How an online community is different from a Social Network
Its very interesting to watch the reaction of people when we tell them that we run an online music community. Most people think that we run a social network and dismiss it right away. A few people get curious and ask us to explain the concept. Very few people we meet already understand the difference. I think thats because online communities are still not very popular in India. There are a few popular forums like TeamBHP that have a strong community element, but only a handful of such sites exist. In this post I would try to explain is the difference between a social network and an online community and why the dynamics are completely different.
Who do you know Already
I think this is one of the key difference between an online community and a social network. More often than not a person joins Orkut or Facebook to connect with people she knows already. They could be old classmates, colleagues or friends from college. The main intent here is to reconnect and stay in touch. A few people go to such sites to find new connections but as far as I know, it does not work very well .. specially on a network like facebook that has strong privacy settings.
Contrast this with an online community. You go there because you are interested in the theme of the community. In case of muziboo, that happens to be Music. Music that you create. Most of our users come to Muziboo to showcase their music to people who care about such home made music. When a user joins an online community, chances are she does not know most people there and is looking to form some connections (mostly online) with people who share the same interest. You are not on an online community to talk about your work, personal life, relationship status, your last trip and ten other things. You are there for just one reason only … your interest. Online communities serve a niche and serve it well.
Mindset towards making new connections
In orkut you would find several profiles (mostly of women) who express that they would not accept friendship requests from people they don’t know. In a social network, your profile is a representation of you in the online world. Your connections, communities your join reflect on you and along with your profile information give people an idea of who your are. So most people prefer not to connect with strangers (again more so in case of facebook) because they would be associated with them in someway.
In an online community, your profile is just a part of your real self. So in case of Muziboo your profile is a representation of your musical self. Your connections there are people you admire musically or who like your music. You are open to adding more friends or contacts because all your care is that they would help you in getting better in your passion. Since you know most people are there for a specific reason, you are more likely to talk to them even if you have not known them before. Its the same reason why I think groups in flickr for a certain city (say bangalore) meetup in real life every now and then and orkut meets hardly ever materialize.
Culture or Spirit of the place
Both social networks and online communities try to stay neutral. They don’t have opinions. They don’t dictate what you should do (there are however guidelines as to what not to do). However an online community does have a culture that you can feel once you have spent sometime there. For example, when I started using flickr, it took me very little time to figure out that I can go and comment on anyone’s picture and then request them for a comment. I could quickly find out that groups are a great way to find people who are interested in some specific kind/aspect of photography
and so on. This culture or spirt is defined by the people in the community but the creators of the place initially play a big roll in shaping it. Which brings me to my last point for today’s post
Nurturing the place v/s letting it be
An online community has to be nurtured. Specially in India or similar place where conventionally we have not looked at online world as a place to learn or pursue something serious. Social networks on the other hand don’t really need nurturing. You don’t need to greet new users and tell them they should comment on other people’s stuff. If a social network is all about the number of users and connections they have, an online community is all about the number of comments they make or the number of group discussions users initiate. To achieve that, community managers have to work very hard till the place carries that vibe all by itself. The concept of a community manager is absent in social networks as I know.
I would be very interested in knowing your thoughts on this article. Have you been part of an online community before? If yes, please do tell us about it and how your experience was. Do you think social network’s groups can serve as online communities?
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Comments
Hi Ishwar
Great point you have raised. There are lots of people who can be community managers and in fact be great community managers. You can sometimes find these people in the community itself. They have to be very passionate about what you offer and have the patience to talk to others
The community managers can come in pretty early I feel. That said, I feel the founders should still keep interacting with the community every now and then just to get a feel for where things are headed. You can sometimes get great ideas by seeing how people are using your service
Hope this answers your questions
Regards
Prateek
Yeah I cant agree more. Social networks are way different from online communities and with reference to Ishwar’s question above, I feel, anybody who understands the spirit and passionate about the service can be a community manager. This can even be users sometimes, owning the place and taking responsibility for the culture. Heres my post on online communities and what it takes to build them
http://www.nithyadayal.com/blog/2008/05/16/building-online-communities/
First, I liked the new neat look of your blog.
I think Ishwar has put forward an interesting question, and you’re ready with a justifiable answer too. :)
:)
i think social networking groups can serve as online communities, especially in cases where user involvement is a lot to do with passion (photography, music, films etc).. While orkut is a lot about saying hi to your school crushes :), i think fb offers a lot more thanks to the different applications which i can use to relate to other people - on one more level of association for existing contacts, and perhaps getting to know people with similar interests… the key thing here is how much interest the ‘founder’ takes in seeding conversations…. one very active community that I’m part of in fb is ‘I love trashy hindi movies’, where participation is amazing….
the other point is users - communities operate in niches, and rely a lot on WOM, but if the same community is in a mass space like fb, think of the WOM it would generate by simply ‘pulling’ people with a newsfeed mention… the point being ‘I am anyway in (say) fb, let me enjoy one more layer of interaction while i’m there’… for me its a classic case of shelfari vs a shelfari app on fb….. so, in essence they should be made to work in tandem… either start with a group, get enough participation to spin off or, make an application on a mass portal to get more participation… damn, that could’ve been a post :D
Wow .. thats an insightful comment .. very true .. probably the reason why most of us try to have some presence in facebook .. in the form of an app .. because getting noticed (coz of newsfeeds etc) is very easy …
Good post dude!
To answer ishwar’s point, I’d say that founders need to seed the community..and in a due course of time, find out who is the “influencer”, and most importantly the ‘mavens’ (ref: tipping pt)
I know few community managers in india and its more of an operational role..but startup cant afford to have such roles in their payroll..
PRateek - I dont completely agree with ‘online communities try to stay neutral.” - good online communities are formed only if there is an opinion (techmeme?)
If you meant “neutral” as in platform neutrality, I do agree with you
-ashish
just an afterthought, in the case of muziboo, myspace might be a better fit than fb because of their work on campus bands etc… the other two entities i see a connection with are worldspace and sunday freedom jam, but maybe you’ve already touched base with them :)
[…] Virtual Address Read a very interesting argument yesterday here on how an online community is different from a group on a social network, or is […]
[…] You are working hard on your startup and you meet tons of new people every week and tell them about your startup. If you are lucky, probably 1% of them would love your startup and show it. This is certainly true in our case. If I go to a barcamp or OCC or other startup events, less than 1% of the people there are excited to hear about Muziboo. Most people dismiss the concept as yet another social network (about which I wrote here). […]
Fantastic post Prateek. To put these thoughts down makes it crystal clear to all of us.
Considering that the Founder is in the best position to understand the culture he would like to cultivate in his community, should the Founder of the community be the community manager?
It takes a toll on his/her time. Sometimes that time can be invested in a building a partnership, in marketing and scores of other areas.
Do you think the role of the community manager can be outsourced. If yes, at what stage of the community should be outsourced? Is there a threshold that one can define?