Blog
tSpec.fromUrl: max=1000000 maxDateCreated=20080820132030 sort=byDateCreated tags=blogId:.3cc31be2 status:published blogCategory:online%20community
Category "online community" in Blog
Growing a community or social network is like tending a garden: you have to plant the things you want, and then feed, water, and weed them. Without that - depending on your climate - you either end up with a bare patch of ground or a garden full of weeds.
A surprising number of organizations, even big companies, throw lots of money at a community and design gorgeous software with fancy web 2.0 bells and whistles, and then put it out there and expect it to grow itself.
The first problem, even with plenty of traffic, is the empty room phenomenon: the first people arrive, look around, see that the place is deserted and take off. People don't tend to want to be the first ones to a party, and they aren't inclined to stick around and try to "get something started." People who do post something don't get a response, and they also give up and go elsewhere.
The solution to that is called - aptly enough - seeding. Before launch, you gather a number of people who can be relied upon to ask good questions and provide the kind of dialogue you would like to see on your site in the best case scenario. Ask them to post for a week or two and develop some content. These initial seeders are, in effect, role models for the people coming after them. Then, when you open the site to the public, the first visitors won't feel like they're the first humans to tread on that ground, and will be more likely to participate and return.
Another important ingredient is the human touch. Real live humans need to be available to answer questions, encourage conversations, and pull the weeds. These people can either be employees or passionate community members, but it is essential that they stop by frequently and do what needs to be done, whether it is moderating posts or helping newcomers find their way around, or posting thoughtful replies. It may sound like a small thing, but it has been shown that simply responding positively to a visitor's very first post makes it much more likely that they will become regular visitors and participants.
Without someone to do this, the community can be dominated by bullies. Your carefully considered topics can fill with objectionable posts or spam. Fights between community members might be the most "interesting" thing posted. Or worse yet, nobody might post much of anything.
It costs money to pay someone to do this so sometimes organizations try to cut corners and skip this step. But it's critically important if you want to have a healthy community - people provide the human touch that even the most sophisticated, well-designed software tools can't. After all the time and energy you've spent setting up your community or social networking space, give it the best chance of success by handling the human side as well as you handled the software side.
Sometimes you have no choice but to make radical changes. This usually happens when a company is acquired, and its community is merged with the new parent, forcing an interface change. The result can be more than unhappiness; you can lose key members of your community and affect membership and growth for an extended period.
So, short of an absolute requirement for radical change, the best option is to make incremental changes. This lets you improve the user experience and add functionality, while you monitor the user feedback to make sure it is working. You can work towards a significantly enhanced experience this way, while keeping your community behind you.
If you have to change vendors or technology, the best option, if you have a vibrant and happy community, is to copy the existing interface, and then continue making incremental changes after the conversion.
If you have to change your place radically, though, do make sure that you let your users know well in advance. Make sure they understand why the changes are being made, and try to get your most prolific and important users to support the change.
No one likes to be forced to change, even when the result is much superior. So as you work towards providing a better place, remember to keep your users happy with incremental changes.
In Japan they say that there are two things you should never discuss with someone from the States: whales and religion. Both are likely to get you in trouble with someone passionate.
I am tempted to add a third item: threaded versus linear discussions. Some people are passionate about their preferences for threading versus chronological discussions, with a high level of conviction. Often I find myself in conversations about this with customers, and an exploration of the two discussion styles seems in order.
Many early web-based forum applications used the threaded model, probably because that's what participants understood from experience with Usenet. The roots of Usenet go back to 1979 when two Duke University grad students created an Internet community system that permits users to post messages (news) within categories called newsgroups. A Usenet thread is a series of messages, where you always reply to specific messages. With many levels of messages and replies and replies-to-replies, you get an outline structure with messages and their replies nesting many levels deep. When web-based forums began appearing in the 1990's, it was natural that many of them would be modeled on the Usenet approach.
Despite the power of the threaded model, some community architects took a different approach, and even before the advent of the Internet some bulletin board systems used a linear interface. Also called the conversational style, this approach offers a user interface in which all messages appear in chronological order. Instead of nesting new topic areas within a thread, users are expected to stay on topic; instead of "hijacking" a thread to change the discussion you're expected to create a new thread. This linear approach more closely approximates real life - until time travel is perfected actual conversations are necessarily in chronological order - and quite likely because the functionality is obvious to everyone the linear style has become very popular.
Both styles have their advantages. How does a new community manager decide on the best approach? I've found it's best to consider both the demographic of the community and common modes of community access to come to a decision. My experience is that in the more technically oriented community, the average participant will appreciate and exploit the power of the threaded interface rather than being confused by it. In a community of largely non-technical users, you will get more participation with a conversational model.
Beyond the skillsets of users, the various mechanisms that may be used to access the community may be significant in the choice of interface. Modern community applications typically permit full participation by both email and browser clients, and sometimes news (NNTP) is supported as well. If only one of these modes is enabled the choice of interface can probably be resolved just by considering the demographic, but in other cases the decision may be more challenging. Typically it's the email participation that can throw in a monkey wrench. With the threaded style a nested and indented reply to an old message - perfectly clear when viewed with a browser - shows up in email with no context at all and confusion may ensue.
From my perspective, the trend among new communities is towards selecting the linear style. Users who are new to forums are quite likely to have experience with blog comments that almost universally linear, and virtually anyone can grasp the basics of linear forum participation quickly. The threaded style isn't going away though, and the choice between the two modes remains an important part of the decision-making process in any new community deployment.
