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Wednesday, January 31. 2007
The Washington Post reported Sunday from Pearlington, Mississippi that "charity efforts have constituted more than 80% of the home rebuilding completed so far." The largest home builder has been Habitat for Humanity. In addition to highlighting the embarrassing government response to Katrina, this makes a huge statement for the power of volunteerism, or to use "new media" terms "social production" or "peer production". But peer production isn't just for social good anymore. The Post also reports on how Doritos will be running "make-your-own" Super Bowl ads saving millions from production costs and leveraging content from over 1,000 ad-makers gunning for the $10,000 price. Or check out the Netflix Prize where teams are competing for $1M if they "substantially improve the accuracy of predictions about how much someone is going to a love a movie". (Thanks to Ken for this tip.) According to their Leaderboard, over 19,000 contestents from 130 countries are competing and the best are 2/3's of the way to the Netflix goal. What's so motivating about peer production? In simple terms, the huge labor pool available to be tapped. We know there are about 1 billion internet users. If each of them has 1 hour of discretionary time per day to spend on a problem that amounts to half-a-million work years of labor per day! Put another way, that time amounts to 47 times the daily labor from the entire Federal government civilian work force of 2.6 million people. What could you do with that many staff? Here are the references:
Wednesday, January 31. 2007
 The location for Online Community Camp 2007 (June 6) is set. We just secured the Computer History Museum in Mountain View for the event.
The museum is great space, and has a lot of good "tech karma". In addition to housing an amazing archive of technologies, the Museum has also hosted several other "mashup camps".
For more information about the Online Community Camp, go here.
Saturday, January 27. 2007
 The ever-scrutinized Microsoft got a stern talking-at in the press from Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, after their attempt to pay a blogger to update Wikipedia entries.
From CNN.com "Microsoft Corp. has landed in the Wikipedia doghouse after it offered to pay a blogger to change technical articles on the community-produced Web encyclopedia site." The article goes on to say that Microsoft suspected that sources at IBM had made the offending additions to the wikipedia entry and were frustrated by "numerous" attempts to work with wikipedia editors to get the entry changed.
It's easy to pick apart MS's approach here. They have admitted that it was an inappropriate thing to do. The question I have is this: If the content of Wikipedia is owned by the community of users at large, and Microsoft is part of that community, shouldn't they be able to legitimately participate in the conversation... if the conversation, in this case is the wikipedia entry? To be fair, Wales did say that the "correct" approach would have been to discuss the entry via the Wikipedia forums.
Tuesday, January 23. 2007
How are you measuring the performance and health of your community?
This may seem like a strange or even whimsical question. Communities are organic and ever-evolving entities, right? Trying to benchmark and measure something as inherently chaotic and dynamic as online community performance, health, or the shiny new metric "engagement" can be challenging. But the reality is that this type of data is now expected from community managers by stakeholders and executives.
So where is one to start? I have outlined a few first steps below, based on my experience. You mileage, of course, may vary.
1. Review your "Basic" Web Metrics
Your "basic" web metrics, from sources like Hitbox or even your server logs will reveal quite a bit of data including # of page views, # of unique visitors, browser type, screen resolution, country, language and referring URLs. While this data in isolation won't paint the "big picture" for you, it will give you some information to make decisions about design (target screen size), what browsers to design to, and potentially what languages to localize your community site in. This information also becomes more meaningful when you look at trends in the data over time.
2. Registrations and Attrition
These numbers are a bit more tricky to get, but you should definitely pay attention to registrations numbers. The ratio of registrations to casual visitors is also a great number to look at if one of your primary goals is conversion from visitor to member. Sign up form abandonment could indicate a usability issue with your signup flow, or could indicate that the value trade off of registering vs. the percieved benefit of the community isn't clearly being communicated.
3. Look at Member Activity
Depending on how you collect metrics and what you used to instrument your site, data on visitor and member activity may be difficult to get as well. Being able to drill down on member participation in your community helps you understand if there is a good balance of the following functions in your community: contributors (those that produce content), connectors (those that form relationships) and consumers (those that consume content). Member activity data also gives you a good view (depending on the quality of the data) of how engaged (or not engaged) your members are in various content and features.
