One of the biggest challenges for those leading the community efforts for large organizations (or really, orgs of most sizes) is ensuring that the hosted community efforts of the organization are appropriate, valuable (both to the org and to the member / customer) and sustainable.

First, a little context. I worked at Autodesk for 6 years as the Online Experience Manager (basically a chief IA). The internal web team was structured as an agency within the company, and each division was a "client". This approach has pros and cons that I won't go in to now, but for the purposes of the conversation today, the effect was that we had oversight over most online activities, including any hosted community activity. One of the tools we used to ensure a quality online experience was to have our clients fill out a simple project brief describing their vision for the community.

Specifically, the brief covered:

• Client Team and Stakeholders


• A Summary of the initial community vision and purpose / rationale


• Executive sponsorship


• Community Manager and extended staff


• Desired features and content


• Goals "what does success look like?"


• Budget


• Launch date

I'm attaching a heavily modified version of the brief I used, updated with the benefit of a bit of hindsight.

I'd really love feedback on this, and would love to hear if you actually find it of use in your day to day practice.

You can download the brief template here:

oncomm_project_brief_v1

Jake McKee has been conducting a series of interviews with Online Community experts for the Online Community Research Network.

The latest is with Sean O'Driscoll (formerly of Microsoft) about working with the legal team on building communities.



Please let add your thoughts via comments.

Also - drop me a line and let me know what you think about the value of these interviews - bjohnston@forumone.com

Over the last 3 years we've conducted research with over a 1000 organizations actively engaged with online communties, including Fortune 500 companies, cutting edge community-based startups and some of the world's leading non-profit organizations.

We are currently conducting 6 studies annually, and we typically release the research reports (for a limited time).

Currently available (free) research reports include:
Identity, Reputation & Ranking:
The Identity, Reputation & Ranking research project studied current practice with online identity, member reputation (including reputation systems and programs) and content ranking techniques.
Key findings from the study include:
- Members typically don’t fill out non-required profile fields;
- Slightly less than 1/3 of the respondents (32%) have, or plan on making member’s profiles portable in the next 6 months;
- Slightly less than 1/3 of the respondents (32%) have, or plan on implementing a universal ID solution in the next 6 months;
- The majority of respondents have, or are developing a reputation system for their communities.
Download this report (free).

Online Community Revenue and ROI Techniques:
The Online Community Revenue and ROI Techniques research project studied revenue streams of online communities as well as monetary and non-monetary measurements of value.
Key findings from the study include:
- Respondents generally valued non-fiduciary dimensions of value, like loyalty, over direct revenue.
- The most effective revenue generating techniques were advertising and charging for community subscription.
- A member-first attitude is needed when considering the addition of fee-based or revenue-generating services. The best way to find out what your members do or don’t want? Ask them.
Download this report (free).

Marketing & Online Communities:
The Marketing & Online Communities research project was intended to study the intersection of current marketing practices and online community building.
Key takeaways from the study include:
- A list of community marketing tactics that community hosts engage in;
- Feedback on the most effective marketing tactics;
- Host policies that marketers must adhere to;
Download this report (free).

Research Reports Available to OCRN Members:
Online Community: Marketing, Growth and Engagement Report / July 2008 (also available for purchase)
Online Community ROI: Models and Reports / February 2008
Online Community ROI Research Report / April 2007
Online Community Metrics: February, 2007
Online Community Metrics: Best Practices Survey / March 2006
Blogs, Wikis and Workspaces: June 2006

Our Research Calendar for this quarter includes:
Online Community Compensation (team structure, titles and compensation packages from over 250 community professionals): to be published August 2008
Community Vendor Satisfaction (Platform & Services): to be published September 2008

In addition to all the research reports, OCRN members get an active say in steering the research agenda, and also help shape the research instruments.

To find out more about the OCRN, please feel free to ping me.

We conducted the Online Community Marketing, Growth and Engagement research study in May of this year, as part of the continuing efforts of the Online Community Research Network. Our goal was to gain insight into how people are measuring engagement in their online communities and to understand how many organizations were using an elite / influencer program, and how those programs were structured.

One of the most interesting findings was around the concept of member engagement. Both the definition as well as the process of measuring engagement varied across the respondent organizations.

Highlights From the Report:

Most people determine the level of engagement based on the amount of activity and the amount of content created (forum posts, reviews, discussions, diggs, links added, comments and content, etc.). They also look at the amount of time spent on the site as one of the main measurements of engagement. Another important dimension, which only a few respondents mentioned is the number and quality of connections that a member has with the host organization (in some cases brand) and other community members.

