Past couple of years I’ve informally researched different edge communities and platforms at conferences and in workshops, listening to and asking people about their community sites. What I have learned so far is that the number of registered users is number one metric. The second interesting finding is that most organization-owned platforms I heard of hover between a few hundred to thirty thousand or so registrations (both active and inactive). Yet nothing ever comes close to millions that popular social networking sites claim.
This is certainly the case even beyond the international development world – while researching this post, found a post about Bank of America reaching some 15.000 users on their online communities.
Yet, there is strength in numbers: only a small percentage of the registered users is contributing actively, and user attrition rates are significant – in my experience can easily be 15-20% per year (those registrations are kept and counted, but users never log in and their email address bounces). We all want to build communities with large numbers of users; lacking any other “serious” quantitative measure, all success is based on that sacred number and donors want to hear about it (in addition to “number of countries engaged”).
The question is will we ever be able to increase the number of users to reach the Web 2.0 levels of millions? The way we approach building community platforms now, I think not.
And here’s why: all community sites operated by organizations imply certain organizational motivation to get people together; it’s all about noble things like working practices, learning, progress… Nothing about our egoistic needs as individuals; what’s in it for us, after all? All those big social sites with millions of users are about the individual’s egoistic need and escapism. It’s about us, not about the organization; dating sites are huge; social networks are huge; nothing else ever comes close. Many other reasons contribute to this disparity, yet this is the biggest one in my view.
Membership potential
The diagram above shows the potential of virtual collaboration applications to attract users. Obviously, the internal organizational communities are limited by the number of staff; the edge is organizationally owned and funded and potentially reaches everyone an organization is associated with – this is where we all are with our tens of thousands of users; finally, only platforms serving individuals’ needs can really attract huge numbers of users.
If you have ever heard of a community platform in international development with a significant number of users, please leave a comment; I’d love to learn about it and why it is successful.
6 responses so far ↓
Simon Hearn // July 24, 2008 at 17:29
Hi Damir,
I like these ideas. I particularly like your graph – it communicates very clearly.
I wonder if you’re forgetting an important dimension that affects overall size: scope of the domain. Organisation led communities (used in the loosest way possible) tend to be focussed around a particular interest (a working group, a CoP, a project team, a proffessional network etc). There are very few communities that are completely open and have no focus (Eldis communities is trying, I believe) . But I’m not sure that they would attract many people anyway.
You mention that number of members is the most common metric, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s the common measure of success does it?
I think numbers matter for certain types of community but for most organisational communities and edge communities, I’d say that content, community building, participation, and quality of learning are metrics that could be more important.
Is it fair to compare larger social networking platforms to smaller mroe focused communities?
Thanks,
Simon
Mark Hurst // July 27, 2008 at 6:03
Clay Shirky http://is.gd/9le talks about the promise, the tools and the bargain being the three essential aspects of a successful community. The large social networking sites are simply tools which make group-forming easy. People use these tools to form a large number of communities with varying degrees of size and longevity. The sites themselves do not constitute communities.
The size of a successful group depends on its intended purpose. If collaboration or collective action is required then smaller groups work best. On the other hand, if putting pressure on an institution is the aim then numbers have strength, whether it’s a flash mob or a blogging campaign etc.
I would suggest there are major differences in the nature of communities numbering a few hundred and those in the tens of thousands in terms of form, function and effectivenes. If you want large numbers you have to make the promise a no brainer and the bargain as tolerable as possible (eg “you’ll meet good people and all you have to do is be nice to them”)…
Mark
Francois Gossieaux // July 28, 2008 at 22:54
There are some very large scale communities around – including the IBM developer community which counts 5M members, the SAP developer community which I think is hovering around 1.5M and the eBay customer support communities which must also be in that range…
Thanks for the link to the BoA analysis. We also released a study which looks at how companies measure progress and success for their online communities (http://www.beelinelabs.com/tribalization)
Damir Simunic // July 31, 2008 at 10:45
Hi Simon,
thanks for the thoughtful comment – many excellent points.
Would it be fair to say that scope is usually determined by the organization’s mission?
Damir Simunic // July 31, 2008 at 11:32
Mark, totally agreed about differences in form and function. Unfortunately, it all gets lost in translation and many people believe all communities are just communities and compete for numbers.
If we limit ourselves to edge communities as a two-way communication channel for the organization, how would one go about defining the promise of those?
Damir Simunic // July 31, 2008 at 12:58
François, thanks for pointing me to those communities – will definitely check them out.
And thanks for mentioning the tribalization study – seen it already, good read. Intend to blog about some findings and how they correlate to happenings in the international development sector.