4. Watch Your Moderation / Maintenance Overhead
Are you constantly editing comments or discussion group posts? Banning members? Removing spam from your forums? Spending all you time approving comments or reviewing video clips before allowing them to be posted? Is hosting an online community inherently painful?
Well, in short, no.
Basically, any activity that detracts from the intended mission and purpose of the community should be tracked, and the root cause should be identified and addressed. This could be as simple as making your Discussion Group guidelines more clear and telling your moderators to lighten up (I had to do this). If you find yourself struggling against parts or all of your community rather than engaging in activity with them, something is wrong. Track the "overhead" for 2-3 months, and then take a time out with your team (and ideally members from your community) to discuss ways to optimize or solve the problem. You'll be glad you did.
5. Ask Your Members
This should arguably be at the top of the list. The best source of data about how your community is doing? Your community. Creating an open dialog about community health and activity can be as simple as turning on blog comments or creating a new discussion forum for the sole purpose of discussing open issues and ways to improve the community.
I've also seen satisfaction surveys used in a very effective way to benchmark community health and satisfaction, as well as to gather feedback on usability issues, moderation activity, and feature enhancements. Several companies I know (SAP, Intiut) use the "Net Promoter" score to quantify the willingness of a member to recommend the community. You can find more information about the Net Promoter concept here:
The One Number You Need to Grow - Reichheld
Other Resources for You
Last March, Jim conducted a metrics survey and put together a white paper based on the results. You can check it out here:
Online Community Metrics Survey 2006
Forum One Web Fun fact: a lot of the snarky comments were mine, made before I knew I would eventually be working for Jim.
If you weren't included in the 2006 survey, and would like to participate in the 2007 survey, please email me.
Survey invitations will be going out the first two weeks of February.
Thursday, January 18. 2007
 Apologies in advance for being way too excited about this!
Francois from the Future of Communities blog just posted an article with access to the full research that Prof. Paul Dholokia from Rice conducted for the Ebay article in the October issue of HBR.
Link:
Customer service communities at eBay (full research paper available)
You may recall Jim mentioning the article on the OC Report blog back in November here.
Tuesday, January 16. 2007
I didn't know the term "social retailing" under I read it in the Post this morning -- Interactive Mirror Mirror on the Wall. Turns out the term has its very own concept paper [.pdf] and was the topic of a panel [.doc] in the UK. I'd like to introduce the concept of collaboratively paying off my credit card -- social bill paying?
Tuesday, January 16. 2007
It's the third week of January. You are back in the full swing of things. The warm glow of the holidays is fading and the reality of your work life is settling down upon you.
It's time for the BIG question, 2007!
What is the BIG issue you are struggling with? The BIG question you would like to tap your community of peers for answers on? Metrics, community management, ROI?
Let's discuss! (via comments)
Monday, January 15. 2007
Forum One has a terrific lineup of online community-related events on deck for 2007. Updated information will be available on this blog and also on the Forum One site, but here is a synopsis, with most events built upon those we've done for years -- and a few new additions:
- We'll hold our sixth annual Online Community Summit in Sonoma, California October 4-5. This invitation-based event brings together an outstanding group of online community executives, with past participants representing industry (Amazon, AOL, Apple, Cisco, Microsoft, Yahoo, others); leading online community groups (Salon.com, MEETUP, Motley Fool); non-commercial organizations (World Bank, PBS, American Academy of Pediatrics); media (BBC, Univision); philanthropy (Gates Foundation, Packard Foundation, Skoll Foundation, Omidyar Network) and many others. Last year's was terrific — we expect this year’s lineup of presenters and attendees to be even better.
- In early June we'll hold our second annual Online Community Camp in San Francisco, a gathering of online community practitioners -- managers, developers, business people, tools providers, funders -- to discuss experience and strategies in the development and growth of online communities. The Camp is an "un-conference" is inspired by the emerging "open space" conference format. (For an excellent description, see this News.com article on the initial MashUp Camp.) This is a highly participatory event that is equal parts work and fun.
- This year we're adding a new event, the Online Community Business Forum. Held May 3-4 in Sonoma, California, the Business Forum is inspired by the Summit (invitation-based, senior-level), but entirely devoted to online community business models and tactics: subscriptions, advertising, marketing issues, support communities, defining ROI, and other important topics. For more information contact Bill Johnston.