Leading Indicators
A few respondents were using a set of "Leading indicators" to benchmark and track engagement:
• "1) Logged in/accessed the site; 2) Posted comments to the site; 3) Posted substantive content (e.g. conversation-starting forum topic) to the site; 4) Completed profile/member survey"
• "Engagement encompasses not only logins to the site, but activity: Digging/burying stories, submitting content and engaging in discussions on specific stories."

An ideal Engagement Metric
Based on aggregate responses, the following metrics would be ideal for rolling up into an engagement metric.
• Amount of activity on site: page views, logins, searches, feature usage
• Number and type of content items created: discussion posts, tags, shared content, etc.
• Number of connections / relationships created: friends added to network, or inferred via frequent discussion exchanges
• Time on site: Total time per month
• Frequency of visits: / per month
• Recommendations: Members referring new community members, passing along community content outside of community, blogging about / promoting community

A perspective on member engagement:
One Fortune 100 Financial Services firm that responded to the survey uses the following definition / measurements of “Engagement”:

“We define engagement in a few different ways.

1) Very tactically in the community. Tactically: How many have registered? What are their posting rates? How often are they are engaging in the community?

2) Strategically with higher-level brand metrics: looking at how this pays off for our overall brand goal. [Company] uses a Net Promoter Score to measure the health of the brand.

We ask “Would you recommend [Company] to your friends?” on a scale of 1-10.

Then we subtract the people who answer low (either 1-3 or 1-5), from the people who answer high (9-10) that yes, they definitely would recommend [Company] to their friends.

That gives us a percentage and we measure it for the [Company] brand and at each of the product levels.

The community is about overall brand engagement and how the community drives loyalty and membership within the [Company] brand.”

Fostering Engagement
All of the responses to the question about fostering engagement raise the point that as community host, you have responsibility for half of the conversation with community members. Themes of regular communication, active listening, strong moderation, fostering discussion and recognition emerged in the responses.

The most popular ways to improve member engagement include:
• Regular and easy communications:
“Send email – ones that are targeted and provide interesting news. We found over our 500 or so communities that those who send regular (monthly) email to members have 7x engagement numbers compared to those who did it less than once every other month.”

• Skilled moderation:
“Keep the forums on topic and firm but fair moderation. “

• Keep content fresh.

• Fostering discussion:
“Encouraging conversation. Sometimes, this means highlighting a potentially divisive, opinionated comment and inviting response. Sometimes, this means asking questions that everyone has an answer to, and nobody minds sharing.”

• Listening to participants:
“Seek member feedback and perspective, build meaningful connections”

• Recognizing members who participate:
“Create a sense of value to their participation.”

The full report is available to Online Community Research Network members. If you are interested in this report (and others), please consider joining the Network. Details are available here: http://www.onlinecommunityresearch.com

This month's Expert Interview is with Mario Anima, Director of Online Community at Current. Mario was kind enough to spend time answering a few questions about Current, the unique community that he helps manage, and the intersection of traditional, new and social media.


Mario Anima
Director, Online Community
Current

"I’m obsessed with online communities, products, and technology. I love when these three things converge, but i’m also a huge film geek, avid reader, and have been known to enjoy video games and music."

photo by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid



Q: Can you tell us a little bit about Current?

A: Current is a television station wrapped up in an online social media site at Current.com. Essentially, our community submits videos, news stories, blog posts, and anything else they find around the web (or create themselves) to Current.com, and then our community votes on the submitted stories to help collaboratively determine what gets made into TV segments (called pods) and aired on Current TV. We also have a full swing production team that produces regular programs like infoMania and Vanguard.

Q: What has surprised you most about managing a community of newgatherers and newsmakers?

A: Everyone involved in a social online community has a dedicated interest, and these interests range from the constructive to the destructive depending on who they are. Seems obvious enough. On Current, however, things can be uniquely rewarding and difficult. Diffusing situations is commonplace in communities, but more often than not, our team finds themselves diffusing dustups between community members who are undergoing an ideological clash of greater proportions. It’s both rewarding and challenging to be caught in between two people who really are committed to being informative, but are on the polar opposite sides of the spectrum ideologically.

Q: What has been one (or some) of the most difficult issues to manage in your community? How did you handle?

A: Censorship. We are largely a social news site, so issues with the censorship crop up frequently. It’s an ongoing issue, but one that we are trying to manage this with transparency and openness. We have a group of online programmers who help facilitate the transition of content from the Internet to TV. Things crop up, sometimes sources are not credible, other times we don’t have the rights to use video that our community really found compelling. We are trying to get better at messaging these decisions in a way that doesn’t leave the community scratching their heads.

Q: What advice would you give to someone interested in becoming a community manager?

