Building an Addictive Site

Question

What aspects of a site (such as SO) make it addictive? I'm looking to build features into one of my own community sites that get people hooked - something to bring them back for more each day and to help drive participation (posting, commenting, etc...), and I'm trying to get a consensus as to what types of features can help achieve this. Any thoughts?

EDIT

Note that this is not just about SO, rather I'm looking for ideas as to how to make a community site addictive regardless of it's audience.

EDIT

I've done a little reading around this, based on some of the answers - it seems that making a site addictive is very similar to making a game addictive.

• Constant, small rewards for contribution (reputation, points)
• Larger rewards for remarkable contributions (badges, ranks)
• Public confirmation of your score (high-scores / reputation)
• Exploration rewards (access to features / secrets / weapons as you contribute / play more)

By adding features that pander towards these desires, a user can be drawn in and always have a goal that is slightly out of reach, causing a feedback loop of constant improvement and contribution.

EDIT

• Speed as a feature

Are there any other aspects of making a site addictive?

Answer 1

The most addictive thing about stackoverflow is the reputation and badges. By quantitatively rewarding users for participation in lots of different ways, SO has become like a game. Not all communities will like numeric rewards, though. It happens to work really well for engineers!

Answer 2

Promises of cool titles. Seriously. :(

Answer 3

Content. The reputation and badges drive participation, but only in the case where the content makes it worth participating. If SO were about LOLcats, it wouldn't be as interesting to me (although it might be to others).

Answer 4

Provide RSS feed. Okay, this won't be the solution for addictive-ness but at least your occasional visitor will not forget your site after browsing a few minutes when he subscribes.

Answer 5

Apart from all other content-related features, the site has to have a catchy name.

Answer 6

Extensibility. I mean this in the general sense. For example, the big social networking sites publish APIs to extend their services so they can be tied into bigger schemes. I think this Semantic Web moniker is still to-be-deteremined, but it's going to be built around extensibility of sites' content.

Answer 7

provide me with help or make me think or make me smile

and i will always be coming back for more :)

Answer 8

I think it's uniqueness and doing that unique thing well. If there were 20 sites like Stack Overflow, we (the SO community now) would probably be across those 20 sites, and they would probably all be lame, because of a lack of a solid community on any of them. However, SO does something unique (well, at least unique for a free site...) and does it well.

If I find a niche (no matter how small it is, as long as it's large enough to get a vibrant community), cater to those people, and do it well, I think you'll have a site that keeps getting people to come back.

Answer 9

1. Keep your users entertained.
   This can be done by adding new stuff regularly that is of interest or some other form of perpetual enjoyment (maybe content created by other users, interactions with other users or rewards).

2. Keep out of users' way.
   Make usage as easy as possible (but not easier). A clean interface might help. A fast server does help as well. Basically, avoid all obnoxious stuff (might be hard when you need advertizing).

Answer 10

The reputation and badges on SO serve two purposes:

1. A reward system, to enourage participation - this is a big factor in addictiveness.

2. Community involvement. By making your feel like you're getting more involved in a community effort, you get more and more comfortable with the place - and so want to come back for more.

I think both these aspects will go a long way - and the two together are dynamite.

But don't ignore clear, uncluttered, layouts, a catchy name (as has been mentioned), and it does help to have some compelling content too (even if that is meant to be community provided, you have to start somewhere).

Answer 11

I pretty much agree with Ned Batchelder's comment. However, I'd go further to say that the nucleus of this site's addictive nature is scarcity - your score can go down as well as up. Risk leads to conflict and conflict creates an interesting narrative. In my opinion, notions of story colour almost everything we do.

Perhaps stackover should be known as crackoverflow?

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If you want to make a community site which is addictive - have it fulfill a need. Facebook works to serve a fundamental need; allowing us to communicate and bond with people.

Look at the way that groups form both on and offline. The Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication might be a useful resource.

More than anything, innovate and take risks.

Answer 12

1. The reputation and badges.
2. The SPEED to get answer or question. It's so active that it's very addictive (want to see what new every few times.

Concerning other website:

1. If you user can win some prize or can get some gain (fraction of publicity for their article for example) this can be a addictive feature.
2. Having a way to personalize with API or RSS

Answer 13

Not an exact duplicate but close to this one Maybe you'll find something usefull there

Answer 14

With the exception of sites that are all about publishing content (like an old school newspaper model) it boils down to feedback to the users which should take place often and without too much fuss.

This might take the form of an active community of forum posters who respond to and create interesting topics, the SO badges, your Google Analytics data...whatever it is it should be giving you new information that you actually want in a way that you can digest in the time available to you every time you return to the site. This should be true whether you were last on the site an hour ago or a month ago.

Answer 15

The excellent questions and wisdom of experienced developers, who unconditionally help those who are new to programming/web design, etc.

This site is a first class example of how and why content is king, and why design is not as important in comparison. The design of SF is visually good, and fortunately simple, but I don't come to this site to see the design.

Answer 16

Building an addictive site means building a site that delivers constant value to users and helps them get that value as easily/quickly as possible.

Craigslist is addictive, and Flickr is addictive. Facebook is addictive, and blogs you're interested in are addictive (to you). Each delivers a different kind of value, but it does so consistently (usually daily or instantly):

Craigslist => information on jobs & classifieds
Flickr => beautiful photos and photos of your friends
Facebook => info and message (and photos) of your friends
Blogs => latest news or just fun ready
StackOverflow => answers/information on programming

Answer 17

1. Develop heroin content or similar must-have feature
2. Slap a load of advertising on it or con people into parting with their cash
3. Profit

With apologies to the gnomes.

Answer 18

You may want to look at Creating Passionate Users blog, which for a while was about reverse engineering passion in users.

Answer 19

Get people a chance to work at 100% of the competence. People enjoy achieving.

Some solid theory and how to can be found within: http://www.amazon.com/Flow-Psychology-Experience-Mihaly-Csikszentmihalyi/dp/0060920432/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1228439876&sr=8-1

Answer 20

Apparently giving a prize or badge early then making the user work for the next one is what does it for me.