I have my academic hat back on and am doing research for the social media class I will teach this next semester. One of the areas I have been spending a lot of time on is the actual design of a community and how it should look in relationship to specific goals and objectives for an organization or initiative. Unfortunately there aren’t any templates for this, just as there are no templates for traditional, physical communities. In my opinion, specified goals and objectives set the stage for the determination of what a community should look like.
One of the greatest values of social media is the collaborative nature and the ability to aggregate a collective knowledge in one place. In my Utopian academic world every social media initiative would include an effort to harness the power/knowledge of their members. If two heads are better than one, surly 18,634 are better than two – or at least you would think – I know I did.
Size matters, up to a point
Metcalfe’s Law (named after Robert Metcalfe, PhD.) states a network’s value grows as the square of the number of users. Whether or not you have heard of this law, it just makes sense. To be fair, there is a saturation point at which the size of your community actually becomes detrimental to your efforts. Some would also point to Dunbar’s Law (named after Anthropoligits Robin Dunbar, PhD) which limits the number of relationships a person can have to 150 (give or take, keep in mind Dunbar is an Anthropologist and in this context he is studying primates). The bottom line, if your community gets too large it will self destruct.
If the goal is to grow the size of your community will the true sign of success be the demise of your community?
So how do you protect your community. The answer, as far as I can tell, isn’t to limit the size. After all, who are you to say who gets in and who doesn’t? It seems Reed’s Law (named after David Reed, PhD.) may just be your saving grace. It states the value of a community grows most powerful with the formation of groups and the connection between them, even more so than what Metcalfe’s law would dictate based on size alone. While Metcalfe says that growth equates (value) n², Reed’s law dictates 2n when you factor in all the different groups which can be created.
As far as I can tell, Reed’s Law doesn’t have the same saturation point as does Metcalfe’s Law. To be sure I have a call in to Dr. Reed and will confirm and update this post with additional information once I have it.
The take away
So here is the take away – if you are building a community you must consider its (future) size. In a general sense, if you are trying to capitalize on the value of your community, groups should be part of your strategy. How those groups are defined, created, led and engaged will be determined by a variety of other variables.
More to come…
I agree that overall growth is the goal for any new venture. Social media is no exception. As before stated, who are they to choose who can/cannot join. The groups I believe are a vital key to success. Not only in handling the growth of the site, but also in linking people with like-minded people where they can interact and engage in something of mutual interest.
[...] it comes to social media and specifically followers/friends that isn’t always the case. I blogged about this a while back but a few recent study I came across and a short conversation on twitter led be back to the [...]
Abby, regarding communities, the initial research had to do with networks. There is, in my opinion, a correlation to communities however they are defined. Take, for example, dogdish.com. At this time is is a small community – members of the site that have the ability to engage in a number of ways with each other. There is a point where the value of this community will diminish because of its size. This is where the creation of groups comes in. Theoretically it will not only help the community survive but will be the impetus of the community having a greater value. Your example of wall-mart is good – yes, the larger they get the less effective they are at operating unless you can create networked groups within the organization. Keep in mind we are talking about an online community though.
I completely agree with you point about churches and in fact, use them as a good example of a community which would find great enhancements if they were to take their efforts to a social media platform (forgive the oversimplification, a sound strategy in doing this is critical for success).
Two points regarding bigger/better. First, relationships aren’t considered in this. We are simply looking at the value of the community. If relationships are important then we need to consider Dunbar’s Law (150 people is max). Second, you are right on regarding tiny communities inside one larger is dead on.
A visual I use is 100 people all talking in a room. Now visualize 10 groups of 10 talking with each group having a specific self designated purpose.
As always, thanks for the comments – good stuff!
Interesting stuff and thought provoking. Chad, I had to read it a few times also, so that makes me feel better. That being said, I have some stupid questions:
1) What communities are you specifically referring to?
2)What comprises a community?
3)Is a brand’s followers considered a community, and if so can that ever be too big?
4)If a company is a community, are you saying they operate less effectively if they are huge, like say (insert obvious example) Wal-Mart?
I may be way off base and confused, but here is my additional 2 cents. Not to get all churchy on here, but I think one of the best examples of this is churches. Mega churches are “taking over the world.” Over the last decade or so the Christian community has seen these Mega churches (to bring it home to OK – Life Church) rise and fall. But is bigger better? Yes and no. I believe (in general) more meaningful connections happen in small groups. But in theory, more people can be reached in larger groups. I figure the solution is if your community gets huge, you have to have tiny communities inside with effective leaders and just as meaningful engagement. (ala, Reed) I personally still prefer smaller groups in general.
