danielskog.se

Bilddagboken is one of the fastest growing Swedish online communities. About a week ago they suddenly changed their design and many members reacted with frustration and anger. In one of the discussion boards on Bilddagboken it was stated that the administrators apparently received 18 000 complaints during the first five days after the redesign! The discontent were not only because of the new functionality or the new appearance, it was also coming from feeling powerless. Members felt disappointed about not being involved in the process and were surprised by the sudden change.

The same scenario has been displayed in many other online communities and social network sites. Every time LunarStorm changes its appearance you will find members reacting with frustration and every time Facebook changes some of its features there will be complaints. Online venues like Bilddagboken must continue to develop to keep up with what’s happening around them and it seems reasonable that they will have to change the design sometimes. But wouldn’t it be nice to involve the members in the design process? After all they invest a lot of their time and energy in the community and they want to feel that they have some kind of influence. When the software environment suddenly changes it is somewhat similar to redecorating their living room without asking them. No wonder they get mad.

If you spend a lot of time in online social spaces you need to remember that these environment are privately owned and that you most often do not know anything about their further development or how the conditions for spending time there might suddenly change. If you are managing such a place, remember that the members want to have some kind of influence. They are not merely “users” but co-producers creating an attractive environment. If you want to have a thriving community you need to let go of some of the power and invite the members to participate in the process of developing the site.

[Also posted in Swedish on my Umeå Live blog]

During the last couple of days several Swedish bloggers have expressed their thoughts on how an online community should behave in order to keep its members over time. Mindpark points out that both Facebook and MySpace seem to be loosing some of their crowds, and suggests that we could look at these and other similar online venues as similar to nightclubs offline. A nightclub needs to be cool and hyped to have success, but after a while the hype calms down and people move to another place.

I’m not sure about the parallel to nightclubs, but I do agree with Mindpark that the size of Facebook has become a major threat for its further existence. When a community grows too big people start longing for something smaller and more exclusive.

Both Mindpark and Bisonblog argue that one strategy that should be adopted by community owners is to allow for sub-communities inside the large community. These sub-communities can be smaller and topic-specific, attracting dedicated members. This is very true and probably one of the key factors to why for instance LunarStorm has been such a lively environment for so long. (However, LunarStorm also seem to be loosing steam nowadays.)

I think that you could put this in another way by saying that if you want members to stay you’ll have to offer them an environment that does not only give entertainment but actually allows for a real community to develop. I get the feeling that many so called “community sites” don’t really have that much “community” going on. No wonder people eventually get bored and move on.

A while ago someone asked me to mention my top three books that had really influenced my work. Well, here is a list of five books that have had a great impact on my work and helped me frame the things I want to focus on in my research.

	Sherry Turkle, (1995), Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995.
	Marc Smith and Peter Kollock (editors), (1999), Communities in Cyberspace, London: Routledge, 1999.
	Michael Heim (1993), The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality, New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
	Ray Oldenburg (1991), The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community, New York: Paragon House, 1991.
	Christine Hine, (2000), Virtual Ethnography, London: SAGE.

The books above are displayed in the actual order of my readings. When I read the books by Turkle (1995) and Smith & Kollock (1999) I had just finished my undergraduate education and I was not familiar with Internet research at all. These books opened my eyes to the complex social dimensions of Internet and I found it fascinating. I still do btw.

Heim (1993) was also fascinating, but in a different way. I remember sometimes feeling completely dizzy when reading about Heim’s philosophical thoughts on the essence of cyberspace. I didn’t understand all of it – but I still loved it because it kind of made sense, somehow. I haven’t really used Heim that much in my work but when I look back I think the writings by Heim boosted my curiosity about technology and its “true” character.

My interest in online communities gradually evolved in the years that followed and when reading The Great Good Place by Oldenburg (1991) I felt that I was on to something, both professionally and personally. Until this day, the image of a thriving third place has been almost like an inner vision to me and helped me to value the everyday places where I live my life. Life should perhaps not be so much about chasing extreme experiences but about finding the beauty in the mundane and enjoying everyday life. In my studies of online communities, the notion of third places online has also been a great help when trying to understand how people find their stay online meaningful and worthwhile.

Finally, Hine (2000) has been really important for my PhD project and helped me to develop a methodological approach that makes sense to me. For a while I felt kind of lost and didn’t know how to capture the things I wanted to study using conventional qualitative methods. Then I read about virtual ethnography and was presented a methodological approach that I could build my work on.

Of course there are other books that also have been important to my work. But these five are among the most important and they probably still influence me more than I am aware of.