Have you ever wondered what an online community consists of, or what it takes to create one? Join our free online classes!

Online communities are being utilized by businesses, political offices, schools and individuals. These online communities are often formed around a single point of interest, but what motivates them to remain active and continue to grow? Much like social media, online communities have been labeled as a mythical beast that only those with the proper education and communications skills can wrangle and bend them to their will.

For this reason I have developed a free online course that will discuss the ins and outs of online communities. Through the University of Reddit (a place where dedicated professionals can host and share courses on any topic), I will be hosting seven sessions that breaks down the roles members play, monitoring and analytics, as well as hearing from those who currently manage online communities.

Though it has not been officially confirmed, reddit’s General Manager (previously Community Manager), Eric Martin (hueypriest) has shown interest in potentially discussing his thoughts on managing reddit. Additionally there may be some other guest speakers which will be announced later when confirmed.

University of Reddit class page

Related reddit post

Description

This course will highlight online communities from both the Community Manager and Community Architect perspectives. We will initially touch on the basics such as what the different roles are in an online community, how each type of member plays a vital role in the ecosystem, and the different methods and procedures a community manager can utilize to act as a proper role model. After the basics we will go into communication theory, specifically three computer-mediated theories that frequently apply to all members in the ecosystem, and a psychological theory that will assist in your understanding of what motivates an online community. Finally we will wrap things up with identifying how and when an individual, organization, etc. should create an online community, how to identify the right tools for the job, and digging into the self-sustaining online community ecosystem model that acts as a foundation for Community Architects.

Class Structure

Classes will run once per week, and each class will run for approximately 30 minutes with up to another 30 minutes for questions and answers. Depending upon the topic for that day it may run under the time limit, and leave room for an extended question and answer period. There may also be an occasional guest speaker brought in as they may be able to provide further insight on our topics.

1. Register for classes using Eventbrite (Return here for each session for the link)
2. To attend the class session go here: http://www.livestream.com/thejournalizer1
3. Class recaps will be posted on www.play-this.org at most 48 hours after the session

There are 7 sessions to this course (all live classes will be at 9 pm EST/ 7 pm PST):

Some sessions may include guest speakers – Past sessions link to recaps, new sessions link to registration pages.

Session 1 – Thursday, Jan. 5. Introduction to online communities

Session 2 – Thursday, Jan. 12 Navigating communities and Identifying tools

Session 3 – Thursday, Jan. 19 Community best practices and policy building

Session 4 – Thursday, Jan. 26** Insights from a Community Manager [Reddit's Erik Martint @hueypriest]

Session 5 – Thursday, Feb. 2 Monitoring, Tracking, and Analytics

Session 6 – Thursday, Feb. 9 Communication Theory

Session 7 – Thursday, Feb. 16** What Motivates an Online Community? [GovLoop's Lauren Modeen @exilauren]

**Marks sessions that may change dates, and may be set for different times to adjust to the guest speakers schedule.

*Marks a longer course that discusses everything from when and why you would create a new community, dealing with those who want to create one even if there is no need for it, and looking at the Online Community Self-Sustaining Ecosystem model.

- Thanks, and let me know if you have any questions.

Required Materials

Internet connection

Beer/Wine

About The Teacher

• Elliot S. Volkman – Age 26
• Bachelors Degree in Journalism and a Masters Degree in Communications.
• My published masters’ thesis “Identifying online communities as self-sustaining ecosystems for fulfilling members’ needs” discusses online communities, managing, and building them.
• I currently manage an online community of 32,000 + members.
• I have also been quoted in a few Mashable articles, am a writer for social media today, and frequently highlight the latest changes in the digital world on Play This Magazine.

Elliot’s e-mail:  elliot@elliotvolkman.com

Twitter: @TheJournalizer

Are you still trying to decide if you like Twitter’s latest changes? Some new features may help change your mind.

Blackbird Pie. Ring a bell? If it does you now that it was one of the lesser known tools that Twitter supported, and it allowed bloggers, writers, and anyone with a website that used HTML to insert a single tweet while retaining the Twitter look. Sort of. Quite frequently it failed to look the right way, and if you used WordPress such as our site it would always break the code when switching between HTML and Visual appearances.

On December 8 Twitter released their latest changes, and with it came quite a few features that made half baked tools like Blackbird Pie obsolete.  Now with three simple steps anyone can embed a single tweet.

