So here is the question… at what point does a member list become a community or does it ever?
Our openBC community has a strong voice and some pretty clear opinions and it is vital and growing and I get a lot of feedback.
This has left me musing though on what is takes to create a new community?
Is there for instance an MSN community or are there just MSN users?
Is the face book a community or is it many groups of users?
I know what it took to kick off the openBC community and I know how much effort is required to maintain and grow openBC.
I have read a lot about communities and their constituents and I have many lessons learned (even recent ones) about what to do and not do.
Still the actually point at which a group of users becomes a community is a question that is currently occupying my mind and so I have decided to launch a research project into this area.
I am looking for a panel of international experts in the field of community so if you know someone who may be interesting to involve please put them in touch as I want to answer this question in order to serve our communities better.
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Dear Bill,
in my understanding, the factor that makes a community out of a network, is the behaviour in responsibility.
This makes the difference to a normal user-behavior.
For users the keyfactor is servicequality, for communitymembers it might be activ participation.
best regards
Gregor
a friend of the openBC idea
Dear Gregor,
I agree with your points and I am still wanting to delve deeper into what factors are considered to be the crucial ones. For instance if it is active participation what kind?
I’d say there is no fixed set of criteria when to speak of a community – the term itself is heavily debated in sociology. Looking at openBC, I’d identify at least two different types of communities:
First, there are shared practices among your members, that is certain routines and expectations your users have developed individually and collectively over time: How to approach someone for initial contact, how to deal with unwanted contact offers, how to broker relationships, … These routines guide members in how to interact with openBC in order to obtain their networking goals. This is a community in the very loose sense of “Verwendungsgemeinschaften” (maybe best translated as communities of practices, but that term is already in use in the business context..)
Then there are communities which are somewhat stronger, and they usually center around one or more of the fora/groups. Here people communicate on a more regular basis, establishing stronger relationships and developing mutual trust. This is where a lot of social capital is being generated, which – depending on the context of the forum/group – might be used for getting information and advice or maybe even socio-emotional support.
What makes things complicated is that some of these relationships will be online only, others will be brought in and maybe deepened from RL, while others might be initiated on the platform but the reach out to RL. So it is indeed a fascinating field for a research project… [disclaimer: I'm working on a related topic myself, but actually I'd be interested in hearing about your ideas and efforts
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A very very big question! In my opinion, a community begins with the possibilty to “exchange some lines on a website”. I know a lot of forums for example for gamers (did you know QUAKE?) where more than 10.000 useres are writing more than 2000 postings per day. Most of them are completly sensless … but this is a community
A community definition depends a lot from the people in it. The aim of a community must be to exchange knowledge with other members and not only to show my offers or my products.
Well, it’s our job to “train” the world in using a community in the right way
Marco
Thanks for the insightful comments I am also wandering what are the key features that are shared and what are different between online and ofline communities.
OpenBC is a high-quality business networking site, part of the trend toward more refined online social networking.
The question is “How does each member maximize his presence and relationship with other members of the community?” What is the most effective way to develop meaningful contacts, feedback, and possibly mutually advantageous business development?
One theory we subscribe to is that the fastest way to build you rown network is to make relevant introductions between people you know well and people you only know a litle, that is one reason why we built the Introduce tool.
I am very much interested in the functioning of brand communities and it seems to me that the more one delves into this topic the more elusive real understanding of it becomes.
I think that there are two factors that are important in the birth of a community. (Of course these are not the only ones.)
Firstly the medium (Internet, blog, msn, product) becomes transparent and real relationships between people start to from.
Users form an emotional attachment with the community (or their place in it) that extends far beyond the logical benefits of using a product or service.
These two aspects are not simply simply swithched on or of on a perticular day but moves on a sliding scale over time.
I look forward to your research!
What about a geographical openBC locator group like frappr http://www.frappr.com? OpenBC could create its own frappr group for all the geeks who would like to know where there friends live.