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The Community Conundrum
I've been around web communities since we invested in Geocities in 1996 and one thing I've learned is the community thinks they own the community. And if you are the one who actually owns it, you'd better act like the community owns it or you'll lose it.
I was reminded of that when I saw the Digg fiasco yesterday. For those who don't know, Digg took down a user submitted link to an encrpryption code for DVDs.
Forget about what's right and wrong in this case, the important point is Digg showed that they control the community and will police it.
That's a big deal. They might get away with that on issues like hate, porn, terror, but not on hacking.
When you get in the way of geeks sharing hacks with each other in a geek community, you've done something big.
I think they can recover, but its going to take work. This is their tylenol scare for sure.
Posted from blackberry so no links. Sorry about that.
Comments (4) | Posted May 2, 2007 in Venture Capital and Technology
Comments
"...one thing I've learned is the community thinks they own the community. And if you are the one who actually owns it, you'd better act like the community owns it or you'll lose it."
Well, I hate to pick nits, but if you could *lose* your community by not acting like "the community owns it" then, in reality, you *don't* own it... the community does.
The problem with business models based on communities is inherent in your own statement: the growth of the community is what makes it valuable, and therefore, the community *does* own itself. Without the members, a community doesn't exist... it's the very definition of a community!
"the important point is Digg showed that they control the community and will police it."
No, what Digg showed is that they don't seem to understand their own community as well as they should, and that a user revolt ends up with them bending to the will of the community for self-preservation.
I understand Digg's conundrum: they want to comply with a legal request (validity issues of the request notwithstanding) and simultaneously not alienate their users. But they could have handled the situation *much* better. As Cory Doctorow noted over at BoingBoing, they could have replaced the offending Digg submissions with the takedown notices, instead of just trying to surreptitiously delete them. And they didn't have to _ban_ users for submitting the stories--they could have put a form letter in place explaining the legal situation and mailed it to users posting those stories and asking them to stop.
The bottom line is that not only did Digg handle the situation poorly, they misunderstood the position and reaction of their "own" community--which is a very dangerous place to be if your whole business model is based on the community. I don't think Digg showed they control the community at all--quite the opposite. I think they got spanked.
Posted by: Dave! | May 2, 2007 6:29:50 PM
My comment has only to do with the last line of Fred's post above that reads:
"Posted from blackberry so no links. Sorry about that."
Anyone that types on devices where "snatching a URL" is inconvenient knows this issue -- we're used used to providing direct pointers/links to topics referenced.
Perhaps a new "ThumbLink" protocol could be created and ultimately make its way into mail/browser/SMS clients as a "supported link" that, if clicked on by the recipient, drove search (or direct) access to the item/topic referenced, kind of like an "Auto-TinyURL-for-ThumbTypers" or "RealNames for Blackberry," as it were.
Indeed a "lazy web" comment, as I'm faced with that all the time. I often simply insert the "Google This" phrase in the subject line, but that still puts the copy/paste work on the recipient, just a thought.
Posted by: Chris | May 2, 2007 6:33:00 PM
I have to concur with Dave. If there's a lesson to be learned here, it's that you _can't_ own a community -- only the medium in which it exists. That's not a trivial difference, and not knowing that leaves you vulnerable to making mistakes like the very one that Digg did. I suspect that "acting like" the community actually owns it is not quite enough. In Digg's case, the community is the most important partner in their business.
Posted by: Confabulist | May 3, 2007 3:25:00 PM
This post is especially prescient today, as Barack Obama's myspace page is currently going up in flames over dueling unofficial/official myspace profiles. In the grand scheme of things myspace is not Iraq, or the economy, but I think the media is going to treat this (and rightfully so) as the Obama campaign's first real misstep -- they're giving the impression that the campaign is more important than the community, and it's blowing up in their face. This episode makes the people's champ look like "politics as usual." Who would have thought that the first "Youtube moment" of the '08 Presidential campaign would have (a) actually taken place on Myspace; and (b) made Obama, of all candidates, look bad.
Interesting developing story...
Posted by: jim | May 3, 2007 4:58:01 PM
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