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April 20, 2005
Untethered Communities
Posted by Ross Mayfield
Jon Lebkowsky on a WELL discussion:
We’re seeing more and more ways to connect, and no one mode is all of the story. The virtual communities I hang out within these days are more fluid and less enclosed than the conversations on the WELL, and you can’t zero in on a single technology or mode that the typical community uses. They may have conversations via their blogs, collaborate via wikis, have realtime discussions via chat, do email and IM, have conference calls, find each other in social network sites, share bookmarks via del.icio.us and photos via flickr.com, etc. What’s happened is that communities are no longer tethered to specific technologies or virtual places. They find many ways to connect, and they keep searching for more.
He summarizes: We often argue that blogs are conversations and that blogs in aggregate work as platforms for online community, but they really are less conversational than dedicated discussion forums, so if you focus on blogs alone, it’s harder to get the sense of community that you have in more traditional virtual spaces like the WELL.
What’s your take on the changing sense of community? Are these less conversational forms?
Comments (6)
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1. Alex Schroeder on April 20, 2005 1:29 PM writes...
In my experience, a collection of blogs only work as a community platform amongst a group of close friends. Many blogs I visit are from people not my friends, and I don't feel a sense of community -- eg. this one. On the other hand, newsgroups and mailing lists sometimes manage to create this community feeling, but as the community grows, the feeling disappears. Too many voices speaking. On the wikis I've been active on, it is still working. Size /does/ matter. :)
Permalink to Comment2. Jay Fienberg on April 20, 2005 1:34 PM writes...
I'm wondering if the "blogs are conversation" argument is just an errant rephrasing of Cluetrain's "markets are conversations"--blogs are conversations only in the sense of the Cluetrain argument to corporations/marketers, e.g., blogs are more conversation-like than PR/marketing brochure-style websites.
In other words, from the point of view of corporate marketing, blogs are conversations rather than communications.
But, from the point of view of individuals who have actual conversations with one and other, aided by various web-connectng means, blogs are neither themselves conversations nor are they often the best web means for participating in conversations.
Permalink to Comment3. Robin Hamman on April 20, 2005 3:40 PM writes...
Any technology or place that can facilitate conversations can also facilitate the growth of communities. I don't think we can make judgements about whether blogs or message boards or even the local park is the best place for community to develop because every community, and every individual in the cluster of individuals who make up a community, is likely to prefer different forms of communication.
I suppose my short winded response is - use the right tools for the right job and don't worry too much about how other people are doing it.
Permalink to Comment4. Nick W on April 20, 2005 4:32 PM writes...
You can have both, it's not rocket science. If you click my name and then see the top right link that says "recent posts" you have the key...
You need to be able to follow conversations better internally within a site, and stop buggering about worrying about blogs all the time. Take the best of both worlds -> RSS/TB/Recent posts
Simple stuff.
Permalink to Comment5. Jon Garfunkel on April 20, 2005 10:42 PM writes...
Jay-- good point. Here was my take on the blogs are conversations meme, which my good neighbor David Weinberger has not gotten around to respond to. Unfortunately, we are stuck with non-threaded comments here which actually kill conversations. Another example: over the weekend, a few threads ago, somebody posed as "Scott Heiferman" and effectively killed any hope of continuing the conversation. (though there was a brief conversation email offline among myself and some of the Many2Many contributors-- it was there since there is no "meta" thread/forum here.)
I think Jon L. is saying that it's a good thing to have broken out of the closed-WELL model, and we now have a richer ecosystem where conversations can take place. That's a good thing. And another good thing we have now, on blogs and other comment-based websites, is that we have real people who can actually follow-through on conversations. That's a quiet revolution that's been happening.
There is still is a problem with our ecosystem, though. Robin impels "use the right tools for the right job," but there is little insight on what the right tools are. I think that Corante has great content, and is more narrowly focused on the average blog, which is what brings together everybody here. But as there is no meta-channel, and no quantified feedback mechanism, it is lacking some useful biological input for evolving.
Permalink to Comment6. David Sabel on April 22, 2005 9:26 AM writes...
I think it's about the conversation, and the people having it. Wherever there is conversation, and people interested in it, community can take root. And the better the technology is at enabling a group to congregate and chew on a topic, the stronger the conversation, and the greater likelihood that a strong "community" will evolve.
My sense is that people have different preferences though, and not all uses of a given technology are alike in terms of success at achieving community building.
Some blogs are single voice monologues with an occasional comment. Others have multiple contributors and a wide audience of followers who post comments, generating non-threaded conversations.
Some email lists are announcement oriented, where one to many posting, but no conversations go on. Others are active bee hives of threaded conversations / debate.
Blogs are conversations the way a meeting room is a conversation. It's a container or a facilitator. Without people and a topic its just another room.
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