Re: UKNM: Communities: Fact or Fiction!

[Nabil Shabka]

Bingo Clay, that's very similar to our schoolmaster model -

http://www.schoolmaster.net.  You won't actually be able to see much as it's

'members' only but, there will be limited general public access in the future.


Nabil


Charles Linn wrote:


> Clay Shirky wrote:

>

> > > This was a bit of a surprise to me.  I had always assumed that aiming to

> > > create online communities was a sensible aim for building traffic, and

> > > that therefore it would be a sensible part of any business model.

> >

> > Unlikely - community is usually measued in the thousands, with the

> > number of truly active participants numbering in the hundreds. Traffic

> > needs are usually measured in the millions, with repeat traffic

> > measured in the 10s or hundreds of thousands.

> >

> > Community can be a fine addition for those that want it, but the only

> > 'community' sites that have that kind of scale are value-neutral

> > homesteading places like geocities.

> >

> > Look at hte failure of places like Echo and the Well to become viable

> > large-scale businesses.

>

> OK, how about this. The UK (and I'm sure the rest of the world that I

> don't know about) is made up of thousands of off-line communities. For

> the sake of argument, lets take Friends of the Earth's local campaigning

> groups of which there are about 250. Say each group numbers about 1000

> people (some are much smaller and some much bigger).  Make a website for

> one and you have a small community website which may have great repeat

> viewing but is useless as a commercial model.  So far I agree with Clay.

>

> How about if you give each local group a Content Management System

> driven web area, with common key areas such as 'members list',

> 'discussion area', 'Campaigning reports', 'Events', 'useful links',

> etc...  You make one group member, probably the secretary, responsible

> for entering and keeping up the content, and you get all of the groups

> to fill in their details in the listed areas, and then you aggregate all

> the content into a supersite, summarizing all the local campaigning

> going on in the UK and all the info relevant to it.  Now what do you

> have?

>

> You have a community orientated website, catering for perhaps 50,000 -

> 100,000 people, providing a huge networking and information sharing area

> where the whole is much greater than the sum of the parts.  This is

> something very useful for anyone who is a member of a local group and

> would encourage a real feeling of belonging. It would probably also be

> interesting to people not members of local groups as well, as it would

> give an overview of all of the environmental campaigning going on around

> the country and could being database driven the info could easily be

> searched and archived.  So the repeat audience my be 200,000 say, but

> still essentially a community lead site.

>

> Of course this is not a commercial example as FOE local groups are not

> in general known for their huge consumerism, and may object to being

> shown banners, but the model itself of bottm-up-site-building using

> existing communities and aggregating them; as opposed to building a site

> all about Stock Car Racing and then trying to market it to anyone who is

> interested, essentially in a push fashion - This is what I would call

> top down and IMO is what most websites are about.  The bottom-up model

> if it can be managed is likely to be a more long term approach but

> ultimately a stronger model again IMO.

>

> Cheers

>

> Chas

>

> --

> Chas Linn

> Web Producer

> Friends of the Earth

> www.foe.co.uk (Yell Awards - Runner Up 1999)


--

Nabil Shabka

BiblioTech

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UK


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