The Perfect Virtual Community
Posted 3/21/2008 09:48:00 AM |
This is actually a very important point - one that I encourage social entrepreneurs and community managers to ponder; it's never enough to just throw affordances or rules at a community, a community must be gardened with love.
Remembering Facebook ca. 2005 (or even Friendster ca. 2003), we can reflect on how the community has changed. In yesterday's post I talked about "privacy" as a key proxy for gauging community health. In early 2005, everyone in Facebook felt like they knew one another; your audience was your network, and your network was your friends (or potential friends). As a result, we didn't use privacy, we disclosed a lot, and we engaged each other digitally at a level never before seen.
At the time, when I began studying the community, I sensed there was a privacy divide, that young people don't understand or care about privacy like "we" do. Over time I've realized I couldn't be further from the truth. To those users, Facebook in 2005 was the perfect community, a digital place they felt so comfortable with that privacy didn't enter the equation. It would have been as weird to use privacy in Facebook ca. 2005 as it would be to walk around with a bag over your head on campus today.
And just think about that for a minute - the perfect virtual community. That's a remarkable achievement, and much credit to Facebook for creating such a remarkable success. Unfortunately, as Facebook opened the doors widely, they learned that community doesn't scale. This isn't new - danah boyd documents the clash of communities in Friendster in her paper "None of this is real". As contexts collide and communities become more heterogeneous, virtual communities become more real - and the privacy fears and stranger-danger that come with real-world networks erode our feelings of community and cohesion.
The Facebook of today is vastly different from the Facebook of 2005. With the influx of new people and new networks comes the clash of contexts. This forces us to put locks on our doors, to shut ourselves off to all but our friends, to confront the non-idyllic parts of community.
Reflecting on Facebook 2005 and Facebook 2008, I think there are important lessons to be learned - for makers of social software, for community gardeners, for those who might wish to make a living at this one day. What can we learn from Facebook, and how can it be applied to the communities we'll construct tomorrow? And can we ever have a community as strong and vibrant as Facebook 2005 again? I certainly hope so.
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At March 21, 2008 11:15 AM,
Bradjward said...
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I've been chewing on this topic for awhile now too, and just put some thoughts down in this blog post yesterday:
http://squaredpeg.com/index.php/2008/03/20/building-community-inwith-social-media/
Seems like we have a lot of similar viewpoints on this topic! I'd love to hear your feedback on my thoughts. -
At March 21, 2008 12:21 PM,
Bertil Hatt said...
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History is repeating: forum used to be that, then cafés, then internet came and on-line fora came and went as the place where enough people staid to have a conversation. All communities, platform, format have been able to cut themselves and the find the right walls to be useful.
Will Facebook replace it self, in addition to replace e-mail, or StumbleUpon? Certainly if they get their hands on Yahoo! execs. -
At March 22, 2008 12:44 PM,
Suzanne Aurilio said...
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I've been thinking about this issue too in a slightly different albeit related context, developing a community of faculty and instructional staff across a university system. http://transform.csuprojects.org/
I think rl examples are useful to a point. I live in a neighborhood that does have community(ies) embedded in it. I have to seek them out and participate in them.
Communities typically have a purpose, however loosely structured that is, and that purpose is often related to shared goals and activities. Socializing is not a goal in that sense. I'm thinking that the term community is ill-fitted to what goes on in Facebook, etc. I think "Network" is a more appropriate descriptor. Networks are not defined by shared activities but by shared connections that may or may not lead to shared activities. Networks aren't as place-bound as communities. Conceptually, the term is more indicative of how we actually live together in virtual space.
I think the sensibilities we derive from community involvement (feeling connected, known, inside (verses outside) are currently more possible through the embodied experience of 3D virtual spaces like Second Life. Again, I'd say though, that simply "being somewhere" doesn't generate the feeling of community necessarily.
Also, I hate to say it, but Americans have a nostalgia for community that many have never experienced except through watching Cheers. My experience of community has come out of need, of being part of a (sub) culture, like the gay community. Interestingly, there are today many gays and lesbians who have no sense of community. They are, like many Americans, homongenized by mass market ideals, which by definition contradict the notion of community. -
At March 22, 2008 1:16 PM,
Bertil Hatt said...
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I'm not sure about neighbourhood, but the list of my friends' group is fairly political, in the broad sense: I'd say 60% of groups have a clear goal, if no real objective ("One million for/againt ~"). I'm in a social science lab, which is a typical left-wing area, and many of my friends are active -- in the right wing area, hence my need for separation features :^] -- so I might be atypical: what about you?
I'm European, so I'm not subscribed into the hotbed of current militantism, MyBO but I'm assuming some of you are: what features are there that you can't find on Facebook, apart from the selective entry? -
At March 24, 2008 1:18 PM,
Amy Jo Kim said...
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>> ... the term community is ill-fitted to what goes on in Facebook, etc. I think "Network" is a more appropriate descriptor. Networks are not defined by shared activities but by shared connections that may or may not lead to shared activities. Networks aren't as place-bound as communities. Conceptually, the term is more indicative of how we actually live together in virtual space.
I totally agree. FB is a textbook example of how communities scale. Pretty much all long-lasting communities START OFF small and cohesive (like early FB) but then grow and splinter and re-constitute as Networks with internal clusters of sub-communities (AKA groups).
