When’s a Community Worth the Time Online?
25 01 2006
When do you to provide your personal information to a web site you’ve just discovered? If your information 1) permits access to special content 2) allows you greater access to the in web community 3) is apart of a transaction.
Certain web sites, like engaging conversationalists, make me feel comfortable sharing personal information immediately; it’s as natural as discussing Thanksgiving dinner with the guy next to me on the plane. Good social networking and online community web sites exemplify this. The more profile information you provide, the richer your online experience. Yet what communities are worth the time investment?
This week I explored the question by trying three new sites. I registered on Gather.com because of blog buzz. I spent twenty minutes copying and pasting my profile from Myspace to Gather; I even uploaded my picture. However, when I was finished, I neither felt like reading anyone else’s posts nor posting my own material. I felt like a teenager faced with countless options yet still bored in a 2006 Geocity site. I’ll check back with them in three months.
A friend recommended me to Chatsum.com, an instant messaging tool that allows users on the same web sites at the same time to chat with one another. Chatsum is still in beta phase. My Chatsum experience emphasizes the importance of relevance in new communication channels. Simply providing chat features for users on the same web site isn’t enough to spark meaningful conversation. I eagerly wait their next phase where contextual profiles may improve the chat experience.
I signed up for Heyletsgo.com because a friend, who had not signed up, forwarded it. I joined immediately and loved it. It requires the least time investment of all these sites and provided the most immediate value. Imagine a City Search without the ads and with local events, a ‘buzz’ indicator to measure their popularity and simple way to organize preferences on an event wish list. I wanted to build a profile to enhance my site experience.
Engaging these new sites this week illustrated the importance of small details in web communities. Sometimes a daily quote, a simple picture, and small anecdote is more important than the grandiose, “cool,” features web communities frequently boast. Online communities can function similarly to traditional communities in this respect. It’s often the waitress who remembers my name at the local dinner, the drycleaner that stays open twenty more minutes for me, and the clothing store clerk who remembers my shirt size that earned my business - and my trust. I’m in favor of small features online that inspire this feel, that make me feel at home, which make me feel welcome. These are the communities in which I seek to invest my time.
What’s your take?
Photo on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/atanas/8145124/
Interesting meditation on communities…for me, though, it isn’t the pre-fab communities like Gather and MySpace that work, but rather the other blogs I’ve gone and read, and the ones who have linked to me. There’s just so much time in one day, and I actually like reading more about people who don’t live around my block. It can, though, depend on what you’re looking for from an on-line community. If I were looking for people to hang out with locally, I might use stuff like Gather (MySpace is a tad too young for me.) But since it’s about reaching across the blogosphere, I prefer not using those kinds of features.
Good blog though
T.