AppExchange FT(community)W

Last year I had the good fortune to be the UX lead on salesforce.com’s AppExchange marketplace site, working with the wonderful folks Hot Studio agency. salesforce.com has a bunch of smart, dedicated people over there and I had a chance to work with an absolute rock star product manager, Ryan Ellis, who has become the gold standard by which I judge all other product managers. The project gave me an immersive view into the world of software-as-a-service (SAAS), and also challenged my notions around community.

“Community” has been such a catchword over the past few years that my friend DaBomb (BURNcast) turned it into a virtual drinking game. The still-prevalent sense around the term among my clients is that it refers to the p2p interaction area of a site, and the people who spend time there, casing trouble on discussion boards while virally marketing a product or brand. Clients don’t necessarily know what communities do or need, but they know they want them because of some kind of magical brand loyalty they keep and further.

The idea of p2p and b2b social interaction is of course valid and worthy of time and energy. But community exists in many forms. The AppExchange is a common space that supports very little in the way of p2p interaction - there are discussion forums on another salesforce.com web property that are key to developer support - but the very exposure to other developers’ products is what drives further innovation. salesforce.com developers range from the proverbial guy in his garage office to major developer groups. No immediate need for chat or groups or friending anyone - this developer community is inherently DIY and helpful on its own. The community exists outside of and beyond the site itself, and it was our job to support it, not try to shape it. There is a high degree of trust - augmented by a rigorous testing and submission process - between force.com and its developers that they created by simply providing good service, providing access to real-live humans for questions and issues, and a fundamental understanding that supporting their user base would result in broadening audiences, greater adoption, and *then* profit.

I come across clients who are expecting the same magic to come from throwing Facebook around rather than really understanding that as wonderful and effective as they are, Facebook, Twitter, message boards, private messaging, etc. are just tools: they are no more useful than the people wielding them. True community (drink!) comes from building relationships with your users, and require sincerity and a degree of transparency that most companies are not culturally set up to provide.

How to change that? Great question. Company culture is so often top-down, and community tools can not be effectively implemented by people who don’t use them. Until CEOs see their consumers as people, their ability to nurture communities will remain as limited and short-lived ad their latest ad campaign. salesforce.com has a long history of talking with their users in customer support and research efforts, and the result is going to be huge, even without “friends”.

Check out this webinar demo’ing the new AppExchange.

09/3/31 UPDATE: More AppExchange love http://icanhasapex.blogspot.com/2009/03/new-forcecom-appexchange.html