GroupAhead

@brianglick what lessons did you learn building Communities for Google+ that you're bringing to GroupAhead? What core metrics does each group need to optimize for in order to see entire-group adoption (i.e. each member sending 5 messages, a total of 300 messages within X days, etc)? Also, hi Brian!

@chrismessina Hey Chris! Two biggest lessons I took from G+ Communities (and related work): - People participate and engage with a group more when they feel a strong identity-based connection to it - in other words, when they really self-identify as a member. That's hard to do on someone else's platform, especially when you're buried four taps and swipes within another app. But if I'm a member of the "San Francisco Joggers League", I'll certainly -feel- like a member when its app is on my home screen, and it's just for me and other members. - Convenience matters. A lot. Push notifications and the convenience of an icon on your home screen really helps draw people back into an app frequently. Everything I need to access - discussions, event details, member contact info, etc - is one easy tap away. We haven't yet got to the kind of scale where we can really rigorously understand which metrics should be optimized in a group to see full adoption - though I suspect it has something to do with what percentage of installed users in a group actually send messages (i.e. is this purely top-down from a few organizers, or are members participating? Do all the chairs face the stage, or do all the chairs face one another?)