Point well taken. But there are simply way too many communities these days. How many communities can an individual be part off and contribute meaningfully. The exit in the community business idea is still dependent on being acquired by Google, Yahoo, MSN etc. Is there a viable business model out there besides ads?
noah kagan
· 3 years ago
Pran,
Thanks for the comment. There are a ton of communities not being acquired by a large company that are thriving today: deviantart.com, threadless.com, dogster.com, suicidegirls.com and tons more. The reason we don't hear about them is we are not involved in them. The main stream ones which make big bucks are what most people hear about.
There are tons of viable business models besides ads:
1- Social Capital/Gifting: Let people through the use of money give to one another virutal goods.
2- Recommended products and services through a community portal.
3- Membership fees to be a part of a community like meetup.com
4- Community donated. This will not bring significant revenue but at least makes the site sustainable like wikipedia.
There are tons more... I think it is just finding out the right balance and value for the members.
Joe Suh
· 3 years ago
Good thoughts Noah... and thanks for forgetting to plug us :)
I'm curious about how important you feel face-to-face interaction is for building community. The obvious core strength of vertical social networks is the tighter, more intimate community. Yet the very nature of a niche also limits the network effects needed to remain sustainable.
It seems to me that face-to-face interaction isn't that important anymore. Dogster and Daily Strength users are fine with virtual interaction only.
If thats the case, social networks seem like nothing more than Forum 2.0
noah kagan
· 3 years ago
Joe,
You are welcome about not being mentioned;)
I feel face-to-face interaction depends on the organization. Some communities are built from a face-to-face group wanting to have an online presence. Whereas, Daily Strength's success is from the anonymity they provide online.
I don't think niche limits the network effects, I just think it reduces it to a smaller exponential growth and that saturation will happen sooner.
Social Networks are definitely a derivative of forums and just provide an easier way to express yourself and communicate with others beyond just a message board.
Joe Suh
· 3 years ago
That seems paradoxical to me - anonymity versus more ways for self-expression.
Seems to me forum software can very easily convert itself into a social network. Forum members already have their own pages (aka profiles), mailboxes (aka private messaging), and a photo (aka avatar). Let them add each other as friends and presto, social network!
So I think the niche social networks that will thrive have to either:
1) Center around an affinity where there is not a good forum already (looks like Dailystrength is taking that approach)
2) Provide a level of online interaction for a community dynamic that is not content with a simple message board. This is where face-to-face interaction is key IMHO...
Just my 2 cents from the social network that will remain unmentioned by The Noah :)
People Finder
· 3 years ago
Some interesting truths to online community building in our Web 2.0 world.
Colin McDougall
· 3 years ago
Noah - Great article!
One point I would like to make for those building community for their online business.
When is the last time you called members of your community to get their personal thoughts?
Yes, your online success can be propelled by spending a few minutes everyday making phone calls to members of your online community.
Quite often things get lost in the written word and thoughts are not fully captured.
Think about this for a moment:
The internet is constantly moving at lightning speed and we (and our community members) are still moving at human speed.
When is the last time you slowed things down to the human pace and really learned what your community wants?
Yes, it's a time consuming thing to do but serves very well in gaining an understanding of what your audience really wants.
I have had huge success by focusing in on one person at a time and allow the snowball effect to kick in.
dave mcclure
· 3 years ago
nice piece noah... i rate it aok (dork!)
as for me, i'm regularly involved in these communities: * geeks / entrepreneurs / internet startups * microfinance / social entrepreneurship * ultimate frisbee
in addition to the above, i've gradually become semi-adopted by several asian & south indian communities due to many family & friends, and i find this diversity of bay area community to be one of the things i value most about living in california.
what's interesting to me is that as technology advances, i find myself participating in MORE, rather than LESS offline & online communities... it seems like the internet helps connect people with smaller & smaller niche communities of more specific interest, and help bring them closer together.
