Communities through Connecting Tissue

One of the more interesting seminars yesterday at the Emerging Technologies conference talked about new forms of community in the Web 2.0 world. Unlike previous iterations of online community, this new one is self-powered and independent. It can’t be shut off by a moderator representing a corporate interest. And it’s more human – each person is their own community node. That is, my community starts with me.

I studied earlier versions of online community where enabled by someone setting up a messaging system on a web site or, even earlier, a BBS. They could also be found on Usenet, IRC, and other places The new form of community is powered by “connective tissue” technologies such as RSS feeds, API’s, trackbacks, blogrolls, and link tracking.. Community now happens when you use these things together.

Here’s how I think it works in a practical sense: I link to a friend’s blog and –bam! – he’s now a part of my community. I also link to my Flickr gallery, my friend’s Flickr gallery, and then also to a Flickr group I belong to. (This is hypothetical; I don’t have any links on my blog yet. Working on it.) This decentralized network forms my community, and for better or worse more closely resembles my real life.

I’m working on a couple of different projects that have a community aspect to them. The guy at this seminar believes that rather than starting new communities, go to where they are. And, to paraphrase his words, you might be lucky enough they let you come visit. So I’m wondering if that’s true, how we pull it off? Bottom line, I think, the focus needs to on brining together the connective tissues.

A couple more take aways:

• Treat your community well. They can always go somewhere else, and the barrier to leaving is very low.
• There is a community affiliation lifecycle: grow up in your parents house (first community), move out on your own (join another), then buy your own house (start your own community.