Social Media is not Community

I'm finding that there is a lot of confusion between the concept of social media and the concept of community. They are often used interchangeably and they are not the same thing.  Social media can help foster communities but social media can be limited to allowing a conversation around content...which is *not* community. For example, ABC allowing people to comment on specific news stories with comments and ratings is not a community. Rating and ranking books on Amazon does not create a community.  I am not suggesting that these things do not have value - they do and it is immense and important - but it is not the same as enabling communities.

Communities have the following characteristics:
- They are continuous, not temporal - this is not to say that people don't drop in and out but there is a core membership that interacts together over a long period of time.
- Communities gather around a concept or common goal not around a collection of content (although content does plays a major role, it is not the impetus for the community).
- Communities take on various conversations and activities, led by different members over time - it is not one conversation but many.
- People within communities get to know each other and interact regularly without centralized facilitation and not necessarily in the context of what the community is discussing as a whole.
- Community leaders emerge over time as they continue to take proactive roles in the community and rally other members to their causes. These leaders are community members and they self-select because of their interests - not because they are told to do so...although they can be encouraged to do so.

There are two opportunities for enterprises then. 1 - to use social media to enable conversations and get a better idea of how constituents respond to specific content, initiatives, goals.  This is much easier both to understand and implement. 2 - to create communities that extend their capabilities and engage their constituents in richer ways that results in higher retention, lower risk, increased ROI, and faster operational capacity.  Communities have enormous strategic benefits to companies but require considerable investment (in resources, time, and tools) and are difficult to implement because they have a significant impact on business processes.

Right now the market seems to get social media but we still have a long way to go in helping companies understand the value, requirements, and needs of communities.

Comments

[ScottG]

Yup. I agree completely. While the lines of what is community and what isn't may be fuzzy and subject to disagreement, they're more then just a few Twitter comments.

Patti Anklam's "Net Work" talks about networks having intentionality and purpose. At which point, relationships are defined along with collaborative interactions directed toward a common purpose. She says, "I believe that a community is an aspect of a network that is aware of its common purpose." She goes on, but it would be both difficult and wrong to type the whole book here. I think you'd like her book if you haven't seen it already.

Scott

[Annette Schulte]

Well-said, and I agree. Social media are the tools that the community can use for its networking and conversation and relationship-building.

I had not fully considered the "common goal" point, but it seems obvious now. Methinks I need to think on that some more.

[Christian DE NEEF]

Rachel,

I work in Knowledge Management and community is very important to KM. As in "Community of Practice" (CoP),

Social Media are a technology, a tool (in the broader sense of the word). They are not community and they do not create community. They are at best enablers, facilitators. Social Media certainly do not create the shared values that are required for people to share (knowledge, experience, support, ... whatever) in a community. As Etienne Wenger says: members of a community are informally bound by what they do together -- from engaging in lunchtime discussions to solving difficult problems -- and by what they have learned through their mutual engagement in these activities.

So, more than rating books of sharing music tastes... for a community to thrive, some form of commitment/sense of belonging is required.

Christian.

[Rachel Happe]

Great comments - and I will check out Net Work!

[David Wallace]

The "social media" trend-let and buzzwords like 'crowdsourcing' wrongly gives the impression that user-generated content can replace news reporting, advertising, voting or other work where there are 'experts' with skills. Fans make an implicit assumption that everyone else out there is 'just like us' and wants to (or can) participate.

Communities in knowledge work thrive when people get - and offer - value from others and build trust. One key difference from 'social media' is a group with a shared goal or mission (open source software) as opposed to just open platform (YouTube, Twitter and other current 'open mic' sites).

My favorite example is the Thinkpads.com website. Started by a single reseller, it has grown into thousands of users and created a deep knowledge base (without IBM's support or permission). It has moved from CompuServe to its own website and matured along with the web since the 1990s.

[Malcolm Kass]

I agree. They do get confused.

[Anne Gentle]

Thank you so much for this post, Rachel... I am a technical writer who is reading and writing a lot of "deep thoughts" about documentation and conversation and community, and this post clarified so much for me! I'm very grateful.

[Stephane LEE]

Great post and comments...

I'd like to add that social media implies "media", which spells "push" in my mind.

Whereas community means that a common goal unites people, and that goal can be improving a brand products&services.

The brand will in that case favor a "pull" strategy, enabling the community to produce content and be part of the social media.

What do you think ?

[Tim Wilson]

Great post! We regularly run into clients who say they want to "build a community" but are *thinking* that they want to "use social media" and really *need* to be working on finding the best ways to "engage with their customers."

[Phil Fersht]

Rachael,

Completely agree that social media provides the tools, not the community - the people define and create the community based on common interests. We are getting some tight-knit blogging communities in some niche areas where there is a common goal to share information and getting together socially.

For example, Jason Busch runs a great blog "spendmatters" in his area of procurement, and uses his blog to bring together his readers and other bloggers socially, in addition to being a content portal:

http://www.spendmatters.com/index.cfm/2008/7/10/Now-4-Bloggers-and-Beer--Tomorrow-Night-in-Chicago

Many people who are new to blogging / social media, do not realize the time investment to develop relationships with other people to build communities, based on common interests.

Phil.