Shawn Gold, CMO of MySpace, is on stage talking about the MySpace phenomenon. I go on at 1:45 to talk about “lessons from the trenches” from a corporate point of view.
I can’t put my finger on it, but the term “community” hasn’t sat well for me since a Jerry Michalski retreat in 1995 when one woman said the word made her think of community gardens, hemp clothing, and socialism. Indeed, “social” came along in Web 2.0 and things like MySpace and LinkedIn are cited as embodiments of the concept. I don’t know why it doesn’t sit well. John Bell cites David Weinberger’s redefinition last week in San Francisco: something to the effect that communities are places where people care more than is normal about something. [I need to find the backchannel transcript for the accurate quote, it’s lost somewhere in Google Reader].
Found it thanks to Lee LeFever by way of Chris Heuer’s post at the Future of Communities : Weinberger said: “I want it to mean a group of people who care about one another more than they have to.”
Back to Shawn Gold — basically a history of MySpace — I don’t have an accurate read on the audience as I missed yesterday and have yet to hear any questions, but the participant roster shows a heavy dose of corporate attendees from the likes of Microsoft, Levi Strauss, PetSmart, State Street, etc. etc. and few community vendors — so Shawn is giving a good backgrounder on what is erroneously assumed to be a teenager phenomenon.
“MySpace made it a great time to be lonely on the internet,” Gold.
“Digital cameras changed the face of self-expression on the Internet.” Gold
Chris Heuer — he of the Social Media Club — just introduced himself and asked me to define “community 2.0” into his podcast capture device. I babbled I fear.
This place is packed. I just turned around and nearly every seat is taken. 500 people? I stink at crowd estimates.
Max Kalehoff just nailed it — communities represent the most loyal customers around a brand yet those customers are generally served by service organizations judged on how fast they can spin people “through the revolving door.”
Community ROI track
I am such a metrics geek, therefore I am listening to metrics and roi.
Matthew Lees from the Patricia Seybold Group is presenting on ROI and metrics — topics dear to my heart. Smart presentation where he lays out some good, sensible KPIs to follow. He cites Cingular, which is a case example I am fond of.
Thanks to Lee LeFever for pointing me at the backchannel transcript noted above.
Bill Johnston, from Forum One Communications, is presenting on Autodesk’s approach to community/forum metrics. Interesting hybrid of quantitative and qualitative analysis with moderators tagging and scoring threads and resolution. He is a Hitbox guy. Interesting how he used Hitbox to count stuff like signups, referrals, posts, comments, tagging, networks and tag clouds — all great manifestations of engagement (citing a community site called Area which featured users creative efforts). Zero to 100,000 members (not users) in nine months.
“As we were able to communicate value we were able to convince stakeholders to write us bigger and bigger checks.”
Anders Nancke-Krogh from Nokia is presenting. He heads the online gaming community N-Gage.
Great Q&A on the topic. I am dying to ask a question about blog metrics, most of the discussion has been about forum measurement and business metrics. Looks like I won’t get a shot — want to know what these guys think are the KPIs for blogs.
Size of community and activity of community are key to Anders. I call these “gross tonnage” metrics. Innovation coming from the community — that’s a provocative KPI to say the least.
Customer “Self” Service
An area close to my priorities — Patricia Seybold and Scott Wilder from Intuit talking about the creation of self-service communities.
Intuit has their act together in a major way. I was just on a panel with George Jaquette, and Wilder confirms Intuit is doing customer community the right way with a big commitment.
Have to cut things short to get on the phone with Asia. Good conference.
Hi David,
I think the backchannel transcript to which you’re referring may be here:
http://www.futureofcommunities.com/2007/03/10/what-is-community-what-is-community-20/, via Chris Heuer’s post.
Looking forward to meeting you.
Thanks Lee. Is there a backchannel at Community 2.0?
See you in 45 minutes.
Not babeling at all – quite a good response. It is posted here along with responses from Mike Flood, the VP of Community Relations for the Seattle Seahawks, and Jake McKee from Big In Japan. Take a listen, in aggregate, I think it is enlightening…
I was wondering if the conference discussed the consequences of social media or just the successes and how to’s? As our technology has developed and we spend more and more time in front of the computer and become more and more attached (read chained) to technology are we missing out on the real life (as opposed to the second life).
I have seen social media hit an all time high in its success and and an all time low in its social benefits with the creation of a childrens based social media site called WebKinz. Think of it as a MySpace/Second Life for your 5-12 year old. It has been called Beanie Babies on steroids. The concern it that I have a 5 and 7 year old that would love to spend every spare minute on the computer at WebKinz world. A good write up and explanation can be found here.
http://socialmedia.vox.com/library/posts/tags/webkinz/
I know as a parent I’m responsible for monitoring the children’s activities on the web, and it is harmless for the most part, until you see them play the games and turn into little drones. Do we as a society have a responsibility to protect them from becoming slaves to technology at such a tender young age or do we just accept it as progress in the 21st century? Currently it is a battle to get them off the site. We have limited their combined TV/Computer time to 2 hours total per day, but it is getting more difficult as social media wants to horn in.
I would love to see the metrics for the WebKinz site as their target audience is new and they don’t have as many (if any) competing social media sites.
Brian,
I only caught a glimpse of the entire program yesterday, but no, there was no overt discussions of the first life/second life balance — the conference was primarily focused on corporate communities,e.g. service and support forums.
Hey David!
Maybe you could post a blog of the conferences you regularly attend, or plan on attending in the next year?
I had not heard of this one you just went to, and would have loved to attend.
Thanks!
dk