, Drupal does it better.

The key point for the hundreds of Drupal developers in Boston? From the creator of Drupal himself, Dries Buytaert, “Release the Killer App.”

Buytaert outlined a few key improvements to meet this ambitious goal that are in the works for Drupal version 7, due in a few months. Future killer app release aside, the features and benefits of Drupal are already very apparent in the latest implementations.

Drupal shops demonstrated several impressive case studies in Boston, with a wide range of product goals and technological implementations. The key point? It’s not just “Freaks and geeks” that are using Drupal for their World of Warcraft blogs.*

So what can one create with Drupal?

Drupal boasts over 3,400 “modules.” These code sets bolt on to one’s Core Drupal site in minutes — or as fast as your server can accept file transfers… With these modules, some Drupal rockstar developers and themers and some great team leaders, these are six examples of the amazing creations that are possible.

Popular Science (www.popsci.com)

“We wanted to practice what we preach.” - The PopSci Team.

Pingvision, one of the newish self-described ‘Drupal shops’ worked with the PopSci Interactive team to produce the online presence of the famous print magazine devoted to innovation. You can read the full case study here.

Pingvision developed a blog-style interface with publishing and workflow managment for the content creators. To meet some of the specifications, Pingvision’s developers created new modules, and is currently making them available for all Drupal users.

Zuda Comics (www.zudacomics.com)

“IBM endorses and implements Drupal.” — Oliver Siodmak, Associate Partner, IBM Global Business Services

Zuda is DC Comics’ foray into online community for comic readers — a market that is nowhere near the size of the 90s equivalent, but one that is even more passionate than ever. Zuda attempts to find the next Superman, 300 or 30 days of night, comic books-turned movies that have built cash-raking brands for DC.

Comic creators can submit their work to the community for rating. Popular work can earn these artists and writers huge opportunity in the form of a contract with DC.

IBM produced the site, executing a brilliant theme and interface for reading and rating comics on screen. The full case study is here.

Fast Company (www.fastcompany.com)

“We spent a lot of money on that, and now it’s yours.” — Ed Sussman, Fast Company Team Lead on sharing a customized module with the Drupal community.

At the Boston Drupalcon, the hybrid team of multiple companies presenting new Fast Company online community seemed to be breathing a sigh of relief. The 120-pages of information architecture proved to be a challenge to Drupalize; the 500K strong existing community from Fast Company’s legacy site was obviously a task to integrate; and the hard launch date required to unveil at the Inc500 conference was unforgiving, but the outcome is impressive.

See the case study here.

Fast Company 2.0-ifyed it’s community with new tools, a new interface and a new spike in engagement. The team reports acceleration in traffic and time-on-site. If you join one site on this list, make it this one.

Warner Bros. Records Artists’ Communities

“The web site is the centre of the company.” — Ethan Kaplan, Warner Bros. Head of Technology

Warner Bros. has fully embraced Drupal as their solution-of-choice for all of their artists’ web sites. Fans of Britney (whoops, Britney.com’s been Drupalized, but she ain’t on Warner Bros., she’s on Sony BMG, so I dunno, let’s go with) Ashley Tisdale, Josh Groban, Avenged Sevenfold, Michael Buble and My Chemical Romance are enjoying new communities built around their respective and unique needs and wants.

The Warner Bros. web team boasted speed to market as one Drupal’s main benefits — they have launched more than 50 web communities in the past year, with unique databases, modules and themes (wild and crazy pink for Britney’s young fans; sparkling head shots and big type for Josh Groban’s more mature audience). The sites’ retention, according to the technical lead, easily quadruples when they switch from the one-way flash sites to Drupal’s user-empowering engine.

Amnesty International (www.amnesty.org)

Developer and business teams around the world worked together to produce the new Amnesty International web site. This implementation features Drupal’s highly-scalable localization (translation) module, including RTL (right-to-left for Arabic). CivicActions developed the site to add future languages with ease. Read the full case study here.

