COMMUNITY BUILDING ON THE WEB

3.PROFILES: Getting to Know Your Members

Whether you belong to a club, a clique, or a company, you need some way to establish your identity and develop your reputation within the group. In the physical world, people meet and interact in person - but on the Web, sensory information is limited, so each community member’s identity must be explicitly constructed, maintained, and verified. 

To re-create this missing social context, you'll want to develop unique, persistent and evolving profiles for your community members. These profiles will help you build trust, foster relationships, and create a rich and meaningful social infrastructure within which your community can flourish. 
 
 

In This Chapter

Why Profiles?
     Provide Context
     Showcase Your Members
     Build Trust

Setting Up Your Member Database
     Establish a unique identity 
     Design Evolving Profiles

Creating a Persona
     Building Blocks of Personal Identity
     Keep identity current

Evolving a Social Identity
     Actions Speak Louder Than Words
     All the Web's a Stage
     Role playing
 
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