Matt, geez, I really wish you would get your own blog – although I wonder if my readership goes up when you comment.
Regarding your comments:I agree to some extent about the possibility of a communications cookbook at the most basic level. i.e. our client wants to share photos so we should create a flickr page. The challenge lies in how it should be used. I am working with two different non-profits. Both will find flickr beneficial to their needs but both will use them very differently.
I have reviewed four “social media” books for consideration of use in my sm class. Each is very tactic oriented and tries to apply a cookie cutter approach (one even has template files which I tried using for my personal/business engagement and found it to be over simplified and lacking any real value). I can’t use books which are solely tactics oriented, especially in today’s day where the tools/tactics change so rapidly. Additionally, the oversimplification sends a very wrong message about how to engage in social media/networking and the tactics which can/should be used.
Not saying a cookbook can’t be done but the following will have to be considered when preparing a meal: The dinner guests, the ingredient list and how those ingredients react when put in the same pot, how it will be served, how often it should be served, what kind of desert should be offered…
Regarding Robert Metcalfe – yes, very awesome guy to say the least. I did notice he predicted the meltdown of the internet a few years back though (based on his theory). Thought that was interesting.
Chad, at times it’s all over our heads. Just keep reading it and re-reading it and the light bulb will go on. Great article and thanks for the link. Some more reading (and re-reading) for the day.
Really interesting post, Bill and coincidentally something I’ve recently been reading about. It’s all over my head (like anything else with formulas and smart people jargon), but I think you’re right on with Reed’s.
There’s some interesting arguments to it though. Here’s one (on a somewhat different topic):
http://www.thestalwart.com/the_stalwart/2005/09/metcalfes_law_r.html
There’s another really fascinating one floating around somewhere. I have it bookmarked on my other computer. I’ll send it your way tomorrow.
Our recent conversation, and then the reading of this post, has me thinking about “templates”. I agree, of course, that the one-size-fits-all template concept is on no value when applying social media (or more broadly marketing communications) to an arbitrary organization. You simply must start with goals and objects and build from there.
The software development world had a similar epiphany a few years ago and we all started talking about “design patterns” (a movement really started by the book “Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software” by Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, and John M. Vlissides – now commonly & affectionately referred to as the “Gang of Four”). The idea is that, as software developers, we encounter the same patterns in systems design over and over. Historically we tended to just recreate the wheel each time we needed one, each time using the justification that every SYSTEM was different. This rationalization often feels correct because the SYSTEMS are, in fact, different but the sub components comprising that system are often similar enough that we can reuse them over and over again if we recognize the patterns. This thinking has given rise to lots of thinking around conceptual patterns, and lots of “cookbooks” with practical code implementations of these components. If used properly, these tools can dramatically improve time to market and reduce overall project risk.
“So what?” you’re asking. I’m thinking of software design as an analogy to business communications strategy. And software patterns as being analogous to specific tactics. From this perspective, if may be possible to build a business communications cookbook of sorts that helps connect specific business communication needs with one or more specific appropriate tactics. The overall solution for a given company would then be the combination of their set of tactics. As I write this it seems somewhat common sensical, but I don’t know that I’ve seen this applied to social media. In may regards this is what you do inherently as consultant but I don’t think this connection is as obvious to lots of folks.
For example, some cookbook pattern might be something like this:
Need: Allow people to post pictures on our website.
Pattern: Use a Flickr account with tagging and a plugin to aggregate the content on your site.
Need: Allow multiple loosely associated organizations to provide updates to a centralized website.
Pattern: Use blog software for each organization to produce RSS and an aggregation tool (Yahoo! Pipes maybe) to feed to centralized website for publication.
(Obviously these would be more completely explained.)
Certainly there’s always room for creative solutions, but the pattern approach allows you to riff on established solutions instead of reinventing the wheel. While you wouldn’t have complete templates, you could have significantly larger building blocks.
Just a thought. I figured since you applied Bob Metcalfe’s law (originally about computers, not people) to social media that I’d just riff on the theme. Bob Metcalfe, BTW, was the inventor of Ethernet and cofounder of 3Com – one of my heros.
-Matt