A: You really, really, really have to love being online, being socially active in online communities, and being willing to jump into just about any situation as called for. In addition to that, you also need to have a keen eye and understanding of when and when not to dive in. It takes dedication and patience, but those are two of the most commonly shared attributes I’ve found amongst other community managers.

Q: What online community and social networking trends do you see on the horizon that are the most interesting to you?

A: Well, the whole micro-blogging thing is extremely powerful, although it’s been talked to death lately. I really think aggregation of social content/profiles still has a way to go, but there are some opportunities there. I think overall, media as we know it will continue to evolve thanks to the Internet and the social networks that continue to crop up. I’m very excited about the mobility and portability of identity and content.

The wiki for the Online Community Unconference 2008 is now open to all for reading / commenting. Of particular value are the session notes.

The wiki can be found here:
http://www.socialtext.net/ocu2008

Selected session notes include:
Worst Case Scenerios - What to do when things go terribly wrong

Cross Networking Madness - How are niche communities using data portability

Building the Collaboration Ecosystem - All components for community building success

Community Management 101: How to get started in this big wide world

Managing communities across multiple sites - Twitter, FB, MySpace, etc...

Community Year One - Phases, Activities, Successes

The platforms for community are SH*T. Discuss

Managing Entitlement - wrangling with the elite & noisy

There were over 40 sessions, and most have some level of documentation on the wiki.

Enjoy!

At the Online Community Unconference a couple of weeks ago, it became clear to me that we are at an inflection point with the "industry" of Online Community. On of the key issues community professionals face is that we (as an industry) are suffering from a lack of solid benchmarks, including compensation of online community professionals. The key purpose of the Online Community Research Network is to work in a collaborative way to research current practice and help establish these benchmarks.

We have put together a short survey about online community professionals compensation, team structure, and current job satisfaction.

The survey can be found here:
<http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=dmkh9tZ6vZHyheMFqv2mcg_3d_3d>

If you are charged with community management, strategy or design at your organization, I would encourage you to respond to the survey. We are seeking input from all types of organizations, and all levels of seniority.

If you decide to participate, there are few things to note:
• All participants will receive a copy of the final (aggregate) report.
• All data will be processed and compiled in aggregate. Data will not be reviewed or presented in a personally (or company) identifiable way.
• All participants are entered in to a drawing for 1 of 10 $25 Starbucks coffee cards.

If you have any questions about the study, please feel free to contact me. We hope to close the survey by July 17th.

The Online Community Unconference was held this Wednesday at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View.

How was it? In a word? AWESOME.

We had 250 participants from a diverse range of organizations, including Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Linden Lab, SeeqPod, Flickr, LinkedIn, Cisco, Sun and Current TV.

We had a jam packed day (started @ 8:30 and ran until 5:30). The energy was palpable. Check out the short video I shot below of folks reviewing the session grid shortly before session 1.



Over the course of the day, participants held over 50 sessions about community strategy, UX, management, member engagement and technology.

Session topics included:

• How do we motivate empowered users to participate positively
  
• Worst Case Scenerios - What to do when things go terribly wrong
  
• The Numbers Behind Trust - The hidden numbers that govern group dynamics
  
• Internationalizing content & community
  
• Meet them where they are vs. If you build it they will come
  
• Building the Collaboration Ecosystem - All components for community building success
  
• Cross Networking Madness - How are niche communities using data portability
  
• Community Management 101: How to get started in this big wide world
  
• Web 2.0 Components to build B2B Collaborative Communities
  
• Community Year One - Phases, Activities, Successes
  
• Community Management 2.0 - Success & Failures
  
• The platforms for community are SH*T. Discuss
  
• Effective Ambassador programs
  
• Pulling the plug - how/when/why?
  

My observations:

It's 2 days later, and I have to admit my head is still spinning. The quality of content and conversation was high, and there is still a lo of processing I need to do. My genreal impressions were:

This was the "Community Community" coming together. This was not an event where a few talking heads lectured the masses. This was a gathering of the tribes for those who manage communities and set community strategy on a daily basis.

The conversation has matured. There were far fewer folks that wanted to talk about community 101 this year as compared with last year's Unconference. Topics were fairly sophisticated and most of the direct feedback I got was that participants were pleased to discover the level of experience represented by the other participants.

The lack of standards is REALLY starting to hurt. Focus is (finally) beginning to shift from islands of communities to the larger community ecosystem. A general lack of standards around nomenclature, metrics, data schemas (including profile structure), profile accessibility and community UX (to raise just a few issues) is starting to come up as a real issue more often. I think we are finally mature enough as an industry to have the discussions as a body of practice (and contribute to and help direct discussions on tactical problems, like Data Portability).

