Building Online Communities

Some Historical Background
Components of Online Communities
What Kind of Online Community Do You Need?
Metaphors for Different Communities

Some Historical Background

From the early origins of the Internet, dating back some 30 years now, the scientists and engineers involved in its development saw the network they were creating had more potential than merely backing up sensitive data in distributed locations (which is all that was called for in the original design). Almost immediately these developers created a rudimentary email system and began passing messages back and forth. By doing so, they created the basis for an online community, linking written thought among people at scattered locations, at speeds possible to carry out group discussions for the first time in history.

This further grew into Internet newsgroups, which formalized the distribution of one-to-many group messages into a system that eventually came to consist of tens of thousands of newsgroups covering every imaginable topic, from the technical (comp.os.linux) to the socially relevant (soc.adoption) to the absurd (alt.barney.dinosaur.die.die.die). While still immensely popular, Internet newsgroup participation is noticeably decreasing each year now due to other advancements in online community participation. Some reports say that Internet newsgroup participation is down about 15% a year for each of the past three years while other forms of online participation are increasing in popularity.

While email and newsgroups were growing in popularity on the Internet, isolated islands of so-called computer Bulletin Board Services (BBS) began taking advantage of dialup modem capabilities and a diverse assortment of these online clubs and groups and information services began springing up, completely separate from the Internet. Most of these services were quite small, hobbyist systems, but some were quite enormous and consisted of separately developed, private networks such as CompuServe in the U.S. and NIFTY-serve in Japan, serving hundreds of thousands of members.

Clearly people want to be connected and online and exchange information.

When the Internet was finally released into the public domain, so companies and private individuals could freely participate in the exciting new service, yet another paradigm rose up and began to take prominent foothold - the World Wide Web. The Web, with its graphical and, perhaps most importantly, hyperlinked user interface has become so dominant that many people consider the Web to be the Internet, rather than just one of many services available on the Internet. For some more background on this, see the section on Internet Concepts.

All the major online services began a move towards integration with the Internet. And isolated BBS services either moved towards having an Internet connection or, failing that, died away altogether. It is fair to say that direct-dial BBS systems, which were so popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s have, for the most part, either joined the Internet somehow or disappeared.

What has happened over the last five years or so, in particular, has been a strong move to integrate these online systems with the world wide web. While a web browser interface, in many respects, is not ideal for for an interactive community, it enjoys the overwhelming advantage of being immediately accessible to the now hundreds of millions of people who are connected to the Internet. Therefore, despite some drawbacks of using web browsers for two-way communication, developers are providing unique solutions to make web-based online communities a popular and attractive way for people to meet and exchange ideas and information.

In a recent new challenge, mobile computing using tiny cellular phone devices has become enormously popular. In some areas, Internet user participation via small portable device has reached 50% of the market. It is anticipated that Internet access via these tiny, wireless terminals will outnumber participants who access via "traditional" computers in a very short time. This also remains a challenge for online community builders.

Components of an Online Community

Typically an online community will have some or all of the following services which provide the basic technical foundation for the community.

Other services are quickly being developed and added to these traditional online community services, including online auctions, online private and group calendars, polls and questionairres with real-time results reporting, the ability for members to create and update private web pages, the ability to customize a private workspace thus creating a private portal to the Internet, online shops and as many other services imaginative people can think up. When creating an online community, you want to make sure that your system has the ability to be sufficiently customizeable and programmable so that new features can be added as desired.

What kind of community do you need?

You may be feeling a little uncertain at this point. You might feel the concepts are interesting, but a bit vague. You might be thinking such things as, "Well, so what are we talking about here? Chat rooms? Leaving memos for others to read? How does this fit into my day-to-day company life? What does this have to do with my school? Is this something that teachers, students, parents and staff can all use somehow? How will this help my customers? Is this useful inside my company? How can our community group use this to help us with our activities?"

In other words, "Where do I go from here?"

Fortunately, you are reading a guide book that takes you step by step through the process of setting up your own online community - from the basic steps of setting up a hierarchy of folders and discussions, all the way through customizing your site.

But still, it is a good idea to have in mind some useful things you want to accomplish with your online community - the purpose of your community.

Well, by now you are getting the idea. You might already be thinking about what kind of an online community you would like to build and what the appearance of it will be like. You probably have ideas about how members should feel when they join and participate.

Some communities only need discussion areas. Some depend on lots of people always being online at the same time and might be chat based. Some require both. Some might need email, and some other might not. The important thing is to think about your group or organization and come up with ways to make your online community inviting, interesting, useful and easy to understand and use for your members.

Metaphors for Different Communities

One thing that helps promote a feeling of community, and makes things easier-to-understand is a suitable online community metaphor.

For example, if you visit WebX Harbor, our developers' community site, we have chosen the metaphor of a friendly, small town. When you enter WebX Harbor, at the top-most level, you will see the following places to visit:

The "place metaphor" we use there is supposed to reinforce the feeling of actually "being somewhere." At the same time, it provides an organizational scheme that, at its top-most level, is supposed to make it easier to get a feeling for where to click next.

The "New in Town" area doesn't fit into the "place" metaphor exactly (because the link itself is not a place), but is so clear that we made an exception for this. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, as they say.

The WebX Harbor City Hall contains discussions about WebX Harbor itself - site notices, discussions about how WebX Harbor is run, and so on.

The WebX Harbor Community Center contains mostly non-technical discussions, a free-talk area, a discussion of social issues involving online communities, a place for members to discuss their sites, and so on.

And the WebX Harbor Insitute of Technology obviously contains the bulk of the technical discussions.

Even though a great deal of graphics are not used in creating this metaphor, the human mind takes over very quickly (and aren't books always better than the movies?) and after a while you really feel as though you are wandering around the town of WebX Harbor, dropping by the Coffee Shop to talk with friends, visiting the College to seek some technical help, and so on.

A suitable metaphor can provide a unifying, special feel for your online community and draw people back over and over again.

Sometimes the metaphor is perfectly obvious. For example, if you are part of a school, the most obvious metaphor is a virtual mirror of your school - a hierarchy of academic departments, student organizations and offices for the different staff. A clickeable map that follows the layout of your school can add to the illusion.

If you are running an hobby special-interest group, then you will want to think of a metaphor that fits in with your group's special interest. For example, a drama club might want a Stage to discuss public performances, a Dressing Room, for small discussions and rumor-mongering, a nearby Bar to go to read newspaper reviews, and so on. Use your imagination and you will come up with a distinctive metaphor to make your place special.

Now, let's get started!