Community p. 1
There have certainly been some interesting topics on this site—from the way, Google’s advertising network is organised, to the traction of being single on Facebook. And that brings me to following pictures on the right, which show two types of network, one that is organic and the other that is somewhat by design. The circular graph on top is a visual representation of who high school students hooked up with within the space of 18 months. It is probably very similar to the Facebook-model. The bottom chart seems equally erratic, though there is a clear point of origin at the bottom left. The shape is called a Brownian motion and is the way Andy Grove described Google’s strategy.
But what we see here is really the end-result. Communities and network usually start with a series of single actions that lead to connections between thoughts, between places, between people. And eventually you have some networks that may seem entirely chaotic and others that are somewhat elegant in their outcome. I should add that Eric Schmidt’s response to Grove’s comment was that there is also an underlying structure that grows with the “chaos,” a framework to support the grapevine if you will, and it is the same for a school or Facebook. A lot of things happen in chaotic environments, but they need an underlying structure to make sense.
This is my latest passion, understanding the structure that supports chaos and even embraces it. It is the new world, well new since a decade or so. This here post is a first of a few, discussing this topic. The structure is as follows. I will begin with some simple principles that surround communities, in my opinion. In a next post, I will look at underlying theories regarding communities and networks. This will be followed by a discussion about enabling technologies that facilitate this process on the internet. After this I will discuss paradoxes, there are in fact a few. I will then present some businesses and sites that are strong in this field and why. At any point, another author is welcome to jump in with their own perspective, either through a post or a comment. Readers as well of course. I will adapt the content accordingly. I’m also interested in which type of businesses and activities do not support community and networks, and why.
Let’s start with some simple positive characteristics that I think communities have:
- create a place where people can express themselves freely, in mediums that makes sense
- allow information to easily go beyond the organisation
- do not abuse users with ridiculous rules or fees
- keep the structure minimal, unless your core(!)-users demand more features
- listen to users, but only if it does not disrupt the experience and doesn’t break the law
To briefly go into the individual points, freedom is an important concept though within a framework of politeness and treating others as you yourself would like to be treated yourself. The medium on blogs is of course mainly text, but it might just as well be pictures, video, or audio. As long as it communicates the argument or point effectively. The second point deals with technology really, and I think the internet is particularly suitable for a spreading of ideas beyond an organisation. The third point again deals with respect for people. The fourth is my opinion that simplicity encourages complexity, which leads to richer content. But, much like Google, structures need to grow with the community, or else they are useless and people will move on. But this also needs to match with what the community needs, which is most accurately communicated by power-users. The final point is also a matter of respect, both for the core-principles that drew people together and society as a whole.
Note that this is a positivist perspective on communities, and that I will go into some other aspects of them in future posts.
I might have left some characteristics out there and I would appreciate feedback on where they could be improved. This is incidentally also the way I perceive Tech IT Easy and I think it’s important to rationalise some principles so that we can encourage a flourishing community where much value is derived from each member’s input. So this, I think, is also a good point to ask readers to comment on what they would like to see on Tech IT Easy to improve their experience, but you can also write us a mail, listed on the about-page.
Vincent is a co-author on Tech IT Easy. You can find out more about him on this blog’s initial announcement or on his site.
LikeRelated posts:
- Chit Chatting with Ziki's Anglo Saxon community manager
- Why Facebook will eventually fail
- Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, estimates the average blog is read by one single person every day
- A new online community is kicking-off: FrenchNetwork.org
- A Network Mapping Software – perhaps my University project this year. Inputs most welcome.
Business strategy, Clusters, Friends, Globalization, Google, Networks, Organization, blogging, innovation, media, open-source, user-generated content
Just a few first thoughts:
1) When you say that it wan’t abuse user with fees, do you mean that you believe only in “freemium” services or you just believe that the fees have to be reasonable? Because eBay has created a strong community while charging fees (quite high according to most sellers)
2) At what point you will have to define the “point” of a community. For example, Pierre Omidyar says that he believes that bringing people together to make business helps creating a stronger community than traditional social networks.
3) It will also be necessary to define what is an “efficient” network. For example, I think that Facebook becoming mainstream is a threat, because you start accepting more and more people, without the real possibility of customizing your profile for your different networks (core friends, job network…). Even if it is not a problem for young people who basically display the image they want to show to everyone, it is more crucial for older ones who wants to adapt the information they give. This is why until now there were no universal social networks, because every single one had a different use.
Sorry if what I say is really common sense, it is just to help you keeping that in mind
By the way I love the idea of making series of articles on different aspects of the same subject, it helps not doing very long articles but splitting and organizing ideas.
Community, page 1. Does that mean that you’ll publish every 379 pages of your book on communities one by one???
Community as we live it today through facebook, or other business driven ones like linkedin are based on profits. (no i m note a communist;)
What i mean is that if you take that in consideration, it’s hard not to see the aspects of fooling (a little bit) the users.
