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Building
Online Communities
Some
Historical Background
Components of Online Communities
What Kind of Online Community Do You Need?
Metaphors for Different Communities
Some
Historical Background
From
the early origins of the Internet, dating back some 30 years now,
the scientists and engineers involved in its development saw the
network they were creating had more potential than merely backing
up sensitive data in distributed locations (which is all that
was called for in the original design). Almost immediately these
developers created a rudimentary email system and began passing
messages back and forth. By doing so, they created the basis for
an online community, linking written thought among people at scattered
locations, at speeds possible to carry out group discussions for
the first time in history.
This
further grew into Internet newsgroups, which formalized the distribution
of one-to-many group messages into a system that eventually came
to consist of tens of thousands of newsgroups covering every imaginable
topic, from the technical (comp.os.linux) to the socially relevant
(soc.adoption) to the absurd (alt.barney.dinosaur.die.die.die).
While still immensely popular, Internet newsgroup participation
is noticeably decreasing each year now due to other advancements
in online community participation. Some reports say that Internet
newsgroup participation is down about 15% a year for each of the
past three years while other forms of online participation are
increasing in popularity.
While
email and newsgroups were growing in popularity on the Internet,
isolated islands of so-called computer Bulletin Board Services
(BBS) began taking advantage of dialup modem capabilities and
a diverse assortment of these online clubs and groups and information
services began springing up, completely separate from the Internet.
Most of these services were quite small, hobbyist systems, but
some were quite enormous and consisted of separately developed,
private networks such as CompuServe in the U.S. and NIFTY-serve
in Japan, serving hundreds of thousands of members.
Clearly
people want to be connected and online and exchange information.
When
the Internet was finally released into the public domain, so companies
and private individuals could freely participate in the exciting
new service, yet another paradigm rose up and began to take prominent
foothold - the World Wide Web. The Web, with its graphical and,
perhaps most importantly, hyperlinked user interface has
become so dominant that many people consider the Web to be
the Internet, rather than just one of many services available
on the Internet. For some more background on this, see the section
on Internet Concepts.
All
the major online services began a move towards integration with
the Internet. And isolated BBS services either moved towards having
an Internet connection or, failing that, died away altogether.
It is fair to say that direct-dial BBS systems, which were so
popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s have, for the most part,
either joined the Internet somehow or disappeared.
What
has happened over the last five years or so, in particular, has
been a strong move to integrate these online systems with the
world wide web. While a web browser interface, in many respects,
is not ideal for for an interactive community, it enjoys the overwhelming
advantage of being immediately accessible to the now hundreds
of millions of people who are connected to the Internet. Therefore,
despite some drawbacks of using web browsers for two-way communication,
developers are providing unique solutions to make web-based online
communities a popular and attractive way for people to meet and
exchange ideas and information.
In
a recent new challenge, mobile computing using tiny cellular phone
devices has become enormously popular. In some areas, Internet
user participation via small portable device has reached 50% of
the market. It is anticipated that Internet access via these tiny,
wireless terminals will outnumber participants who access via
"traditional" computers in a very short time. This also
remains a challenge for online community builders.
Components
of an Online Community
Typically
an online community will have some or all of the following services
which provide the basic technical foundation for the community.
- A
hierarchy of folders or forums providing group discussion space
in different topic areas. Some communities have just one level
of discussions, while some have quite elaborate trees of nested
levels consistent with a more complex, diverse discussion community
or a large organization.
- Real
time communication services, so that people who are connected
at the same time can communicate with each other directly and
instantly. These services include simple public chats, private
chats, moderated speaker events, online live classrooms and
instant messaging - the ability to signal to a user to receive
a quick message sent by another user.
- A
built-in private email mailbox for each user, for the sending
and receiving of private messages with other members, and also
with people outside the community.
Other
services are quickly being developed and added to these traditional
online community services, including online auctions, online private
and group calendars, polls and questionairres with real-time results
reporting, the ability for members to create and update private
web pages, the ability to customize a private workspace thus creating
a private portal to the Internet, online shops and as many other
services imaginative people can think up. When creating an online
community, you want to make sure that your system has the ability
to be sufficiently customizeable and programmable so that new
features can be added as desired.
What
kind of community do you need?
You
may be feeling a little uncertain at this point. You might feel
the concepts are interesting, but a bit vague. You might be thinking
such things as, "Well, so what are we talking about here?
Chat rooms? Leaving memos for others to read? How does this fit
into my day-to-day company life? What does this have to do with
my school? Is this something that teachers, students, parents
and staff can all use somehow? How will this help my customers?
Is this useful inside my company? How can our community group
use this to help us with our activities?"
In
other words, "Where do I go from here?"
Fortunately,
you are reading a guide book that takes you step by step through
the process of setting up your own online community - from the
basic steps of setting up a hierarchy of folders and discussions,
all the way through customizing your site.
But
still, it is a good idea to have in mind some useful things you
want to accomplish with your online community - the purpose
of your community.
- If
you are a school administrator, you want to think in terms of
the major groups your community needs to serve - students, their
parents, your teachers and staff, perhaps the school board,
and the public in general.