The best resource about online communities is the community of practice. This statement is actually a common thread in all of Forum One Network's activities. We believe the best and most valuable source of information about building and growing healthy online communities is the body of practitioners.

We will be opening up the Unconference wiki in about a week, and will post highlights of the session notes. In the meantime, lot's of folks were twittering and blogging. I've posted highlights below.

Other Unconference highlights:
http://twemes.com/ocu2008
http://summize.com/search?q=ocu2008
http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=ocu2008
http://www.grimwell.com/?p=211
http://talk.lithium.com/lithium/blog/article?blog.id=lithium&message.id=139#M139

PS: Tasty Snacks = Accomplished!

We just released (for a limited time) the Online Community Revenue and ROI Techniques research report.

The study was conducted last fall as part of the Online Community Research Network, and explored issues around driving revenue via online communities.

I've included highlights below. I would encourage you to download the report for the full result set.

Question: Based on your experience, what are the most effective strategies and tactics for generating revenue from an online community?

Summary:
Respondents highlighted several common themes, including:

The need for Advertising:
“Provide a platform for peer-to-peer interaction that advertisers can participate in. By ensuring that advertising content is relevant to the content the community is generating (through tools like contextual matching), we’ve seen high ROI for advertising partners for
branding and lead generation campaigns.”

The need for Subscriptions:
“In our context (most-valued content available only to paying subscribers), we provide high-quality community features – including access to experts – as a privilege of subscribership.”

The fact that Advertising and Subscription are the leading strategies isn’t surprising, given that the model was pioneered with content-based sites. Several respondents mentioned that revenue generation from communities was indirect, particularly with regard to brand affinity and advertising.

Categorized write in answers follow -

Advertising:
• “Ad impressions - both visit duration and repeat visitors.”
• “Ad placement has resulted in game downloads from our casual games forums.”
• “Advertising on member content.”
• “Advertising sponsorships.”
• “Identifying quality community connections to leverage for advertising targeting insights.”
• “Provide a platform for peer-to-peer interaction that advertisers can participate in. By ensuring that advertising content is relevant to the content the community is generating (through tools like contextual matching), we've seen high ROI for advertising partners for branding and lead generation campaigns.”
• “Thought leadership, lead generation, customer retention are top indirect revenue sources. Customer councils, ad revenue and member dues are the most frequent direct sources.”
Advertising, Brand Loyalty, and Upgrade Program:
• “Unfortunately, a lot of revenue generated through business communities is indirect. Brand loyalty, hyper-affiliation, user acquisition are all difficult to translate into real dollars - although some companies try. Advertising is probably still the most effective way to monetize a community though - and the more targeted the ads, the better. For instance, having an "upgrade now" button on the forums for an outdated device, etc. A while ago, we piloted an upgrade program through the dell community that was quite successful.”
• “From our viewpoint, it's really a matter of having a more engaged readership. We're strictly an ad business at this point, and getting more people to come back to the site more often and see more pages is only good for us.”

Brand Loyalty:
• “Clients need to appreciate indirect value of promotion, brand awareness, and loyalty. We work with many of our clients to develop their platforms in a way that the software itself could be resold/white labeled for resale.”


Subscriptions & Brand Loyalty:
• “Allow a big upsell jump. A super-premium level allows people to express their loyalty even if the benefits are almost the same as at the next level.”
Subscriptions:
• “In our context (most-valued content available only to paying subscribers), provide high-quality community features, including access to experts, as a privilege of membership/subscribership.”
• “Providing a base platform for free, and charging for a premium version.”
• “Where the revenue is part of a premium service, as a cost of obtaining value from the community or directly tied to the identity and ego of the community member. For example, some kind of payment to access premium content or tools to take better advantage of the social space. Identity creation is a powerful motivator to which money is a means, not a barrier.”

Sponsors:
• “Incite users to create valuable content that can be sponsored by interested parties.”
• “We have not succeeded in having individuals pay directly; we have had more success in getting supporting institutions to pay for their employees' access.”

Create a Strong Community:
• “I do not believe you should be doing community to generate revenue. Our objective is to provide customers/users a way to Learn, Share, and Explore Technology.”
• “The communities don't generate revenue. They provide us a ‘lock-in’ to using our service by showing the value of the "network effect" on our platform. They provide a richer user experience for clients' members and therefore providing greater support during contract renewal negotiations.”
• “Create a strong community, then monetize the activity, versus monetizing the capabilities early on.”
• “Our focus is not on generating revenue directly. We focus on enabling community participants to develop solutions, find answers, and gain knowledge.”



Question: What advice would you have for a colleague that needs to introduce revenue generating activities to their online community?