Darwin would say that we will end-up with only one community, or a couple of various ones which are complementary (eBay/facebook/linkedin). So from this point, the company has to drive most people to its own community, which leads to a common trick which eBay for example used: free->paid service->when the user cannot afford losing the platform->raising the fees til a kind of breakeven point.
Then, you were talking about keeping the structure minimal. But what we have seen for Facebook with the openplateform (the new windows?) is that it’s not a demand driven model, but an offer one. It’s more pushed toward the users. That worked actually with a jump of 2million users in less than a month and half.
Finally, i wanted to add that for me, the best community would be a kind of universal ning one: one user, multiple communities, one profile adapted to each community in which the user is involved.
Well, sorry if it doesn’t make sense, that was my 2 cents…
Phew, a really nice set of responses (finally!)
No, Fiji and Ilias, I understand your comments and I will respond to them in 2 separate comments. Jeremy, it was meant to be an abbreviated part 1, not page 1, and I will correct it in page, eh part 2. I hope it will not take 300+ posts to describe this.
Ok, Fiji. Regarding charging non-ridiculous fees, I meant unrealistic. For example, this blog is fairly free, apart from time and some hosting, so it’s unrealistic to charge users for it. On the other hand, there are blogs who charge for commenting, to keep the quality-level high. I have no problem charging people, as long as it is a justifiable cost. It is based on the principle of respecting a community’s members, but also them respecting the community. Clear, I hope.
Regarding community, it can take so many shapes that I can’t restrict it to just eBay and exclude others. Let’s take the traditional measure of a village, and if eBay fits in, why or why not? and if social networks fit in, why or why not? I will address this in a future post, as I agree that this should be defined.
Regarding efficiency, I’m not sure if I addressed this, unless you are referring to keeping the structure minimal. But your comment bears a response. I define efficient as something that allows me to get from one point to another as quickly and easily as possible.
It seems to me though you are talking about an efficient business-model, which can be argued for Facebook is becoming less and less possible, exactly because of the diversity and strong competition. Again, I plan to discuss business models at a later point, but I will discuss it here if you wish also.
Regarding universal search. I can see both pros and cons for it, but it certainly does not seem technologically impossible to me.
Finally, Ilias. A very insightful comment! You have very top-down view of communities and I completely agree with your analysis in the first paragraph. Communities are like organisms that benefit from having more and more users on them… up to a limit. But a community is worthless if it doesn’t also provide value to its members. eBay does, I would say.
Regarding keeping the structure minimal.
To me, minimal means that you can easily derive value from a network. And Facebook allows that for me. I did not have to sign on to any extra services or install extra applications to talk to my friends. I agree that their current strategy allows things to get complicated quickly, especially if you combine abundance with peer pressure. That, seems to me is asking for some trouble.
But I can see why they did it: as a marketing gimmick and to possibly start a virtual economy inside their network.
Thanks for your answer Vince.
What I meant was not at all to limit the definition of communities to eBay, but simply to segment the different types of communities according to the involvement of their users. Making business with each other (such as in eBay) requires more trust than in Facebook for example, so it generates different behaviours which might be interesting to analyse.
Concerning the idea of a universal network, you are right on the technical point: it would be sufficient to create customizable profiles depending on the type of “friends” on the same platform. This is why I think that Facebook becoming mainstream is a risk as long as they don’t allow a better customization of profiles: I have in my Facebook network both close friends and job relations I have worked with once in a while, and I certainly don’t want the latter to see my holidays pictures! As a result I put the minimum on my profile, which is not exactly the initial purpose.
It is exactly the phenomenon of dilution that most of social networks are experiencing when becoming mainstream, and this should definitely be analysed. Consequently I really like Ilias’ vision of a unique ideal platform but with different profiles for different types of use: the whole platform would become mainstream but not the different networks in it.
Interesting points, Fidji. I will certainly try to segment communities, though that comes with some challenges. They mean different things to different people and to the community-owners as well.
Regarding mixing personal and business on Facebook, that’s a perfect illustration of this. I personally think it’s a bad idea and I would advise you to start a hidden profile just for friends. Or kick out all your business-pals and refer them to your linkedin
.
One of the cons to a universal network is exactly this mixing. In the real world, you also don’t allow just anyone in your house and don’t tell them the same things you would say to your family and closest friends. There is more merit in creating mini-networks, aimed at specific uses: Linkedin as a CV, facebook for friends and family, blogs for everyone, etc.
Exactly! But the problem is the peer pressure: nobody likes being rejected on a social network, and I can hardly kick out my business pals from facebook even if it is for a good reason. For a social network it is difficult to find a balance between the advantages of becoming mainstream (you find all your friends on the network) and the cons (dilution). Therefore I am totally for highly targetted mini networks.
Again, really great post, I am impatient to read the following ones!
[...] track-record of starting them and not continuing it. Case in point: my first and last post on community. So, next time I start a part 1 of anything, please slap [...]