Daniel Prager » Blog Archive » On Online Communities

On Online Communities

Online communities and connections are functioning more and more like real world ones.

We interact and connect with people who we admire, people who can help us achieve personal goals, and, even if we don’t like to admit it, people who make us feel good about ourselves.

We share data and content for the the same reasons that we share information in real life conversations: We are aiming to add value, and we want status and recognition for our contribution. Online Communities give us a powerful roadmap to understand a topic, group of people, or social norm. Never before have communal conversations been so public, so available, and so easily infiltrated– all from behind a screen.

As online communities begin to reflect our real life social circles, and as our online attention becomes even more scarce, will online communities gain value? Will they become overpopulated and flooded by networkers, marketers, and advertisers who will end up interrupting our sincere community building in their desperate attempts to avoid interruption?

As a perennial optimist, I’m going to say that online communities will gain value. Niche online communities will grow to the point where one can completely avoid pandering for any kind of mass audience.

But there is a negative and cynical part of me(shocker), that asks: If a niche community is powerful enough to completely sustain an individual’s online interaction, can they even be considered a niche community anymore?

More than anything, I love the complexity of this topic, and cannot wait for online communities to change, for better or for worse, in the future.

What are some of your favorite online communities, and what do you think the future holds for them?

I also apologize for the philosophical post. Dealing with measurement and client screams for social media ROI creates a monster that idealizes big picture writing. So thanks for indulging me.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, January 21st, 2010 at 11:40 pm and is filed under Everything, MyThoughts. Tags: Advertising, interruption, Marketing, online communities, online versus real life, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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I think all online communities undergo a natural degeneration. I'll be excited to see one, maybe it's twitter or tumblr, that doesn't lose its appeal as it attempts to monetize, expand, or adapt to the everchanging web.

I think some of the most interesting communities are driven by commentors interacting around content (duh I would). The people that comment around the Gawker blogs, for instance. Because the community is self-selecting and based on common interest, and not driven by some compulsion to be a part of whatever is new, it's a higher quality interaction. There is a weeding out of the participants who don't add quality or who stop participating and start lurking. The most visible community members are usually the best ones– best meaning they add the most quality to the community and are the most interesting to other members– not simply the most active/loud ones.

And as social commenting (yeah, you've got me obsessed with this idea, DP) adds robustness to comment-driven communities (like this one!), those communities can be a better way than ever for people to come to know each other and relate about a certain topic. Communicating about what you care about, your niche, is done with increased quality through a comment-driven community.
http://www.theoceanagency.com Danny Prager

Love this comment. Thanks so much. Now for the response.

To your first point:
“all online communities undergo a natural degeneration” . I'm not so sure. Twitter is one community that has gotten better, not worse, as it has hit the main-stream. I see your point, but I think that communities that rely on their users, rather than infrastructure to adapt, expand and monetize will succeed.

To you second part about Gawker blogs:
I love online communities that reward participants for being smart. At the same time it does raise the question, do those types of incentives just reward participants who best mimic and/or suck up to the community leaders?

When it comes to social commenting, that is something I am infinitely excited about. In the future, I can't wait to search through Disqus, and see well crafted responses to quickly and intelligently get the gist of a discussion topic.

People are also obsessed with identifying influence on the web. Social commenting could be such a powerful way to find thought leadership based on good content and not just popularity.