Easy as 1 – 2- 3

Click on a tweet that you want to embed

Select “details” from the expanded tweet

Click on “Embed this Tweet”

You will then be presented with a window and HTML code. There are a few other options like adjusting the alignment of how the tweet will appear, and a shortcode for blogging platforms that use them.

Twitter Unveils New Designs For Web, Mobile, And TweetDeckplay-this.org/2011/12/08/twi… via @AddThis

— Elliot S. Volkman (@TheJournalizer) December9, 2011

Twitter is releasing a major overhaul on the way users discover content, and how brands share it.

Twitter is rolling out a new set of designs on their Web platform and mobile apps. In what appears to be one of the most drastic changes since the new profiles, Twitter is now putting your information into modules on the Web platform, and focusing more on discovering new things with the mobile apps.

In Twitter’s campaign labeled ”Let’s Fly” (#letsfly) they have simplified their design in what they believe would be an improved user interface (UI) that makes it easier for us to connect with our friends and discover new ones. “ You’ll see this new design both on Twitter.com and mobile phones, so that you’ll have a familiar experience any time, anywhere. We’ve also updated TweetDeck to be consistent with this new version,” as stated on Twitter’s official blog.

They will also be releasing updates for the iPad app in the future. In the mean time the user interface is now focusing on four key areas: Home, Connect, Discover, and your profile. These four tabs will be found on all of their platforms so that the user interface and experience remains the same.

Home is Where Your Friends Are

“Home keeps everything you’re interested in all in one place.” Your current Web based version of Twitter consists of a stream of tweets; and a panel on the right side that includes your follower/following information, suggestions on who to follow, trends, and information about Twitter. The new version will turn these different objects into segmented modules.

Tweets will no longer slide open to reveal more information (replies, conversations, retweets, and multimedia attachments), but they will now open like an accordion to reveal further information.

Connecting to Others

What used to be a place for your to view your last replies will now become a portal for connecting to others. “Interactions shows all the actions other people take related to you and your Tweets. See who follows you, retweets or favorites one of your Tweets, or adds you to a list,” as stated on Twitter’s news release.

Discovering New Things

The Discover tab (identified by the hashtag) now includes Twitter stories. Essentially the story feed will become like a news feed based on a hashtag that you search for. It will include Twitter users that frequently user the hashtag or are an influencer of the keyword, content that is trending, and content that is shared by your friends. It acts very similar to that of Flipboard in that the most shared content will appear in the stories section based on your interests and connections.

The Discover Activity tab will also bring a new way to know what your friends are doing. For Facebook users consider this the part of your news feed that shows when a friend likes something, adds a new friend, or something similar. The activity feed will show when your friends add new people to a list, reply to tweets, favorite a tweet, and retweet items.

New User Profiles and Brand Pages

Similar to the new home page and feed will now be a segmented profile. These profiles separate tweets from user information, lists and users who are relevant to you.

Brand pages will be similar to the new user profiles, but they will also be allowed to create a banner image directly under their user information. It is also likely that they will not be listing other users relevant to them.

According to Adages’s coverage on the brand pages there are two features specific to them:

They can be customized with large header images that advertisers can use to display their logo and tagline more prominently than under the standard format, where branded elements of the page design are often partially covered by the time line of tweets. Brands can also choose to keep a particular tweet at the top of their time line, and that top tweet also auto-expands to reveal an embedded photo or video from Flickr, YouTube or other sources, without requiring the user to take action.

Embeddable Tweets

Remember Blackbird Pie that allowed you to sort of embed a tweet? Probably not because it didn’t work very well. For Posterous and WordPress bloggers you can now embed a tweet by going to its time stamp and getting the URL. Once the new version of Twitter launches anyone will be able to click on a tweets details or permalink and then “Embed this Tweet.” You will then be able to drop the code into an HTML editor, and your tweet will appear.

If you want new Twitter try going to this tweet. Some how it forced mine to work twitter.com/#!/twitter/sta…

— Elliot S. Volkman (@TheJournalizer) December8, 2011

For the latest on changes to the social media world follow us on Twitter @playthis or @thejournalizer

Rejoice time constrained social news junkies, as Flipboard has made it’s way to the iPhone.

From what is probably one of the most highly rated and easy to use news readers for the iPad comes a new way to keep track of what your friends are reading, sharing and consuming on popular social networks. Essentially Flipboard generates a magazine style reader that collects content based on what your friends share, so hopefully you have similar minded people in your contact lists (though you select the specific interests that you would like to appear).

