Communities don’t rely on network effects to be successful
Someone mentioned the other day that, “The number of members in the community was small, so the use of the CoP was very minimal”
As a general statement, that has nothing to do with it. There’s no reason that small member CoPs won’t thrive, just because of the quantity of people.
Sure if you have more members, there is more opportunity for original content and for comments to that content…as I said it’s an opportunity, not a fact.
It’s true, seeing others participate may influence you to do the same, so you may get this more frequently in a CoP of large members.
But, there is also to consider the issue of quality over quantity. Sure you may have lots of activity, but does the community have a rhythm, is everyone happy with the types of things being posted, or would they sooner get away from the noise and huddle in a corner with a batch of people they really gel with and have some some engaging conversations.
Sometimes you may find there is not much activity as you’d think in large CoPs, as not everyone may know each other (trust), and may not be confident to participate, whereas this is not an issue in small trust based CoPs.
All it comes down to is do your members have a shared interest, know and trust each other, and want to participate (a willingness because they want to, not because they are told to)
- if they do, it will be used
BUT, Critical Mass of people or Network Effects is not as essential in communities as it is in networks, from wikipedia:
“The classic example is the telephone. The more people own telephones, the more valuable the telephone is to each owner. This creates a positive externality because a user may purchase their phone without intending to create value for other users, but does so in any case.”
I think the following part could also apply to CoPs that have too many members, that is, alot of the content is becoming noise (ie my posts are noise to you, and vice versa, so why are we in the same community). I guess I’ve been posting about the possibility of Community Congestion of late:
“The expression “network effect” is applied most commonly to positive network externalities as in the case of the telephone. Negative network externalities can also occur, where more users make a product less valuable, but are more commonly referred to as “congestion”
If you have a community of 5 members, this is all it may take to have a thriving place.
- I do believe you reach a momentum point where content being posted spurs others to do the same (find the rhythm)
- but this is more about the critical mass of content with existing people, rather than needing more people to reach that critical mass.
If a social network like LinkedIn or Facebook only had 5 members who didn’t know each other, it would die, as there would be no-one to connect with (and you don’t want to connect to existing people in the network who you are not interested in)
- a community is about a group identity, whereas a network is about me and my contacts
A sweet spot in between this is a social bookmarking site like delicious which has inherent value for the individual even though it’s a network…from wikipedia:
“A more natural strategy is to build a system that has enough value without network effects, at least to early adopters. Then, as the number of users increases, the system becomes even more valuable and is able to attract a wider user base. Joshua Schachter has explained that he built Del.icio.us along these lines - he built an online system where he could keep bookmarks for himself, such that even if no other user joined, it would still be valuable to him.[2] It was relatively easy to build up a user base from zero because early adopters found enough value in the system outside of the network aspects.”
Ed Mitchell has an explanation on the differences. To add to this I’d say you can have a network within a community (eg. Ning), but not the other way around.
Related
CoPs and Informal networks
[ADDED 11/10/09: Networks and Communities of Practice: What is the difference?]
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John - I think part of the issue with institutionally-sponsored communities is that “bigger” is seen as “better”. Volume metrics rule.
If you are talking about groups that are emergent or completely member-directed then you don’t care about size. You may even purge your membership of non-productive individuals. But you may not call yourself a community.
Another POV for institutionally-sponsored communities is that for most organisations they actually have a portfolio of community groups. Some are big n baggy. Some are small n feisty. And this diversity is good…
Comment by Matt Moore — February 5, 2009 @ 9:05 am
Thx for the regular visits Matt, it helps me confirm whether I’m speaking rubbish or not.
I know what you mean…on paper a community with 200 members sounds successful, as long as further questions are not asked about contributions.
I really like contextual membership labels, Miguel shared these labels with me via a LinkedIn conversation:
“- User with more than one message: “Phil Collins - Member”.
- User with more than seven messages: “Phileas Fogg - Active member”.
- User with over 50 messages: “Ebenezer Scrooge - Contributor”.
- User with over 150 messages: “Diane LeMoult - Pillar of community”.
- User with over 500 messages: “PG Wodehouse - Sould of the party”.
- User with over 1000 messages: “Isaac Asimov - Community brahmin”. ”
Comment by John Tropea — February 5, 2009 @ 10:56 pm
I think the contextual membership labels are good. Possibly # of posts and length of time someone has been a member?
Comment by Matt Moore — February 6, 2009 @ 1:12 am
Problem is our current system doesn’t have this feature built in. I’m gonna see if we can run some sort of report
cheers
Comment by John Tropea — February 6, 2009 @ 3:25 am
Great post, good point. This is my experience as well. It would be interesting to see if the 90-9-1 principle also goes for small communities as well… I don’t think so.
Comment by Samuel — February 10, 2009 @ 3:13 pm
Interesting post, thank you, and one after my own heart.
Quality over Quantity every time - but this runs directly in the face of current organisational theory (participation as seen as quantitative engagement metric) and software sales (community/network software is either afforded by banner ads or product sales so either need volume of participants).
Also I would guess it depends on the personality types in a small group - and proximity of their shared passion (and other stuff like time and resources at their disposal).
I’m hanging around with http://www.transitionnetwork.org a lot at the moment (recommend having a look at what they are up to as they are a network which supports local communities!) - helping them identify how to best use the web to connect their wide range of stakeholders over specific things.
One of the many things I’m learning is that pre-forming community group models and assuming they will fit snugly into any centralised expectation of behaviour and technology use is a big risk (and possibly one of the big flaws in all the community modelling stuff I’ve seen over the years) as new self-starting bottom up Transition communities are springing up all over the world, and one pre-canned model for their behaviours, processes and protocols simply won’t work as they are all in different contexts personalities etc.
The ‘membership’ of the local communities (I use that word carefully as Transition is definitely an enabling network supporting all these micro-communities) need to define their own processes and protocols and interfaces to the rest of the Transition eco-system, as well as their own definitions of success; otherwise they won’t buy into them.
What we can do from a key node, however, is set terms and standards for sharing stuff (semweb style aggregation and re-syndication), and propose a central measurement model to indicate progress with indicators around carbon reduction, community resilience… So we’re aiming to focus on outcomes rather than ongoing quantiative assessments…
(end ramble!)
Comment by Ed — April 24, 2009 @ 10:57 am
Great Ed, thanks for dropping by.
I think this is all part of our industrial era psyche of homogenisation (one-size-fits-all/economies of scale)
Consumers are not all the same, and we are PEOPLE anyway. As you say each bunch of people, location, situation, pursuit is different, and requires unique processes, leadership and dynamics that suit that pool. This also helps them deal with uncertainty and adapt best to their unique context.
It’s like my local blockbuster video shop who don’t really order movies for the local audience, they seem to be ordered from head office with disregard for their customers tastes…it seems that way anyway.
The transitions community seems a great project, and would be interesting to observe the different approaches used by each community, as the premise of each is similar, only differing in location.
I’m sure you have good practice models, but I’m also sure by allowing bottom-up dynamics to flourish that you will have even more examples and anecdotes to update to your good practices.
Comment by John Tropea — April 24, 2009 @ 11:38 pm