As with so many other facets of the technology industry, San Francisco is a global center for vibrant online communities. The most successful platforms in this industry balance rules and features that steer participants toward constructive community building, while leaving enough room for the autonomy that allows a digital culture to thrive.
But what kind of design decisions help create those successful communities? And how can engineers turn those designs into working platforms? We posed those questions to three locally grown companies with some of the most vibrant online communities in the business.
In 2005, college friends Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian were invited to join the first class of Y Combinator. At the time, they recognized a gap: there was no easy way to share and discover the best content on the Internet. They built a website where people could post and find interesting links and information all in one place, an idea that eventually became the Reddit we know today, supporting more than 100,000 active communities. CTO Chris Slowe took us through the particulars of the product itself.
What product design decisions underpin Reddit’s platform?
We are differentiated through the way that we empower volunteer moderators and users with tools needed to govern communities and keep Reddit a welcoming place.
Shortly after Reddit launched, one of the first product decisions we made was to develop a voting mechanism that allows users to upvote and downvote content. While it may seem like a small decision, it’s evolved into a powerful and important tool that allows users to signal the value and acceptability of content and behaviors in their community. Voting gives users the opportunity to have skin in the game and self-regulate their communities by accepting or rejecting any piece of content. A study published by researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology examined how norms are created and reinforced on Reddit. Interestingly, they found that there’s an entire class of online behaviors that users self-police. Beyond enforcing our site-wide rules, users are extremely passionate about the platform itself, which means they step up and play a special role in reinforcing the cultural norms of their communities.
Early on, we also made the decision to add comments to Reddit. At the time, this felt like a major decision but today I can’t imagine Reddit without comments. We are one of the few places on the internet where long-form content and conversation can flourish. Combined with the ability to vote on each post and comment, this structure gives people the ability to have real, authentic conversations.
We redesigned the front end of Reddit a few years ago, and now we’re redesigning our back end as well.”
How were engineers able to turn those design principles into a working product?
Reddit is inherently an open platform, so we take an open approach to how we design and build new features. Our project managers, engineers and designers talk to our users on the platform to share experiments, gather feedback and discuss new features. We also have several community councils that connect Reddit employees with the volunteer moderators of similarly-themed communities like gaming or sports. These efforts are all further supported by a dedicated user research team that helps guide our understanding of how we can continue supporting our communities.
On the technical side, we redesigned the front end of Reddit a few years ago, and now we’re redesigning our back end as well. The goal of this process is to reduce our technical debt and optimize our infrastructure for rapid development and deployment. This ultimately empowers our engineers to experiment and build quickly and efficiently.
Crunchyroll began life in 2006 as a video-sharing site and has since grown to become the world’s largest hub for anime and manga fans, with more than 45 million registered users. A subsidiary of SF-based digital media company Ellation, Crunchyroll now hosts more than 1,000 anime titles and 30,000 episodes, making it the world’s largest collection, and the platform also hosts games and an online store. Senior Director of Product Design Brian Johnson outlined some of the facets that help to create loyalty among the company’s legions of fans.
We know that our community uses these ratings to determine what to watch.”
What product design decisions underpin Crunchyroll’s platform?
To ensure that Crunchyroll is the world’s best home for anime, there were a number of product and design decisions that were put into motion over time. These decisions built Crunchyroll into a platform that was more than just a streaming service, but somewhere fans could find and create community.
Through Crunchyroll News, we provide a space for users to discuss and share ideas in the comments. Similarly, the Crunchyroll Forum is a space where users can continue to discuss their favorite series or topical items within the anime industry. Users can also rate and comment on episodes, movies and series on-platform. Through our user research, we know that our community uses these ratings to determine what to watch, and their comments provide a lot of value to the majority of our users.
We have a free tier where fans can watch ad-supported anime and a paid subscription tier, which allows fans to watch simulcast series alongside the broadcast in Japan without advertisements. Premium memberships help support the broader anime industry, and subscribers are contributing to the anime ecosystem and community.
Fandom started life as Wikicities, then Wikia, before its latest evolution was born to help movie, TV and gaming fans learn about, engage with and immerse themselves in their chosen media. The company promotes a free, collaborative environment for fans to create and share content. CMO Stephanie Fried said the company uses a combination of data points to inform its overall strategy and design decisions.
What product design decisions underpin Fandom’s platform?
Fandom has been successful by fulfilling fans’ needs better than anyone else. We are data-driven and fan-obsessed. We work backward from fans and creators to needs, understood through a combination of quantitative and qualitative data, to make product design decisions. After implementation, we measure feedback to ensure we’ve served fans sufficiently and course correct where needed.
We work backward from fans and creators to needs.”
How were engineers able to turn those design principles into a working product?
Fandom’s engineers use their passion for problem-solving to turn these design principles into a working platform by building services and products that reliably scale to hundreds of millions of users around the world.