Summary:
Recommendations varied from the respondents, but several themes emerged from the content:
• Understand Your Community: Know what your community values, and what they expect from you. Let your community guide you on what they value, what they will pay for, and what types of advertising they will tolerate.
• Add More Features/Value: Don’t put roadblocks in front of features that are necessary for a healthy community. Think of value-added services that compliment the core community feature set.
• Be Careful: Your community is a delicate ecosystem. Make sure you don’t abuse it.
• Combine Revenue Sources: which techniques like “Target Advertising” and “Premium Upselling”
• Quality over Quality: Focus on a few effective revenue streams rather than several moderately effective ones. 1 well placed ad vs. 7 throughout the interface.

Again, if you would like to see the full report, I would encourage you to download it here.

Are you a community manager or are you in charge of online community at your organization? Are you in the Bay Area?

If so, you might find the Online Community Roundtable of interest. This is a small netowrking group / event that meets regularly to discuss issues, opportunities and trends with online communities, and represents leading organizations (large and small).

Our next meeting is Tuesday, June 10 at Cyworld in SF. The session will last from 5:30 to 8:30. Please email me if you are interested.

We have had an unbelievable response to the upcoming Online Community Unconference to be held June 18th. Registration numbers are just shy of 200 people, and we expect to hit 250. We think this will be the biggest event, this year, focused on online communities.

We have a wide range of organizations, industries and personalities coming, including: Adobe, Autodesk, BabyCenter, CafePress, Cisco, Civic Ventures, Comcast, Digg, eBay Research Labs, EdgiLabs, Flickr, Forrester Research, Google, Intuit, Jive Software, Link TV, LinkedIn, NetApp, Omidyar Network, O'Reilly Media, Six Apart, Social Edge, Sony Online Entertainment, SRI International, Starlight Starbright Children's Foundation, Sun, VMWare and YouTube.

To see the full list of folks coming, check out the registration page:
http://ocu2008.eventbrite.com

If you are charged with managing online communities or community strategy for your organization, this will be a fantastic event for you. The agenda is participant driven, the networking is fantastic, and the content will be fantastic.

The Online Community Research Network is kicking off our next research project to study online community marketing, member engagement and growth strategies.

The goal of the study is to get direct feedback from community managers and strategists about:
- most effective ways to market their communities
- the definition of community member engagement
- best practices for fostering member engagement
- fostering community health and and driving growth

We have found that the best source of information about community best practice and strategy comes from the collective experience of real-world practitioners.

If you would like to participate in the study, please send me an email (bjohnston@forumone.com) with your contact info, your organization, and a link to, or description of the communities you manage or guide.

This month's Expert Interview is with Christine Perey, Analyst and freelance associate of Informa Telecoms & Media. Christine has a truly global view of the topic of mobile social networking as a former Bay Area resident who now resides in Switzerland. Christine was kind enough to spend time answering several questions about mobile-based social networking below and expands on some of the findings published in the new Informa Telecoms and Media report, Mobile Social Networking: Communities and Content on the Move.


Christine's Bio:
Christine Perey is an analyst with over 15 years experience in new and emerging multimedia communications markets. She is a freelance associate of Informa Telecoms & Media and a regular contributor to Informa’s Mobile Media information service.

Christine was the publisher and editor of The QuickTime Forum from 1991-1993 and the founder of The QuickTime Movie Festival. Christine is an invited speaker at industry events and serves on boards, panels and committees dedicated to the advancement of rich media experiences in business and consumer markets. In 2008 Informa Telecoms & Media published Mobile Social Networking: Community and Content on the Move, the most comprehensive market research report on mobile communities, researched and written by Christine. Previously, she authored the Personal Mobile Video Communications market research report published by Wainhouse Research in 2006.
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Q: What are the key differences you see in the mobile market in the states vs. Europe and Asia? Specifically, what are the key barriers to innovation in the US?

A: As far as the general topic of mobile services for consumers and businesses is concerned, there are dramatic regional differences. For example, in the US, most (somewhere over 90%) subscribers are under contract, meaning that they receive a bill every month for the services they used in the prior 30 days. When a service provider has a guaranteed revenue stream, they are less likely to innovate than when people are changing operators every week or month. Also, until relatively recently, both in-bound and out-bound calls were charged and the consumer or business contracted for a flat rate monthly plan based on the “block” of minutes. This affects how people use the phone service (it lowers the tendency to give out the mobile number, for example). By contrast, in European and Asian markets, pre-paid services and dialing party pays are the rules, not the exceptions. People “top up” the phone cards in their phones and can change carriers any day of the week. Many have two phones (with two different carriers). There’s a good article on the US cellular market performance with some of Analysis Research’s recent report findings. Here’s a snippet:

Analysis Research predicts that total annual subscriber growth in the US nationwide could fall to 2 percent a year by 2012, compared with the 11 percent to 14 percent growth posted by the three wireless carriers, AT&T, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile USA. But add in Sprint Nextel, which posted two consecutive quarters of subscriber losses, and the total annual subscriber growth last year for the top four carriers dropped to 9 percent – the slowest growth in a decade.

