Online Communities 101 Recap – Session 1

For the first session in the online communities 101 course we defined what what a community is, what community managers are, and how members contribute to the ecosystem… using memes.

For those interested in session two it will be live on Thursday, Jan. 12 on Navigating communities and Identifying tools, and thanks again for those who joined in on this session. Also I have been fighting off a bad cold so I sound a bit more like a frog than I usually would. I also say um a lot because I hate public speaking. The slides can be found on Scribd.

So what exactly in an online community? Well frankly there is no single definition that has been widely accepted, but one that is suitable for our needs and comes from someone with a long history in online communities will do just fine. Howard Rheingold was part of one of the very first online communities known as The WELL that was established in 1985, even before I was born. He defines an online community as the following:

Virtual communities are cultural aggregations that emerge when enough people bump into each other often enough in cyberspace. A virtual community is a group of people who may or may not meet one another face-to-face, and who exchange words and ideas through the mediation of computer bulletin boards and networks.

For some of Rheingold’s musings on The WELL, check out his book on his site or you can buy it.

Internal Vs External Communities

Not all online communities follow the same structure or system, and they also don’t have to be in a specific designated location. We are generally used to internal communities, and throughout the presentation I referenced subreddits quite frequently as the base. However, in some cases there is not a need to create a new community, and that is when you build an external community. You can find a more in depth description either on the presentation or on my article from SMT.

External facing communities are better suited when there are already established communities. For example there is a fan made community called PriusChat that is independent of Toyota. If Toyota was interested in building a customer service portal on the Web that would be one thing, but if they were looking at building a social gathering point as a community it would be reinventing the wheel. In that situation as a community manager you would work with the community, and in some cases with with various fan sites or many online communities.

Another example is the latest Battlefield game and how they handle online communities outside of their direct power. Their community managers generate content, press portals, and updates for the game on their designated site; however, because there are so many fan sites and communities for the game there is not as much reason to re-create a purely social gathering point. Granted there probably are some sort of forums from EA, but they are used mostly for bugs, errors and account issues. You can see the Battlefield 3 community manager in action by looking at this post on reddit where a person asked about hackers and banning.

What is a Community Manager?

Both internal and external communities require a community manager, but there are a few differences. Similar to the lack of a standard definition of an online community manager, it is difficult to provide a single definition of what each of us does. However, there are some attributes that are associated with each of us. While I decided to take the less professional path to explaining this, I would suggest looking at Jeremiah Owyang’s “Four Tenets of the Community Manager.”

Also please note that online communities are not the same thing as social networks. That means Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, etc. are not online communities, but networks. Community managers can also be social media managers, but the two tasks have different reasons for being.

Who is Part of the Online Community Ecosystem?

The short answer is that everyone is part of the online community ecosystem, but each type of member plays a vital role. Passive Lurkers consume content, Active Lurkers share your content and help you grow, General Members produce and reply to content, Advanced members help shape the community, Power Users are among the influencers that form social norms and hold a great deal of power in internal based communities, and the Community Architect is the one who initially builds the community (your boss, but sometimes you). Full definitions below.

Volunteer Assignment/Project

For those interested in getting a bit of hands on experience I want to bribe you with an iTunes gift card. All you need to do is message me on reddit  (if you don’t have an account, sign up it takes two seconds) and let me know you want to become a moderator for /r/cmgr. I will be posting random links that say they are spam. Just mark it as spam and the person who gets the most points by the end of the last session will get the gift card.  Assignments will change for each session as well.

Community Member Definitions

Passive Lurker: These are members who continue return to a community to consume the content, discussions, and advice but do not contribute or share any of it.

Active Lurker: Of the members in an online community active lurkers will make up a vast portion of them. Based on Ben McConnell’s 90-9-1 principle for every one post a power user makes in a community, 90 lurkers will have consumed the content and not contribute anything in the community. However, active lurkers consume community content and also share the content to their own personal networks and external communities. When Active lurkers share content externally they become detrimental to a community and its growth.

General Member: These members appear to do a majority of the grunt work for online communities, but that is only partially correct now that social media is being used throughout the world. Prior to the adoption of social media most communities were self-contained or vaguely spread through word-of-mouth and chat rooms. These members actively comment on articles, discussions, and external communities, but not as frequently as a power user.

Power User: These are the people who push for new discussions, shout on roof tops about how much they enjoy the community, provide feedback to Community Managers, and often act as mini Community Managers themselves. Power users make up one percent of the community.
[Image via Hyperbole and a Half]

If you have any questions feel free to leave a comment or message me @thejournalizer