As I was sifting through my Google Reader this morning, three posts came to my attention. Each raised an example of why online communities and the technologies that support them are so critically important to business interests.
The first article was by search guru John Battelle explaining why nobody comments on Google News entries:
It goes to the heart of what Google is not good at: Community. Look at the comment threads on Digg, for example, or Ars Technica, or Boing Boing. Why are there such long, boisterous comment threads? Because we know that the news we are reading there was driven by human beings…But Google News is driven entirely by a computer algorithm. There is no explicit community. No one goes there to engage in community…In short, there are no stakeholders in the Google News community. It’s not a place people go to be social.
In short, if the prominence of Google’s news items were driven by people’s actions and choices, a community would sprout. But where people can have no impact on the outcome, they don’t want to be involved.
Battelle’s argument brings this presentation from TED to mind:
After nearly a century of having read-only media directed at us from all sides, people want their vocal chords back. The read-write Web is — at base — all about community.The second article came from Mashable! where they’re reporting on Facebook’s brilliant move to translate the site into as many languages as possible:
The company has launched an app called “Translations,” that is a community effort to make the site available in your language of choice. The goal, according to Facebook, is to make the site “available to everyone, everywhere, in all languages.” The app asks users to translate more than 10,000 different phrases, and then asks others to vote on the translations for approval.
Mashable! reports that there are more than 800 translators and over 15,000 translations waiting for votes by users.
This is a brilliant business move by Facebook. The assistance is free, fast and community-driven. It’s like building a Wikipedia inside of Facebook driven entirely by community goodwill.
The third article covers the remarkable stream of information coming through the Twitter-sphere about the tragic news of former Pakastani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s assassination this morning:
When Hurricane Katrina struck, great weight was given to the speed with which the blogs swung into action. Twitter is proving far quicker at relaying reaction. This has huge implications for business.
World events can disrupt markets, impact buying decisions, affect entire economies. If the speed at which we are now being bombarded with news is literally in the moment, then enterprises will need to have appropriate process response mechanisms in place. I’m not convinced those exist.
What I have seen today is the convergence of new media forms like Twitter and its add-ons, Seesmic, blogs and traditional TV media providing a powerful example of how important events are going to be reported, dissected, analyzed and ultimately acted upon from here on. Not some time in the future - but now.
Twitter may seem more like a bunch of mindless, disconnected chatter at first glance. But people are on Twitter sharing information with one another. Conversations start on Twitter, and conversations are the building blocks of communities.
The beauty of Twitter is that anyone can put himself right in the thick of the conversation simply by starting an account and following the influencers they care about. The information coming from the community gives us a real-time look at the worldwide conversation.
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