Rockband (www.rockband.com)

… And Drupal’s okay with Flash too. Check out Rockband’s appropriately loud and abrasive experience for a great example.

You can download Drupal at www.Drupal.org and start building your community.

Filed under: CMS, Community, Drupal, Web 2.0, Web Strategy by Craig Ritchie
6 Comments »

Tags: amnesty.org, chris dibona, CMS, Community, dc comics, dries buytaert, Drupal, fast company, google, ibm, open source, popsci, rockband, warner bros, world of warcraft, zuda comics

I don’t know if you’re experiencing it too, but if 2007 saw a social explosion online, the first quarter of 2008 is witness to the fallout. As Facebook adoption slows, Twitter is exploding with new users, LinkedIn’s engagement seems to be soaring, and niche social media sites are finding their stride among an empowered prosumer population. I’ve spent the last few months using a multitude of tools, and finding new life outside of Facebook.

The fallout is everywhere, and new, real growth from that fallout is happening thanks to users spanning beyond the early adopters and tech-savvy teens. So, ‘Hi’ to the grandmothers and other “late adopters” (CEOs?) out there joining the conversation. It’s richer now, and we’re all benefiting.

Filed under: Community, Social Media, Social Networking, Twitter, Web 2.0 by Craig Ritchie
No Comments »

The multitude of new social networks - Facebook, MySpace and Dogster alike - are complaining that users no longer have any loyalty. They arrive, create profiles, upload some photos, and stumble on to (upon?) a new tool or community and move on, sometimes never to be seen again.

(Consequently, marketers are very worried about what this foreshadows for their brands. That’s another blog post, however, and more suited to my new (shameless plug alert) blog, Badvocates.com.)

To build a strategy that prepares for this, each community should consider focusing on the five ‘I’s of online community. They aren’t rocket science, but they address the common mistake that site and tool builders are making: focusing on the hip and nifty 2.0 technology at the expense of defining the true value of that tech and the community one hopes it will foster.

Take twitter for example — launched in June of 2006, and the favourite of the elite when trying to sound in the know. Half a million users and a thousand copy cats. But most non-twitterers, and even many twitterers themselves, still question the value of the tool.

Twitter, and the designers of your online community (social network, blog, fan page, online brand presence, or twitter rip-off) must consider the five ‘I’s of online communities:

1. Investment

I’m not referring to your VC. But rather your users’ investment, and how you design your community to allow them to invest their time, energy and effort in to your community. The more a user feels they have invested in a community, and the more that community is able to interact with them, the less likely they are to move on to the competition.

2. Incentives

What incentive is there to join? To tell a friend? To stop lurking and really start contibuting to the community?
… And how difficult is it? It’s certainly not enough to say “everyone else is using it” — The public may come, but this fact won’t make them stay… It’s a self-defeating strategy.

3. Information

Arm your users with the info to understand the ever-increasing value of your product. Netvibes does this well — inserting a bright banner on my personal homepage whenever they improve their toolset. (Which I accept and close at my leisure.) Furthermore, arm your users with the ability to advocate your service. Twitter could benefit greatly from this. People are constantly questioning the value of the service, and it’s a difficult concept to sell, unless you’ve tried it.

4. Interaction

Ah yes, the most difficult element to conceive, capture and champion. How do your users interact with each other? How do they even find each other? How do they interact with you? How do you braodcast new improvements? This is the core of Facebook’s value . Members most find out about new applications when friends choose to use them, creating easy access and viral adoption.

5. Innovation

What are you doing better than before? Better than the competition? What’s the next improvement you’re launching? Can your users evangelize it in- and outside of the community?

Ultimately, a successful online community doesn’t come from the tool, it comes from the adoption of that tool and its continued use.

How do you foster online community?

Take these five ‘I’s and turn them into a ‘We.’

Filed under: Community by Craig Ritchie
1 Comment »