You can make a very effective and useful online community where
staff and teacher groups can have private group discussions,
teachers can provide course materials and assignments for students,
parents can come in and ask questions, voice concerns and make
suggestions, students can promote their extra curricular activities
and people in general can come visit your school and see exhibits
of student projects.
Some classrooms might use real-time features, such as online
classroom features, so students can take a tour, via the Internet,
to places the teacher wants to take the students to - or show
each student, at his or her desk, three-dimensional models of
what they are studying.
- If
you are a company dealing with any sort of technical product,
you would like a place where customers can come in and post
questions for your staff and other customers to answer. This
kind of technical support community is becoming more and more
popular on the Internet. Customers love it because there is
a way of reaching people 24 hours a day and getting a response
from other customers. And since customers can search previous
messages for answers to questions, as time goes by a useful
online support database grows out of the community. Needless
to say, any question that a customer can find an answer for
by him or herself saves your technical support staff from providing
the same answers to the same questions over and over again.
- If
you are a community organization or club of almost any type
- coin collectors, drama groups, wine lovers, religious organizations,
pet owners, salsa dancers, model ship builders, space enthusiasts,
conspiracy theorists, gamers, joggers.... anything - an online
community is the perfect place to bring people of common interest
together to meet, exchange information, provide mutual support,
promote hobbies and interests and basically provide a place
to hang out. The neat thing about the Internet is that no matter
where you live, you can have another "virtual home" online where
you can also live and exchange ideas with other people in your
online community. To many people, their online community becomes
as important as the community in which they physically live.
And remember - no matter where you move to, you never have to
leave your online community!
- If
you are a small company, you can use an online community for
holding group discussions - discussions that leave a written
record! For example, let's say late at night, when nobody is
around in your office, you have an idea. You can post your idea
to your forums. When other staff members check their messages
they will read your idea and they can respond to it. Others
can see the responses and a discussion (hopefully a constructive
one!) will ensue. The great thing is that everybody is participating
in these discussions at times that are convenient for them.
In fact, your actual offices don't have to be in the same place
at all. Your virtual office, in the form of an online community,
brings everybody together.
Well,
by now you are getting the idea. You might already be thinking
about what kind of an online community you would like to build
and what the appearance of it will be like. You probably have
ideas about how members should feel when they join and participate.
Some
communities only need discussion areas. Some depend on lots of
people always being online at the same time and might be chat
based. Some require both. Some might need email, and some other
might not. The important thing is to think about your group or
organization and come up with ways to make your online community
inviting, interesting, useful and easy to understand and use for
your members.
Metaphors
for Different Communities
One
thing that helps promote a feeling of community, and makes things
easier-to-understand is a suitable online community metaphor.
For
example, if you visit WebX Harbor,
our developers' community site, we have chosen the metaphor of
a friendly, small town. When you enter WebX Harbor, at the top-most
level, you will see the following places to visit:
-
New in Town? Introduce yourself! (144 messages)
- WebX
Harbor City Hall (1 folder, 2 discussions)
- WebX
Harbor Community Center (3 folders, 2 discussions)
- WebX
Harbor Institute of Technology (WIT) (14 folders, 2 discussions)
The
"place metaphor" we use there is supposed to reinforce
the feeling of actually "being somewhere." At the same
time, it provides an organizational scheme that, at its top-most
level, is supposed to make it easier to get a feeling for where
to click next.
The
"New in Town" area doesn't fit into the "place"
metaphor exactly (because the link itself is not a place), but
is so clear that we made an exception for this. A foolish consistency
is the hobgoblin of little minds, as they say.
The
WebX Harbor City Hall contains discussions about WebX Harbor itself
- site notices, discussions about how WebX Harbor is run, and
so on.
The
WebX Harbor Community Center contains mostly non-technical discussions,
a free-talk area, a discussion of social issues involving online
communities, a place for members to discuss their sites, and so
on.
And
the WebX Harbor Insitute of Technology obviously contains the
bulk of the technical discussions.
Even
though a great deal of graphics are not used in creating this
metaphor, the human mind takes over very quickly (and aren't books
always better than the movies?) and after a while you really feel
as though you are wandering around the town of WebX Harbor, dropping
by the Coffee Shop to talk with friends, visiting the College
to seek some technical help, and so on.
A
suitable metaphor can provide a unifying, special feel for your
online community and draw people back over and over again.
Sometimes
the metaphor is perfectly obvious. For example, if you are part
of a school, the most obvious metaphor is a virtual mirror of
your school - a hierarchy of academic departments, student organizations
and offices for the different staff. A clickeable map that follows
the layout of your school can add to the illusion.
If
you are running an hobby special-interest group, then you will
want to think of a metaphor that fits in with your group's special
interest. For example, a drama club might want a Stage to discuss
public performances, a Dressing Room, for small discussions and
rumor-mongering, a nearby Bar to go to read newspaper reviews,
and so on. Use your imagination and you will come up with a distinctive
metaphor to make your place special.
Now,
let's get started!
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