People tend to underestimate the effort required to build and nurture quality community site.
Also information architecture (UI) issues of community sites are hard to nail down.
Mehul Patel
· 3 years ago
This is a Brilliant post from one of the most vibrant and highly confident guy in whole of Bay 'Noah Kagan'
Noah I agree with this totally and like Seth G says Small is the New Big or Small is beautiful, also strong focus and constant efforts is something which will definitely pay off, the idea is simple dont work for or towards the pay off, but work for passion or anything you love and add a lil effort to it each day and you are Home!
As You have mentioned Daily Strength I would like to mention www.Minti.com a site run and managed by and for Young Parents all over the world it started small and now its a Awesome new age Smart Wiki on Parenting very Hip too!
Thank You Noah and Venture Beat :)
Jitendra
· 3 years ago
Noah,
Great article...Online communities allow people to converse without any regard to geography...Of course we pay for this ease of use in terms of making it easy, for a few bad actors, to try and make money from such communities via spam and other unsavory schemes. If we are able to get a system to identify and root out some of these bad actors, the on-line communities have a chance to be a whole lot more vibrant and useful.
Sundar Krishnamurthy
· 2 years ago
I don't think communities like Cupertino happened because people chose to be among "their own".
There is a single driving force behind high concentration of Chinese and Indians (both are Asians in my book) in Cupertino and that is the school district. This is really a network effect where other Asians moved in because of the perceived value of the schools and ended up making it real.
Online communities however differ in one respect. Even the best site for any topic is not guaranteed to have the largest community because (a) it is easy to create similar sites and (b) there is no real effort to switch from one to another.
The value delivered by the site to a participant has to be more than the effort to participate in order for an online community to be successful.
noah kagan
· 2 years ago
Sundar,
Great remarks. I 100% agree that Cupertino has a huge draw because of our remarkable school system. Your second sentence is right on point with my arguments. There is a community that built around an initial base of people who came for the schooling.
I think overall there needs to be an initial reason for the communities to form. For that to happen there needs to be an immediate benefit for themselves.
Geoff Dodd
· 2 years ago
I found Noah Kagan's article to be extremely positive :) and it struck a chord with me as I have two beautiful nieces from Thailand living with us as they undertake High School studies here in Perth, Western Australia.
We were in Bangkok recently and the language barrier really got to me. People do flock together from commonality of language and culture. Online communities then need to OVERdeliver more, possibly offering language translation by machine? so finally we'll be able to, say, chat in Mandarin? Thai? Vietnamese? (With quick simplified machine-driven translation.) There's a task for Silicon Valley, Noah.
All Comments
Thanks for the comment. There are a ton of communities not being acquired by a large company that are thriving today: deviantart.com, threadless.com, dogster.com, suicidegirls.com and tons more. The reason we don't hear about them is we are not involved in them. The main stream ones which make big bucks are what most people hear about.
There are tons of viable business models besides ads:
1- Social Capital/Gifting: Let people through the use of money give to one another virutal goods.
2- Recommended products and services through a community portal.
3- Membership fees to be a part of a community like meetup.com
4- Community donated. This will not bring significant revenue but at least makes the site sustainable like wikipedia.
There are tons more... I think it is just finding out the right balance and value for the members.
I'm curious about how important you feel face-to-face interaction is for building community. The obvious core strength of vertical social networks is the tighter, more intimate community. Yet the very nature of a niche also limits the network effects needed to remain sustainable.
It seems to me that face-to-face interaction isn't that important anymore. Dogster and Daily Strength users are fine with virtual interaction only.
If thats the case, social networks seem like nothing more than Forum 2.0
You are welcome about not being mentioned;)
I feel face-to-face interaction depends on the organization. Some communities are built from a face-to-face group wanting to have an online presence. Whereas, Daily Strength's success is from the anonymity they provide online.
I don't think niche limits the network effects, I just think it reduces it to a smaller exponential growth and that saturation will happen sooner.
