In the latest issue of THE HUB magazine, Bradley Kay has an interesting article called "Micro-Communities" (.pdf here).

The article is written from the perspective of a marketer, and for a marketing audience. In the article, Kay suggests that the giants of social networking could learn a few things from master hotelier Ian Schrager.

Using Schrager's hotel Delano in West Palm Beach, Kay says:

If the Delano has taught us anything over the last 10 years, it’s that less is more and to maintain exclusivity you must first create demand through desire and intrigue.

He says that the large social networking players (MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) should stop serving anyone tha wanders in the door and should

be considering new ways to close or limit access and create specialized content for “micro-communities.”

Kay goes on to suggest that Micro-Communities offer marketers:

the ability to drive sales through targeted offers; conduct inexpensive R&D by allowing users access to online prototypes of products, packaging or marketing materials; and provide invaluable information about the nuances of specific audiences and how to communicate with them most effectively.

I thought Kay's article was thought provoking, but it left me with a feeling a little uncomfortable. If marketers are allowed to "exploit these platforms", as Kay puts it, will the community experience suffer to the point of losing all value?

What do you think? Can marketers participate in a niche community in a meaningful way?

The Marketing & Online Communities conference is coming up November 8 in NYC. We are holding it at the superfly Tribeca Grand hotel. Did I say superfly? Indeed.

Speaking of superfly, I started pinning down advisors and speakers this week. The ideal mix we are going for is approximately 40% innovative agency content, 40% community host content, and 20% corporate marketing / brand management content.

I'm pleased that I've been able to secure two of the people that I am paying attention to with regard to "marketing / pr 2.0" practices:

Tim Manners - Cool News of the Day / Reveries
Steve Rubel - Micro Persuasion / Edelman

I have approximately 10 slots to fill, and lots of calls this week and next, so expect that list to grow fast. If you have speakers or session ideas you would like to pitch, please let me know ASAP.

I've posted a tentative session list for the conference on the M&OC details page here:
http://www.forumone.com/moc

I'll also list it here, but be sure to check back on the events page, as that's the one that will be kept up to date.


Tentative Schedule:
8:30 - 9:00 Registration

9:00 - 9:30 Introductions

9:30 - 10:30 Session 1: Marketing to Communities - The Brand "Us"

10:30 - 11:00 Break

11:00 - 12:15 Session 2: Anatomy of an Integrated Campaign

12:15 - 1:30 Lunch

1:30 - 2:30 Break out Sessions
- Creating successful campaigns targeted at established communities
- Hosting the premier community for your Brand
- Common Ground: Communities and Agencies working together

2:30 - 3:00 Break

3:00 - 3:30 Sponsor Demos

3:30 - 4:30 Session 4: The Future of Community-based Marketing

4:30 - 6:00 Reception

Again, feel free to contact me with any speaker or topic suggestions.

Seth Godin calls "Online Community Organizer" a "job of the future" in his latest post.

It would help if that person understood technology, at least well enough to know what it could do. They would need to be able to write. But they also have to be able to seduce stragglers into joining the group in the first place, so they have to be able to understand a marketplace, do outbound selling and non-electronic communications. They have to be able to balance huge amounts of inbound correspondence without making people feel left out, and they have to be able to walk the fine line between rejecting trolls and alienating the good guys.

Since there's no rule book, it would help to be willing to try new things, to be self-starting and obsessed with measurement as well.

I've been contacted by both job seekers and those looking to fill the type of position Seth describes steadily for the past 4 months.

We even have some of those positions posted here

The fact that main stream marketers like Seth are starting to talk about the value of online community and social media is nothing but good news for the industry (such as it is)

If you are looking for a job in the online community space, please check our Jobs category:
http://www.onlinecommunityreport.com/categories/2-Jobs/

For those of you wishing to post online community job openings, please feel free to email me at bjohnston@forumone.com.

We also feature open job listings in our Online Community Report newsletter, which comes out every month.

Nielsen/NetRatings is dropping page views as a key site ranking metric, PaidContent.com and the AP report:

Now, news that Nielsen/NetRatings is planning a major shift in web metrics, moving, according to the AP, from page views as the key metric to time spent on a site.

This new approach will likely shake up current rankings, for instance:

...under the current system, AOL ranked sixth in total page views for May but first in total minutes: 25 billion. Using total time, Google drops to fifth from third in page views. (The reason given is Google’s mission to send people off quickly for answers; that’s probably true but ignores Google’s other mission now, which is to keep people engaged on its own sites.)

