2 posts tagged “virtual community”
An illustration of my view of levels of online community. I see relevance to thinking in these terms in a "Web 2.0 World" that doesn't always distinguish between the types of user interaction with sites and with other people. Sometimes, or perhaps often, discussion about virtual communities is too imprecise. In such cases, usually technology is set as a high point of discussion and simple user-to-user interaction is treated as community. In reality, strong, vibrant virtual communities generally takes a long time to develop. And while the technology might hinder such, it doesn't on other hand create it.
Recently and in droves, internet businesses are realizing that users play a strong role in defining success. This realization has led to increasing discussion of online community, social networks, and user-driven technology. The debate on the validity of various concepts of Web 2.0 aside, the irony is that the attention on social and community-based aspects of online products, technology, and space is actually a delay by the majority in catching up to what a minority have always understood.
While the more recent attention on the topics has many benefits, it includes a number of drawbacks. One of these negative consequences is that increased in attention and number of “players” has led to dilution of meaning in commonly-used language. Namely, common use of terms like “online community” is no longer “common”. The increased usage of this and similar terms may be inversely proportional to the decrease in the common understanding of the terms themselves. Unfortunately, individuals between groups and within groups can find themselves using terms that seemingly has a common definition, but in actuality the usage of such terms carries different meanings to different individuals.
Such is now the case with general discussion about “online community” within and between internet businesses. In order to have productive conversations about strategies, technology, and products (whether or not they are labeled “Web 2.0”), it is crucial that the use of language be more precise and that a common understanding of certain terms develop.
The increased attention in the last couple of years on social and user-driven aspects of internet businesses no longer allow for “online community” to be a truly useful term. It is no longer a precise term. In actuality, there are several different phenomena that tend to be described as “online community”, but these share little in common besides being a description of groups of people using a particular website. Phenomena often described as “community” range from websites that post static content from user submissions to fully functioning online communities (in the truest sense of the word). It is difficult to establish a list of definitions of community because any discussion of “community” tends to fall more on a spectrum rather than within a particular group.
To see these points illustrated further, one might consider some of the “community-oriented” products launched in recent years across the web. To some, all of these would be illustrations of online community, given that each involves user-generated content and each involves participation by the user base (“community”). However, the use of the word “community” when referencing particular products and technology does not involve the same conception of “community”. For example, the level of interaction between members in a virtual group or discussion board is not the same as that of the collaborative efforts in wikis. Contributors to the wikis do not interact with one another in ways that one would describe as community interaction.
Highly developed online communities represent the most accurate use of the term “community”. These are self-sustaining, self-maintaining, and organic units that beyond being a sum of its parts (individuals), represents a separate entity (perhaps in the sense that a corporation is recognized separately from its individual owners). Such communities continue to exist as individual members leave and new members join. These communities are also not best described by the particular technology employed to allow the community members to interact with one another. While particular technology may stifle the maintenance or growth of the community, the community itself is ultimately not defined by the technology. While the poor use of technology may negatively impact the health of the community, the technology does not create the community.
On the opposite extreme, one sees the term “community” being assigned to newer technology and newer spaces on the internet. Such usage sometimes describes online spaces that see interaction between the users and the site, with little or no interaction between individual users. Other times, there is interaction between users that are more happenstance rather than efforts to form a cohesive group.
There is a strong potential for this type of imprecision in use of language to cause misunderstandings within and between groups. As one group talks about “community” with another, it is difficult to imagine productive dialogue developing out of uncommon use of language. In the case of “community”, the different usage of the terms can easily cause differences in the valuation of assets. One group may discuss the value of community referring to true communities developed with careful management over a long period of time, while another team may be referring to technology and products that allow for additional user-generated content to be created. Truly, these are completely different concepts, yet there seems to be a need for each to use the same term “community”.
While the above is not a full articulation of the increasing problem of misuse of language and misunderstandings about the term “community in particular, it should serve to point out that such an issue exists. And the more that people discussion things like Web 2.0 and all that it incorporates, the more that the inaccurate use of terms like “community” will stifle understanding, increase tensions, and create confusion.