“The iPad is an amazing device that challenged us to rethink how people discover and share social updates and news. With the iPhone we redesigned Flipboard for those times during the day when you’ve only got a few minutes to check in, when people want to find the things they care about even faster,” said Mike McCue, CEO of Flipboard. “Flipboard for iPhone has been our number one request and now this release finally puts all the power of Flipboard in your pocket.”

Supply and Demand. It is not something everyone gets right, but when companies listen to their happy customers it often quite beneficial. For this version of Flipboard there are a few changes as they had to make usability easier for the handheld device. The iPad version acted more like a magazine where users would swipe horizontally to change a page; however, now users will just flip the content vertically. To get the full context of the content the user just taps on the image, and the article or story opens with it.

It’s a “stack” of stories, posts and images that are beautifully rendered with various layouts and style guides. And every page shows the original tweet and lets you quickly like, favorite or re-tweet back to your community.

Unfortunately at the time of writing this article Flipboard appears to be having server errors. When attempting to register as a new user through the app users are greeted with the following error “Couldn’t build your Flipboard. Please check your Internet connection and try again.” It would appear their user forums are also receiving a flood of complains on the issue, but this will likely just be a small kink in their launch as people flock to their service.

[Download Flipboard for Free]

Flipboard for the iPhone Spot

Have you noticed some of your favorite communities sporting a black censor bar over their name? Here is why:

The Stop Online Piracy Act or SOPA for short is a proposed bill that would allow the federal government to censor certain websites that feature content that has a copyright on it. More specifically to censor sites that are hosted in other countries that allow people to view streaming videos, shows, and other material that the entertainment industry would prefer to regulate and receive traffic for (understandable); however, like many legislation that are not worded particularly well, this could mean the government has the ability to censor other websites as well including some of our favorite online communities. This includes Facebook, Twitter, and any other site that allows content to be posted without strict moderation.

Post a video on reddit? If it has a copyright then reddit could be held legally liable for what a user posted there. Even this very site could receive media that has a copyright on it, and could not only be censored, but cause legal action. In addition to the content owners sueing people left and right they can also force their advertisers to cancel partnerships and agreements with them, which could cause them to have to shut down due to a lack of funds.

So if you see sites like Boing Boing, reddit, or Disqus censoring their logo now you know why.

The full text of HR 3261 (SOPA) can be found on the Open Congress webiste.

A tragic event has occurred as one of Diaspora’s creators, and an advocate for social media privacy has passed away.

Ilya Zhitomirskiy, the 22-year-old co-founder of Diaspora has reportedly passed away today of a yet to be determined cause. In response to the tragic loss to Zhitomirskiy Diaspora has put a tribute on their site showing a dandelion and an image of him.

For those unfamiliar with Diaspora it was one of the largest contenders in the fight for social media privacy, and what Google+ has modeled their network off of. They were among the first to create aspects (essentially what Google Circles are), which places a greater focus on sharing to different groups rather than to an open audience.

The loss of Zhitomirskiy is a terrible one for those of us in the social media privacy world.

When Facebook released their latest changes including the new Timeline feature, users were less than thrilled about how their news feed were organized.

Although not everyone has been upgraded to the new profiles on Facebook, one feature that people will be seeing in the next few days is related to how you view your News Feed. Currently users have Highlighted Stories first (updates with the left upper hand corner marked in blue), and the recent items would be listed below them.

If you wanted to skip the Highlighted Stories you would have to click “# More Recent Stories”, and until something else was marked as a Highlighted story you would just see the latest updates; however, not everything appears in there because of Facebook’s algorithm or Edgerank.

Though most user complaints are ignored the ones that persist after the initial launch period appear to be corrected or reversed, and with that an updated sorting feature is being released. Now you will be able to use either the newer news feed or sort by the latest updates (Recent Stories First). However, the latest stories first feature may still incorporate the Edgerank algorithm and not every single status may appear.

This is where Facebook and Twitter diverge as you will see every tweet from your followers regardless of how many times it was retweeted; however, Twitter is also now joining the activity feed world with some added features as well.

So which sorting method do you prefer? Personally I’m all for the most recent updates, and I unmark a majority of the Highlighted Stories.

 *Note – Not all users are able to use this feature yet.

Twitter is slowly rolling out some new features to compete against the social media behemoth that is Facebook.