Technologies for mobile networks are not the same around the world. In the US and most of Latin and South America, the technology is based primarily (with the exception of AT&T Wirless/Cingular network and T-Mobile which are GSM/UMTS) on CDMA2000 which is a different radio technology than what was adopted and deployed in Western (and most of the Eastern block) Europe and Japan. In Europe and in many other parts of the world where advanced mobile services are offered, the technology is GSM which is the predecessor of WCDMA and the step up (to UMTS-3G) is relatively easy. There are proponents of these different technologies in each camp, for sure, but the bottom line is that due to the fact that these differences exist today, some mobile services are easier to build or deploy and will advance/develop more rapidly in some regions than others. In Europe, the UK and Italy are very advanced markets for mobile but for different reasons.

In Japan and Korea, mobile network services are the most advanced in the world, although the UK is not far behind. The competition among carriers and the penetration is high (exceeding one handset per person). Let’s look at Japan to compare and contrast the drivers of innovation, getting to your question about possible barriers to innovation in the US market. In Japan, NTT DoCoMo had the foresight in the mid- or late1990s to create an environment where a rich ecosystem for application developers could develop. In addition to having developer APIs and other tools, they provided a strong financial incentive for developers who created new services on their network. The developers in the i-Mode ecosystem would receive 20-30% of the revenues charged by the mobile operator for the services. The economic reward system is an important driver of innovation but the mobile network operators in the US market have adopted a strong “walled garden” approach where they and only they choose the services offered and if the successful services are provided by a third party, even then the “cut” of the action (revenues) which returns to the application developer is much lower (5-10%).

Despite the regional differences in regulation, markets, technologies and revenue sharing strategies, mobile communities are rapidly expanding in all parts of the world! I don’t have hard statistics to provide about on-deck and off-deck community tendency, but my impression is that mobile communities are making themselves easy to find and people are looking for them on their mobiles. Subscribers are looking for community services on the mobile operator’s deck as well as on the Mobile Web.

One of the barriers to subscribers using mobile communities is the cost of the data traffic. We’ve all heard and many have experienced the sticker shock when you download large files to a mobile handset or do a lot of surfing. In countries, such as Japan, Korea, UK and a few other European markets, there are flat-rate, all-you-can-eat data tariffs offered, which really reduce the barrier to using the mobile data services such as mobile communities. These are catching on and where available, User-Generated Content and mobile community services are high on the list of compelling reasons to take a flat rate data plan with your contract.

In addition to the mobile operator related regional differences, it is clear that there are also economic and societal differences which influence the rate of mobile community adoption. I’ll just look at a few of these non-operator factors to make my point. In many (most) economically less well developed regions of the world (outside the Western and Japanese economies), the mobile handset will be people’s first and only access to the Internet. The number of mobile phones has already exceeded the number of Web connected PCs. Increasingly these mobile phones are capable of accessing data services such as mobile communities. It’s not a question of choice, there just aren’t broadband Internet services available at affordable prices, or the PC in the home or office is shared among an entire family or group of people and you don’t want to have your community experience to be shared by your parents or siblings! The mobile handset personal experience is private and personalized and for some services, dating, for example—a very popular mobile community service—it’s not the type of experience you want to be doing in a living room with people around.

Like in web communities, there are strong cultural drivers which influence the appeal of communities and the feature popularity. In Asian markets, digital gifting is very popular. In Japan, people love to view UGC on their mobile, but are more conservative than Americans when creating their own content. In the US market, more subscribers are exhibitionists with their camera phones.


Q: Why doesn't having international players like T-Mobile help spur innovation and openness in the domestic US market?

A: T-Mobile has operated a very innovative service in the US market called MyFaves and after over a year of success it has expanded this service to Germany, the UK and elsewhere. Please read about this.
Mobile network operator groups, such as Hutchison Whampoa, Telefonica, Orange and Vodafone are very actively pursuing mobile community partnerships and view these services as important to their differentiation and competitive advantage both within a country and between geographies. Mobile communities, like their web cousins, need critical mass to continue growing. Having the ability to reach people on other networks in other regions is very valuable as some of the larger chat communities (e.g. Jumbuck and AirG) have shown.

