Dion Hinchcliffe‘s diagram somewhat resembles a cross-section of an infection, and perhaps rightly so.
While I dislike the “Seven Habits Of…” angle/meme of the article, I did like his checklist, despite (in my opinion) the misuse of “leveraging” for “lever” or indeed the simple “exploit”:
Ease of Use is the most important feature of any Web site, Web application, or program.
Open up your data as much possible. There is no future in hoarding data, only controlling it.
Aggressively add feedback loops to everything. Pull out the loops that don’t seem to matter and emphasize the ones that give results.
Continuous release cycles. The bigger the release, the more unwieldy it becomes (more dependencies, more planning, more disruption.) Organic growth is the most powerful, adaptive, and resilient.
Make your users part of your software. They are your most valuable source of content, feedback, and passion. Start understanding social architecture. Give up non-essential control. Or your users will likely go elsewhere.
Turn your applications into platforms. An application usually has a single predetermined use while a platform is designed to be the foundation of something much bigger. Instead of getting a single type of use from your software and data, you might get hundreds or even thousands of additional uses.
Don’t create social communities just to have them. They aren’t a checklist item. But do empower inspired users to create them.
If you consider unintended use cases, it’s possible that the “inspired users” might create the social community themselves; cf. the critique of the World of Warcraft Social Network.
