Micro Persuasion: The Promise and Peril of Ubiquitous Community - 0 views
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"Steve, what's the next hot online community?" It seems as though everybody is on the lookout for the successor to MySpace, Twitter or Facebook. Nobody, even in a difficult economic climate, wants to be viewed as a latecomer. Perhaps as a defense mechanism to avoid being wrong myself, I now give a boilerplate answer that I believe can last. In short, the next big community is not a single destination. Rather, it is going to be everywhere. To paraphrase Forrester analyst Charlene Li, social networking is becoming "like air."
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The problem, however, is that this model can't scale. Tastes change and people are always migrating to trendier sites-especially as their friends do. As a result, the Internet amber is littered with fossilized communities that once dominated. These former stalwarts include AOL, Angelfire, TheGlobe.com, GeoCities and Tripod.
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Community today is a different animal. People now expect it to be part of virtually every online experience. Most media companies now allow users to leave comments or even create profiles. Hundreds of thousands of brands, NGOs and individuals have set up their own social networks on Ning.com. The entire web is going social.
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actually think the shift in online communities is going towards niche social sites. Sites like Myspace and Facebook are big and their user base is overwhelmingly diverse. I think the trend now is to move towards communities that are based around shared interests, especially with the proliferation of things like ning. Will the walls between these networks break down? Probably. But I think there's always going to be a desire to commune online with people who share your interests. This is actually good news for marketers because niche communities mean more targeted marketing opportunities any way.
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A network that works well on a mobile platform--knows where I am, who within my network is near me, offers recommendations, etc. + the concept behind FriendFeed which aggregates multiple networks gets us closer to the "air" analogy. It's really not that far off. Just waiting for wi-fi networks and handheld usability to catch up.