One of the things we know that users are against is being in a walled garden in their community. Since mobile network operators can prevent the subscribers of other operator networks from joining a community, this can reduce the viral effect. If I’m an Orange customer and you are an O2 subscriber, we should still be able to be friends in the community. This is one of the great appeals to being off-deck or at the very least to join communities which are independently operated.

Q: What are the most interesting trends you are seeing in the mobile social networking space, and where (geographically) are they happening?

A: Mobile communities that offer people the ability to find others with like interests or to meet the numerous other human needs they have over the course of their days and lives, are blossoming. They are not copycats of web communities. Rather they are evolving in their own unique directions because people are taking risks and experimenting.

One of the things that we see increasingly is the desire on the part of community participants to take part in the mobile economy. In other words, those who are driving a lot of traffic for advertising or downloads want to get a fraction of the community host’s revenues. The systems which reward users with points or internal currencies are quickly going to link with recommendations. If I recommend that you go see or purchase something within our community and you trust me and follow that advice, then I should get a reward. Consumers will, over time, become the purveyors of micro-advertising campaigns. If I like a brand of hair product, computer or a sports team, and your transaction is influenced by my preferences, the community will track these social shopping patterns. This isn’t unique to the mobile communities. It is likely to be implemented and adopted well in mobile because the identity of the users is known to the platform provider based on a unique relationship they have with their phone and the mobile network operator.

In parallel with the evolution of communities, community features will be integrated to many if not all digital experiences both mobile and online. In the future, a social networking service will struggle to survive and attract new users simply by providing a social networking functionality as a core service. Instead, the features and functions will be offered as part of other services helping to drive personalization (through the data gathered), drive loyalty and to drive sales. At least this will be possible when a set of universally accepted community user feature-centered standards are developed, ratified and integrated into all future platforms.


Q: What key trends should online community and social media professionals pay attention to?

A: There is a great deal of uncertainty in this market, but the dimensions of the opportunity and the number and types of companies participating in the industry indicate that Mobile Social Networking is going to improve quickly and the service themes at its core – meeting the needs of people to stay in touch and feel that they belong to a group, to be entertained, to increase their productivity, to make a difference or have an impact – will persist over time.

In the future, entertainment will be very different as a result of mobile devices that enable sharing of digital content. According to Nokia’s research entitled A Glimpse of the Next Episode, published in December 2007, approximately 25% of the entertainment consumed by people in 2012 will have been created, edited and shared within ‘peer circles’ rather than produced and distributed by professional firms and studios. As a result of the popularity of online and mobile services like Mobile Social Networking, people will be accustomed to sharing their ‘instant’ social media with people they know as well as with people they have just met. In parallel, they will be learning to use the new tools at their disposal and developing collaborative media skills that will prove more rewarding and engaging than passively watching, reading or hearing the entertainment media produced by the impersonal entertainment powerhouses.

Future mobile devices will have better microphones, perhaps even microphone arrays combining multiple mobile devices into ad hoc sensor networks, for superior capture of sound, such as music and speech. In addition to sound and video, the mobile device will detect other users in the vicinity and, if they are known and part of a user’s community, applications will automatically embed tags associating faces and voices with names.

In some high-end devices, continuous measuring and monitoring of a user’s surroundings will detect when to begin and end a capture sequence, automatically zooming and focusing on items of interest. Since social media is rarely visible from inside a pocket or purse, mobile devices for social media capture will more likely be wearable, mounted on the user’s glasses or hat.

Systems in the mobile handset will permit the manual or automatic annotation of social media with information such as the place, the date and time, the objects in a scene and possibly more ‘human factor’ data such as the emotion of the user. By associating metadata at the time of the capture, the social media blending tools will have the ability to identify whose media was used in an edited composition, as well as to remove or hide people who do not wish to be identified or heard.

Q: What are your recommendations to those hosting and operating online communities?

A: Providers of community services aimed at the broadband-connected PC users are already using three of the four strategies available to them to expand the reach and use of their platforms to include mobile devices. The first strategy is to build a WAP version of the online services. Many add some value to the user by offering the option of receiving alerts when the platform detects community-relevant events via MT SMS and permit message management and viewing using the handset. Orkut and Facebook have used this strategy to date. MySpace also offers a WAP portal interface among its other strategies.

The benefit of this strategy is that it gets a rudimentary level of service deployed, so that the early adopters can at least browse and check their communities when mobile. So far, few of the online community providers using this strategy have enabled the rich social media features which the users of mobile handsets would most like to see. This is because the level of investment necessary for re-architecting the service platform for correct display and formatting is high, given the online community operator’s lack of historical concern with device management, and difficult to justify based on their existing banner ad revenue models. In the future, this strategy should persist and improve as online communities acquire the expertise necessary to build robust mobile community platforms or gateways to their existing services.

