photo credit: alamez

I was talking to someone responsible for a Ning site tied to a major label rapper and this Ning site is basically just stealing articles from other sites. He did it to one of my articles, so I filed a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) notice and had Ning pull it down.

The subsequent conversation was weird and disappointing. It was clear that the person didn’t have even a cursory grasp of online content creation or copyright. In defense of his actions, he pointed out other sites that did the same thing. The sites that he pointed out, however, didn’t exactly do what he said. They did it sometimes, but sometimes they didn’t, not 100% of the time like him. And they included source links.

photo credit:
Stéphane Moussie

As I write this post, I’m listening to “The Ghost of Christopher Wallace” by Jay Electronica featuring Diddy. It was made available as a free download recently and I really like it.

The song features two verses from Electronica and lots of ad-libs from Diddy, which I love. The second half of the song is all ad-libs. But, in between the first and second Electronica verses, Diddy raps, “your reign on the top was short like leprechauns, as I crush so-called willies, thugs and rapper-dons.” This line comes from “Kick in the Door” by The Notorious B.I.G.

Though it’s not what Biggie meant, what I’m thinking about right now is how destructive it can be, for anyone managing a community, to get wrapped up in their reign on the top.

photo credit: Ivan Walsh

“There is absolutely no reason for any middle school student to be a part of a social networking site.”

These were the words of Anthony Orcini, the principal of Benjamin Franklin Middle School in Ridgewood, New Jersey. They were included in an e-mail he sent to parents at the end of April, urging them to immediately ban their children from using any social network. Lou Young of WCBS has the story and a full copy of the letter. This comes care of my friend James Dasher.

I’m not wholly surprised by this e-mail, but was a little stunned by the wording of it. Personally, I don’t believe that this is the right course of action – not in general and not for all families. Certainly, parents have the right to block their children from using a social network and that may be the right choice for them. However, I question whether that choice should be made due to a forcibly written message by a school principal. I just hope parents don’t read this and make any rash decisions.

photo credit: jcfrog

One question I get asked a lot goes something along the lines of “how will forums keep up with [something]?” or “forums are old hat, why would people use them over [something]?” or “why use forums when you can use [something]?” However will forums survive? Let’s talk about it.

This is Limited Thinking

Forums aren’t going anywhere. Let’s get that out of the way. My great grand kids may well look back at this post and laugh at their crazy great grandfather and his talk of vinyl records, er- I mean forums. But, for as far into the future as I can possibly see, I do not see a time where structured, text based online discussion communities will cease to exist. Unless the internet ceases to exist or, at least, changes very dramatically.

photo credit: Unhindered by Talent

If you offer a product or a service, you have a community. It may be small or large, local or international and you may not even acknowledge it, but understand this: you have one.

Your community is comprised of those who use, enjoy and support whatever it is that you do. There was a time when engaging your community was a costly endeavor. Telephone? Postal mail? Yeah, fan clubs were cool and they were better than nothing, but they were bulky and required, in many cases, substantial investments with sometimes limited returns. The internet changed that.

Now, you can readily engage with your fans, your supporters, your community through communities that you host and through communities at other sites, like Facebook and Twitter. You can now easily communicate with masses of people with the press of a button. Or, a handful of people, if that is the size of the community.

The question isn’t whether or not you have one, the question is: what do you do with it?

photo credit: david.orban

I organized and moderated the “Social Media: The Bad and The Ugly” panel at Blog World & New Media Expo last October (see my recap). It had a wonderful lineup featuring Amber Naslund, Director of Community at Radian6 and blogger at Altitude Branding; Wayne Sutton, Partner at OurHashtag and blogger at SocialWayne.com and Robert Scoble, Managing Director at Building43.com at Rackspace and blogger at Scobleizer.

If you’ve attended a lot of panels or presentations in this space, one thing you notice more and more is the backchannel and the influence it has (or doesn’t have) on the presentation in question. Sometimes this is beyond the speaker’s control, perhaps they are surprised by a massive scrolling screen of messages behind them. These days, this is often powered by a Twitter search.

photo credit: Gusjer

You’ve got a brand new community on basket weaving. You badly want people to come to your site. So, you go to the largest basket weaving community on the internet and start discreetly inviting members. Maybe you instant message or e-mail them off site, so that the people running the established community won’t notice. Maybe you use the private message system. Perhaps you even post on the community, too, to appear as a well meaning member. You’re really on your way now, right?

No, you’re not. Instead, I would say that you’re building your site on an old burial ground. And you know how that ends up. Bittersweet success haunted by the ghosts of the past that you’ve violated. Not everyone will agree with me, some will tell you that this is fair game or that it’s not hurting anybody. That it’s simply competition. But, not me.

PostRelease, the forums-based advertising platform, and research company Synovate have released the results of a survey aimed at determining the influence of people who contribute to online forums, as opposed to those that do not. They polled 1,000 citizens aged 18 and older in the lower 48 United States from November 19 through 23.

They found that one in five Americans contribute to an online forum and that those that contribute to online forums are far more likely to help a friend or family member make a purchasing decision, recommend a specific product, post reviews and ratings online, share advice offline and online, share links about new products, take an active role in organizing an offline event and more. For the highlights and exact percentages, see the table below.

photo credit: Beatriz_Mojica

I feel like I need to say this: there’s nothing wrong with a community being “just” forums. Nothing at all. There’s this push in some circles for them to be more and that’s cool. I love when people try new things. I encourage everyone to explore their ideas. That’s how we get better, that’s how we learn. But, problems arise when we think that forums by themselves need anything else. They don’t.

First, this is nothing new. People have, for a very long time, had sites with forums that weren’t simply about forums or whose focus was not forums. So, that’s not new. Either approach can be awesome. They’ve always been a great complement to other things – and they’ve always been fine by themselves.

MySpace grows leaps and bounds. Facebook hops in next. Twitter’s all up in this. Various other buzz brands pop up, as well. vBulletin starts developing into more of a social network application. That’s all great, there is plenty of room. I love all of it, please keep going. But, don’t use this as a means of saying forums are not good enough by themselves or that they are better with more things.

photo credit: Rob Shenk

I was talking to a member the other day, in what was a very serious conversation about that member’s future on the site. Part of that conversation was an attempt on my part to get the member to refocus on what the community is about and not to get out of hand in discussions where people disagree with you.

This veteran member had been challenged many times by a new member. The new member disagreed with a lot of what they said. Instead of taking it as he should have, and setting an example for the new member as an established member, he took it as a battle, as if discussion on our forums was some sort of war. And this carried over into numerous other threads. This was very disappointing to me and my staff.

Now, there are plenty of communities that are basically militant debate clubs. And that’s totally cool. But, that’s not what my communities are. We aim to be a friendly discussion community. Friendly doesn’t mean that everyone agrees. It means that when people disagree, they do so politely, respectfully and thoughtfully, focusing on the points of the discussion and not on attacking the person who made the points.

Even so, sometimes, members get carried away, as we all do. Where disagreeing with someone becomes a petty game or a battle. That’s not what I want. And so I told this member, exactly: “Discussions are not warfare; this is not a battlefield.”

I continued to tell them that this wasn’t about the member, the person who disagreed with them, me or our staff: this was about the community as a whole and what it stands for. And we don’t stand for this. I believe the member got the message and hope that we turned a corner.