Low vs. high churn rate
Another question to ask yourself is what the churn rate on the site will be like. Do most participants post a few times? Or do most participants post regularly?
Message boards can support sites with both a low or high churn rate, but we strongly recommend them on sites such as support sites where most users only log in once in a while to ask a question. Message boards are ideally suited to these kinds of uses, since users can quickly create an account and post their questions. Social networks, with their more elaborate profiles, present a bigger hurdle to users who just want to ask a question and don't necessarily want to get involved in a community.
On the other hand, if you have a site where you have a core of stable participants, social networks provide additional benefits for long-term members. As an in-house example, our company used to use our message board product for our intranet. We used it when we had to discuss issues that spanned across departments, but it was fairly quiet. When we shifted to a social network, our intranet blossomed. In addition to starting discussions, people began contributing interesting finds to their blogs and posting photos.
So, which product is best for you?
It depends on what you're trying to achieve. If you have a top-down community, or a community with a high churn rate, I'd recommend a message board community. If you have a bottom-up community, or a community with a stable core of users, I'd recommend a social network.
Read part 1
Because we offer two different types of community products - a message board product and a social networking product - we often get asked which type of community is best.
The answer is: it depends. You find groups of people clustered online using all kinds of different tools, from comments on Amazon, to videos on YouTube, to more traditional message boards and chats. The best tool for you depends on the type of participant you're trying to attract and the kinds of interactions you want to foster.
A few quick definitions
A message board is built around discussions. You can organize those discussions into folders, or add other features such as blogs and file sharing, but the heart of the product is the discussions that users can browse and contribute to. An example of a message board is the Adobe Forums site. If you start clicking around this site, what you'll find are lots of discussions on lots of topics. The whole site is organized around those discussions.
A social network is built around the individual members. The members can create discussions and blogs, and organize groups, but the focus of the site in on the member profiles and the links between those members. An example of a social network is the Ireland Calls site. If you click around this site, what you'll mostly find are lots of member spaces. Even the discussion groups highlight their members - it's the first thing you see when you enter a group.
Top down vs. bottom up
One question to ask yourself when you're deciding which type of tool to use is whether you want a top-down community or a bottom-up community.
Message boards are top down. Generally a community manager organizes the entire site, creating and organizing folders, reviewing all of the messages on the site, deciding who has access to what, and dealing directly with member issues. Everything is organized from the top down.
Social networks, on the other hand, are organized from the bottom up. Although there is generally still a community manager, that manager does not exert a lot of control over the individual member and group spaces. Members decide how their space will look and who will be able to participate. Even the discussion groups are member-created, with each group having it's own member-owner who monitors what happens inside it.
There are advantages both ways. The important thing is that you have a clear sense of whether you want a community where you exert control throughout the site, or one in which you hand over most of the control to the individual members.
"Top down vs. bottom up" is one important aspect to think about. "Churn" is another. Tune in next week, when I'll talk about how churn may affect your decision.
People use online communities, social networks, and blogs for social interaction and to find interesting and useful information. These environments provide a way for users to hang out and stay in touch with people they already know, and a place to meet and interact with people who have similar interests.
Social networks provide a home page and personal space for each user, along with the concept of friends and networks of friends. MySpace and FaceBook are the two largest social nets today in terms of both members and usage. They started as places where teenagers or college students could hang out and stay in touch, typically with friends they already knew offline. The most common activities are to check for new messages, send messages to friends, and from time to time update personal information and pictures and check out those of your friends.
Online communities, on the other hand, use message threads for users to communicate, and primarily provide a place to discuss issues that are of common interest. Salon TableTalk is an online community that has over 10,000 members, many who have been there for years. They talk and get to know each other, and develop long-term relationships. Tools used to support these communities include message boards, mailing lists, and usenet groups.
Social networks often include more traditional online community tools and provide a way for groups of users to form around special interests. For example, MySpace is well-known for its music groups and access to bands; teens and young adults are much more interested in new music and staying on top of what's happening, and these groups have been a major draw for this demographic. CarSpace.com, for car lovers, is another good example of an integrated social network and online community.
Blogs are another prominent service that can develop relationships over time. The regular readers of a blog come to know and trust the author, and often get to know readers who leave regular comments. Blogs are used in two ways: content blogs focus on a particular topic area, while hub blogs link to lots of interesting posts. Content blogs provide a way to find and read high-quality, interesting content without a lot of clutter; because all of the posts on the blog are by a single author or related group, they tend to have consistent quality. Cafe Hayek, by two economics professors at George Mason University, is a good example of a content blog. Hub blogs primarily provide interest and novelty, as long as the author has a good eye for what is appealing to his/her readers. InstaPundit is a good example of a hub blog.
Again, social networks often provide tools for members to have their own blog or journal. This provides a way for users to easily make posts for their friends, or of more general interest.
In terms of relationships, social networks are typically one-to-one, with private messages used to stay in touch with your friends. Online communities are many-to-many, with relationships formed among the participants in their discussion threads. Blogs are one-to-many, with relationships formed primarily between the author and his/her readers.
The bottom line is that in order for a service to be successful, it has to provide enough interest, novelty, and utility that users keep coming back for more. The site tools must provide a pleasing, convenient way for users to post new content and for visitors to find interesting stuff.