Social Networks are definitely a derivative of forums and just provide an easier way to express yourself and communicate with others beyond just a message board.
Seems to me forum software can very easily convert itself into a social network. Forum members already have their own pages (aka profiles), mailboxes (aka private messaging), and a photo (aka avatar). Let them add each other as friends and presto, social network!
So I think the niche social networks that will thrive have to either:
1) Center around an affinity where there is not a good forum already (looks like Dailystrength is taking that approach)
2) Provide a level of online interaction for a community dynamic that is not content with a simple message board. This is where face-to-face interaction is key IMHO...
Just my 2 cents from the social network that will remain unmentioned by The Noah :)
One point I would like to make for those building community for their online business.
When is the last time you called members of your community to get their personal thoughts?
Yes, your online success can be propelled by spending a few minutes everyday making phone calls to members of your online community.
Quite often things get lost in the written word and thoughts are not fully captured.
Think about this for a moment:
The internet is constantly moving at lightning speed and we (and our community members) are still moving at human speed.
When is the last time you slowed things down to the human pace and really learned what your community wants?
Yes, it's a time consuming thing to do but serves very well in gaining an understanding of what your audience really wants.
I have had huge success by focusing in on one person at a time and allow the snowball effect to kick in.
as for me, i'm regularly involved in these communities:
* geeks / entrepreneurs / internet startups
* microfinance / social entrepreneurship
* ultimate frisbee
in addition to the above, i've gradually become semi-adopted by several asian & south indian communities due to many family & friends, and i find this diversity of bay area community to be one of the things i value most about living in california.
what's interesting to me is that as technology advances, i find myself participating in MORE, rather than LESS offline & online communities... it seems like the internet helps connect people with smaller & smaller niche communities of more specific interest, and help bring them closer together.
now isn't that special :)
- dave mcclure
http://500hats.typepad.com/
People tend to underestimate the effort required to build and nurture quality community site.
Also information architecture (UI) issues of community sites are hard to nail down.
Noah I agree with this totally and like Seth G says Small is the New Big or Small is beautiful, also strong focus and constant efforts is something which will definitely pay off, the idea is simple dont work for or towards the pay off, but work for passion or anything you love and add a lil effort to it each day and you are Home!
As You have mentioned Daily Strength I would like to mention www.Minti.com a site run and managed by and for Young Parents all over the world it started small and now its a Awesome new age Smart Wiki on Parenting very Hip too!
Thank You Noah and Venture Beat :)
Great article...Online communities allow people to converse without any regard to geography...Of course we pay for this ease of use in terms of making it easy, for a few bad actors, to try and make money from such communities via spam and other unsavory schemes. If we are able to get a system to identify and root out some of these bad actors, the on-line communities have a chance to be a whole lot more vibrant and useful.
There is a single driving force behind high concentration of Chinese and Indians (both are Asians in my book) in Cupertino and that is the school district. This is really a network effect where other Asians moved in because of the perceived value of the schools and ended up making it real.
Online communities however differ in one respect. Even the best site for any topic is not guaranteed to have the largest community because (a) it is easy to create similar sites and (b) there is no real effort to switch from one to another.
The value delivered by the site to a participant has to be more than the effort to participate in order for an online community to be successful.
Great remarks. I 100% agree that Cupertino has a huge draw because of our remarkable school system. Your second sentence is right on point with my arguments. There is a community that built around an initial base of people who came for the schooling.
I think overall there needs to be an initial reason for the communities to form. For that to happen there needs to be an immediate benefit for themselves.
We were in Bangkok recently and the language barrier really got to me. People do flock together from commonality of language and culture. Online communities then need to OVERdeliver more, possibly offering language translation by machine? so finally we'll be able to, say, chat in Mandarin? Thai? Vietnamese? (With quick simplified machine-driven translation.) There's a task for Silicon Valley, Noah.
Thanks, Geoff Dodd Perth, Aust.