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Temptation from our sponsors...
Temptation from our sponsors...
So I’m at le web in paris this week. The plan was to blog regularly about each of the topics throughout the two days of buzz words, business plans and stating the obvious. At least thats what day one has consisted of so far. Me and Ami started counting how many times we heard the word “community” and “user generated content”, it reach 60 communities and more user generated contents from just two topics. Still its a nice event, some good people are here and I’m enjoying my first big geek event.
Lukasz (Spreadshirt founder) was on a panel entitled ecommerce 2.0 which was okay. the panel “moderators” have a habit of talking more than the guests and the true point of each topic has not really been nailed. So alot of time is wasted pimping the panelists companies rather than engaging in discussion. I guess its inevitable that the commerical side of the business would need to rear its head, after all its what is funding it all. With 4 tv channels and over 160 press representives the pr opportunities are huge and being fully exploited. A community is not a solution, a business model, or the magic bullet of the future of the internet. They dont exist on their own, gated communities for the communities sake it will be okay everyone we own a community, there’s people on it and stuff and they talk and have hundred of “friends” they have never met. The question is do they actually care about that community, what are they contributing to it, and how much are you letting them shape it and your business.
They are driven by an interest, a specific unifying topic that unites the community. Its businesses and the platform providers job to make those participants more than just passing eyeballs. For myspace its the showcase of personal taste and the desire to date and meet the sex. A community of 5m people who all automatically got a Live account with MSN isnt a community, its a potential userbase of 5m. Within that there might be a community of 50k who actually care about the product enough to evangelise it, submit bugs and actively help to improve it. I guess for me the classic mantra of “size doesnt matter” is just as relevant to communities as anything else (unless you want to sell them to a tier 1 internet company of course). Im sure those in online marketing would dis-agree.