The second strategy is to port the online service features to a mobile operator’s proprietary service environment. This is essentially what MySpace did with Helio and, to a far lesser extent, with Vodafone. The service is offered on-deck and is easy for the user to log in, especially if an application or applet is installed. This strategy will also persist and involve pre-loaded applications on feature-rich handsets for mobile community services and social media.

The third strategy is partnering with a mobile community platform provider, such as InterCasting. Bebo and Piczo are among those choosing this strategy for their mobile service access. By using a mobile community platform and aggregation service, the online community reaches the largest number of potential registrants. As long as the community keeps its service brand and feature set, this is a sound strategy and significantly reduces the time-to-market. Other online communities are likely to follow this route when it is proven both from a technology integration and business model perspective.

The final strategy that has yet to be tested is for an online community provider to partner directly with a popular independent mobile community operator. The technologies for creating the gateway between the two will need to be proprietary but need not depend on a third party developer and could evolve at the speed that the two partners require. One of the reasons that this has not been properly explored yet is that mobile community service providers have not, to date, seen much advantage in this. However, as more broadband-connected PC users seek to access via mobile, the overlap between the two access types will drive the dialogue around potential partnerships.

To be successful with a mobile strategy, online communities will need to make a more significant investment to understand and meet the needs of mobile community participants than they have to date. Well-designed surveys, free trials such as that conducted by Sulake, the provider of Habbo Hotel, and the engagement with mobile community industry experts will all contribute to the education of the online community operator.

The most challenging domain for online community service providers to tackle will be in the area of revenue. As community participants have become accustomed to having access at no cost, they are reluctant to begin paying for equivalent or inferior services. As the mobile advertising market heats up and brands feel more comfortable with their community campaigns, this obstacle will gradually decline.


About PEREY Research & Consulting
PEREY Research & Consulting builds and leads senior management teams conducting and applying market research. Component and systems vendors, network operators and value added service providers rely on Perey Research to tap emerging multimedia technology trends, and to devise and implement new business development strategies in light of these trends.

I've been thinking about issues around user profile, data accessibility (because who wants to "port"), and universal login thelast couple of days as I prepare for a panel discussion about reputation at next week's Community 2.0 conference.

Specifically, I wanted to check in on the state of OpenID support around the social web. It seems there are glimmers of hope out there. Large companies like Yahoo and Microsoft have announced plans to support OpenID in various ways. That's part of the problem: lot's of talk, not much action.

From the TechCrunch artcile "Kevin Rose at FOWA: DIGG Adopts OpenID"

Kevin Rose, speaking here at the Future of Web Apps conference in London, just announced that Digg will adopt the OpenID decentralized digital identity platform. Don’t expect this right away though - adoption will begin “later this year” according to Rose.

That was FOWA 2007... as in February of 2007 (over 18 months ago). Unfortunately, it seems like OpenID gets more lip service than it does development resources for most sites.

AOL received kudos for their OpenID implementation, yet you still can't login in to AOL using an OpenID created by a "3rd Party" (read: not AOL.)

From AOL's login help file.

Can I log in to all AOL sites using my OpenID account?
We have additional work to do to support 3rd Party OpenIDs with the ability to log in and access AOL® Web properties. Once this work is done, you will be able to log in using your 3rd Party OpenID instead of creating an AOL® account. If a property is able to support OpenID you should see a tab with the OpenID logo as a log in option.

Isn't one of the key tenats of OpenID not to have a central authority managing IDs, so, more often than not you will be dealing with "3rd party generated IDs".

I don't claim to be an identity or data portability expert, but it seems there is work to be done both on the advocacy & user education side of OpenID, as well as on the implementation side.

On the positive side, there are several sites that fully support OpenID, and they can be found here:
https://www.myopenid.com/directory

The Online Community Unconference is coming together nicely. We are on for June 18th at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. I expect about 250 folks to attend, and Kaliya Hamlin is helping us out with facilitation.

Current organizations attending include:

• Autodesk, Inc.
  
• BabyCenter
  
• CafePress
  
• Cisco
  
• Civic Ventures
  
• eBay Research Labs
  
• EdgiLabs
  
• Forrester Research
  
• Google
  
• Jive Software
  
• Link TV
  
• NetApp
  
• Omidyar Network
  
• Social Edge, A Program of the Skoll Foundation
  
• SRI International
  
• Starlight Starbright Children's Foundation

You can see the full list of org and people attending on the conference registration page here:
http://ocu2008.eventbrite.com

We expect the Unconference ot be an action packed day of networking and sharing about issues and best practices in the online community and social media space.