Clever Thoughts

Community, Conversation, Contribution?

// March 14th, 2010 // Brain Dump, Social Media

First, if you like this image check out more like this by Intersection Consulting on their flickr page.

When people talk about community they think about neighborhoods or communities that are focused around a theme. So in some ways, community is an issue of geography or topic. For example, there is a strong community around fiber arts/crafts that lives at Ravelry.com that has on the order of 400,000 users. The reason many of the people joined this group is to take advantage of the shared knowledge about fiber projects.

With the internet as a gathering place for community, geography is no longer a factor for many and their has also been a blurring of the focus of topic as well. The idea of community is no longer just about one topic. Ravelry, again for example, has many groups that talk about a wide vareity of topics that have nothing to do with fiber projects. You can find people talking about Dr. Who, Obama, McCain, parenting, and even podcasting (not just the fiber related ones either).

Social media tools have begun to create a new type of community. One that extends beyond any specific focus and geography. This is both confusing and frightening.

It is no longer a question of shared theme as it is about contribution to the conversation. For people on twitter and even with blogs in general, each contribution is judged on it’s own as valuable or not, and these contributions are not expected to always relate to a topic you are expecting. With this new community/conversation comes a new understanding of what you share. As some may begin to worry about what they are putting out there,

I think it is also important to know why you are contributing in the first place. For some it’s business and for others, like me, it’s personal. As someone who posts about places I go and people I talk to, I do put conscious thought into my own security, but that is not the only thing that drives me to share information.. it’s just a part of what I am putting out there.

So, it’s a brave new world where contribution and conversation are not analogues with community… In a way it’s a new “Society”…

I ask you, how do you value contribution, what do you think about all of this, is this something new?