- Bill Johnston of Forum One will continue to host the popular Online Community Roundtable Series, a free, quarterly, invitation-based gathering in the San Francisco Bay Area for online community professionals. For more information contact Bill Johnston.
- As in previous years, we'll conduct an Online Community Research Series involving surveys, interviews, and conference calls addressing the most common and daunting challenges facing online community professionals. We'll provide updates about the series, including opportunities for participation, in this blog.
- We'll again run the Washington, DC Web Executive Series for web professionals principally (but not exclusively) in public policy organizations interested in web management issues, including some online community topics. We have four seminars already scheduled, all at the National Press Club: Usability (February 22); Blogs (April 24); Technology Investment Planning (June 21); and Web Business Strategy (September 26). Additional details are provided on the Forum One site.
We look forward to seeing all of you at many of these events through the year!
Monday, January 15. 2007
 Virginia-based citizen journalism innovator, Backfence, is going through wrenching changes with the departure of much of its management team including a co-founder. The Washington Post reports that in spite of receiving $3 million in funding from private investors and the Omidyar Network and launching a dozen community sites, Backfence is now "downsized to a modest team of people and they're out of money."
Monday, January 15. 2007
“We were young, we were foolish, we were arrogant, but we were right.” -- Daniel Ellsberg (Pentagon Papers) - Via Wikileaks.org The Washington Post leaked the (soon to happen?) release of Wikileaks.org. Though there is no there there yet, the Post says it will be "a Web-based way for people with damning, potentially helpful or just plain embarrassing government documents to make them public without leaving fingerprints." It will be great to see how well this works out. Is it the kind of tool that can respond to governance dodges like Henry Reid's recent "dead-of-night legislating" or will we need more specialized responses? In any case, it is certain that for the policy commons to be effective, transparency will be a critical dimension and Wikileaks is addressing the transparency need head-on.
Sunday, January 14. 2007
 The Community 2.0 Conference, scheduled for March 12-14 in Las Vegas, is bringing together organizations interested in better understanding and utilizing online communities.
Bill Johnston of Forum One will be presenting on "Communities -- How to Measure Success".
Readers of the Online Community Report qualify for an event discount by clicking here (or after 2/2 here).
Friday, January 12. 2007
 More activity in the Q&A space. Amazon released the beta of askville, their question and answer website, at about the same time that Google Answers closes up shop. Of course they aren't strictly comparable. Google Answers was a "professional" Q&A board with approved contractors answering questions. (There is a good article about GA on Wikipedia.)
askville says it is using Amazon's Mechanical Turk service to "help provide good quality answers". I'm not sure how that is working out but nice to see questions & answers about it.
Thursday, January 11. 2007
I’m Bill Johnston, the new Director of Community and Research for Forum One Communications.
I’ll be a regular contributor to the Online Community Report moving forward. My focus will be on highlighting how organizations are realizing value by engaging with their communities online - and vice versa.
I’ve been involved in Online Community space since 1999. I got my “big break” that year when I helped launch TechRepublic, a community for IT professionals. 1999 and 2000 are a big blur as we worked around the clock to crank out multiple versions of the TechRepublic community (based on member feedback, of course) and grow from 0 to 2 million members in less than 2 years.
I come to Forum One from Autodesk, where I spent the last 6 years designing user experiences and, more recently, driving online strategy for the company, including our blogs, discussion groups, and community sites. I am especially proud of the Autodesk Discussion Groups, our blog program, and of our industry community sites like AREA.
A really fun part of being in the online community space is meeting all the great people who are actively developing communities for their organizations. I plan on attending all of the community-related events that I can, so if you’d like to meet in person, please drop me a line at bjohnston@forumone.com .
For those of you in the Bay Area, I also direct a (free) quarterly networking event for Online Community pros called the Online Community Roundtable. If you are interested in attending, please send me an email.
You will also be hearing more from me about the Online Community Business Forum to be held in Sonoma May 3-4. Details will be posted here and on the Forum One site in the next few days.
OK, enough with the intros, now on to the blogging!
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