Jon Keefe's presentation on Building Online Communities given at our Manchester Seminar on the 1st July and in London on the 6th July

1. Building Online Communities July 1st 2010 Jon Keefe CEO KMP Digitata

2. Community Memory 1973 Community Memory ’73 1st Public BBS – Berkeley San Francisco experiment to understand how people would react to exchanging information via computer

3. History of Communities online Usenet ‘79 – organised into topical categories called newsgroups Usenet resembled Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) which were precursors of today’s internet forums MUD (Multi-User Dungeons) multi-user real-time virtual world represented in text IRC (Internet Relay Chat) a form of real-time Internet text messaging (chat) or synchronous conferencing Chat Rooms BBS SysOP home-hosted systems Today’s Threaded Internet Forums www.biofind.com Community 2.0 Web 2.0 technologies plus a community

4. Definition When people carry on public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships Howard Rheingold Author- Virtual Communities (1993)

5. Other Leading Lights Mark Granovetter American sociologist at Stanford University Theories on the spread of information in social networks known as "The Strength of Weak Ties" (1973). Malcolm Gladwell “The Tipping Point” where he talks of “the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point.”

6. What makes up Online Community An enabling technology Ning, wordpress A core topic Passionate contributors Background crowd An unwritten social contract of trust Moderators (sometimes)

7. Examples of the purpose of online communities Activism Clan (gaming) Research test bed Technology Strategy Board 30,000 representative UK onliners www.innovateuk.org Support Groups

8. Examples of the purpose of online communities Ethnography Hobbies www.flickr.com - photography www.redbubble.com - poetry Answers www.blurt-it.com A highly networked individual’s social graph

9. Biofind

10. Mercedes forum

11. Second Life

12. Make up of a community Peripheral (i.e. Lurker) – An outside, unstructured participation Inbound (i.e. Novice) Newcomer is invested in the community and heading towards full participation Insider (i.e. Regular) Full committed community participant Leader (i.e. Champion) A leader, sustains membership participation and brokers interactions

13. Make up of a community Peripheral =1000 Inbound =100 Insider =10 Leader =1

14. Community participation Lurkers don’t readily participate because they don’t believe they need to and in not doing so they are being helpful Leaders participate because they believe that their actions will have positive outcomes Member participation is not based on hierarchical needs or goals-driven theories but desire planning and they environment Increasing participation in online communities: A framework for human–computer interaction:JonathanBishop

15. Dynamics of Communities Lurker Inbound Insider Leader 1 Lurker Lurker Inbound Lurker Host Lurker Leader 2 Insider Lurker Lurker Inbound Leader 3 Lurker Insider Inbound

16. Value of Community User 1 £ £ ? Host £ User 2 £ ? £ £ ? User 3

17. Monetisation summary Good Old fashioned cpc mechanisms Subscription or freemium models Relationship commissions

18. Other value in community Conversation/dialogue Sentiment Influence Co-learning Collaboration

19. Qualitative Signs of success Signs of ownership within the community Self-policing Rituals Off-line actions begin

20. Quantitative success metrics Number of new members Number leaving members Member satisfaction Number and type of content items created Number of connections / relationships created Time on site Frequency of visits Recommendations & Referrals

21. Building a community Don’t let technology drive the community Seed content with known champions in the topic Inaugural members act as roll models Define code of conduct Beta Keep participation simple Initially all content open unless as part of a reward

22. Building a community Politely provoke and reward participation Track strangers/lurkers and try to promote them through desire Be active and part of the community yourself Set an example It takes time!

23. Summary Online communities have social structure just like the real world because they comprise real people! Online communities have a voice and an opinion Online communities can be valued in many ways

24. Summary Be careful, you don’t want to be thrown out of your own community. Because the lunatics will take over the asylum

25. Thank you, any questions?