In our Online Community Metrics 2007 study (to be released in August), we found that page views were far and away the most collected and reported metric. If general confidence in this metric starts to erode, what will take its place? Is "Time spent on site" the most meaningful metrics for communities?

The other big issue is with online advertising. Most sites are using page views to correlate "impressions", similar to traditional marketing campaigns. If page views become meaningless, who do marketers communicate value back to clients?

A cry for revolution was heard during the July 4th holiday that the era of the A list bloggers to come to an end.

It all started (i think) with Kent Newsome's pretty hilarious spoof on the Declaration of Independence, the Declaration of Blogging Independence, where he takes aim squarely at the Technorati Top 100.

When in the Course of online events it becomes necessary for alienated and isolated bloggers to dissolve the existing blogging hierarchy and exclusionary behavior which have disconnected them from the A-List and made them feel even more nerdy, and to assume among the multitude of powers they wish they had, the equally unattainable station to which the Laws of It Ain't Fair entitle them, a decent respect for The Onion and Al Gore requires that they should write yet another post no one will ever read to declare the many real and imagined causes which impel them to the third party affected and now ironically embraced separation.

Others quickly joined the revolution:

Joe Duck, from his The Blogging Revolution has begun! (?) post, says:

I’m tired of reading the same old people who in some cases are too busy chasing dollars to blog nearly as creatively as they did in the old days (ie a year ago). The more ominous case is the new trend in blogging that has “A listers” effectively (even if not literally) shilling for big corporations under the provocative guise called “conversational marketing”.

And in a subsequent post actually talks about removing Alisters from his feed list.

Hugh Macleod chimes in here.

In the past, say, from the late 'nineties until the last six-twelve months or so, Bloggers' readership grew IN PROPORTION to the social networks that were built up around them. Hence the phenomenon of the "A-List".

But if we're honest, looking back, it was always these circumventing social networks that were the really interesting part of the equation. The actual blogger in question, less so. Even if in our celebrity-worshiping culture, we sometimes forgot that.

It's interesting that some of the backlash was based on the personal accessibility of the blogger, and sometimes the overexposure of a particular blogger, either via the media or at conferences. The reality is, one persons time and attention is only so scalable.

One a personal note, I do think my habits have changed a bit over the last 6 months in that I cast a wider net than just the A-List. For me, this is mostly a byproduct of meeting several hundred new people passionate about online communities and social media because of the Forum One evens I now help run. I am exposed, face to face, to a lot more "b &c" list bloggers that have interesting and insightful things to talk about. They are actually in the trenches doing the work (managing communities, building social networks, developing new marketing techniques), as opposed to just commenting on the industry.

A very specific example of a changed habit: I read Scoble's shared links almost daily, but I almost never read his actual blog's feed. I'm more interested in what he is reading and what he is paying attention to.

What do you think? Are your content consumption habits changing because of social networks?

File this under "huh?"

JupiterResearch released a report this week (press release here) that essentially says online communities (including social networks) have little effect on influencing online sales.

It seems unlikely that this would be the case. A more likely scenario is that the study was unable to specifically attribute influence back to communities, which does not necessarily mean that there is actually "little influence".

From the press release promoting the report:

The effectiveness of social and community sites, like MySpace, in driving retail sales is still emerging. Because 53 percent of online shoppers go directly to the retailer website while they are shopping, in contrast to the only three percent utilizing blogs, it’s clear online shoppers continue to seek out direct access to locations where they can purchase a product or the source of that product when researching and purchasing both online and off-line.

Sure, it makes sense that you would actually buy a product from a web site that is actually selling it. Most bloggers I know aren't a consumer goods storefronts. I'm not sure what the point is about "only 3% using blogs". Also, I think one component of influence that may have been missed here is the role of communities on consumer good awareness.

“From a branding and advertising perspective, social and community sites are garnering a great deal of influence online,” explained Patti Freeman Evans, Senior Analyst with JupiterResearch. “But when researching a product online, shoppers are looking for fundamental information, not entertainment or social interaction. In the end, the consumer is still interested in convenience and efficiency and social and community sites are just not that efficient.”

I'm puzzled by this statement. I would hazard a guess that the majority of product reviews online are from a "community" source, whether it be member reviews at Amazon or more informal reviews from enthusiast communities, like automotive message boards. Most people I know start with online reviews when researching a purchase.

I was really interested to see the results of this study, but the content offered as a teaser in the press release is not inspiring me to rush right out and read the full report.