Twitter released a new outlet, Twitter Stories, that highlights some of the history changing events that occurred in 140 characters or less, but the real changes are coming over the next few days. In the past your basic options were the Timeline, @mentions, Retweets, saved Searches, and lists you follow or create. Rather than the @mentions section you will now have your username listed and gain some additional information from when people follow you or add you to a list.

The biggest change comes from the new Activity feed that replaces the Retweet section. Similar to your Facebook Newsfeed you can now see when people you follow begin to follow new people, favorite a tweet, and add people to a list.

New @Username Feed

Activity Feed

Facebook will be launching several new features during their F8 conference on September 22, but prior to that they are slowly pushing out new News Feeds and navigation bars to users. As you can see above when the new News Feed kicks into gear you will be greeted with a basic explanation of what you will now see each time you log into Facebook. Previously you had the option to select between most recent updates and top stories, but now these are both integrated with each other.

What exactly does that mean?

Facebook is rolling out new features for F8, and will likely be expecting member backlash. Robert Scoble seems to have the general user response summed up well:

I like Mark’s leadership because he keeps pissing off his customers. Let’s see how:

1. Facebook used to be for only Harvard students. They were pissed when Mark let the Stanford ones in.

2. After he took over all the universities, Zuckerberg opened it up to everyone “oh, no” they cried, “my mom is gonna be on Facebook.”

3. After he got everyone on Facebook Zuckerberg introduced the news feed. That got a MILLION PEOPLE to protest. http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1532225,00.html

4. Then he changed the privacy settings. That got him investigated by the government.

I’m sure I’m forgetting a few things he’s done to piss off the users here.

Yet we still are here. So, go ahead and complain. It’ll make you feel good, but you can’t hold back progress! Or, if you can, I guess you’ll join me over on Google+, right?

New-ish Navigation Bar

Prior to adding in new multimedia goodies like the super secret (sac mark) Facebook music program, simple features like the navigation bar have received a makeover. Below is the old version of the navigation that has two shades of blue and still shows “Account”.

Where as the new navigation strips the word “Account” from the navigation bar, and also removes the edit friends from the down arrow. Below is a screen shot from a Facebook Page profile; however, it is exactly the same for personal profiles as well with the exception of the mail/inbox feature.

Facebook Birthdays

If Facebook is good for one thing, it is to help us remember the 300 some odd birthdays of our friends and family members (for us married folks Facebook even gives us a 5 day warning prior to our anniversary, brilliant!).  Whenever it’s your birthday you can expect an onslaught of birthday greetings to takeover your Facebook wall. With the latest update adding happy birthday messages are even easier! (read: lazier approach). When accessing your News Stream navigate over to the usual area where you find birthday, event, and other timely notifications. Click on one of the birthday buddies names and a window appears allowing you to kill at least two birds with one stone. See below:

Concluding Thoughts – Marketing

So why exactly is Facebook doing this prior to F8? Elementary, my dear Watson. By creating additional negative buzz (and Facebook loves negative buzz), they will be sure to capture the interest of any news outlet that may have thought they could ignore the new features and updates. If enough users complain, and they are, you can expect to hear about it by mid-day on your local news channel. Did I mention that it is Google+’s official launch date? Like most online communities users emulate their role models. Facebook does a good job of stealing attention .

This week Facebook unleashed a new feature that allows you to follow public Facebook comments for people you are not currently friends with. Also, you have to opt in.

That is correct sir, Facebook is finally getting the hint that people want the option to opt into new features, and along side with the new subscribe option there have been a plethora of new privacy updates to compete with Google+. Social media, like every other consumer product, is driven by you. When competition strikes we all win, but of course that means every new media/social media outlet will have to find new reasons to complain.

Facebook’s New Profile Subscribe Feature

So you are interested in a public figure who doesn’t have a Facebook Page, but you want to know more about them. Previously you would just have to regularly stalk their page for an updates, but with the new subscribe feature you can get notified when people update life events, status updates, photos and games as long as they are marked as public.

Prior to the launch of the subscribe feature you were able to follow Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg that acted as foreshadowing of the subscribe feature. As you will notice Mark already has well over 5 million people subscribe to his public updates, which is a result of the follow option.

Facebook designed this particular feature so that you can connect with journalists, political officials, celebrities and the like. Brands on the other hand will still be required to have Facebook Pages. See below for Facebook’s comparison on why an individual may want to open their feed to more people rather than creating a page: