“It’s not a community if everyone doesn’t feel free to participate as an equal. As soon as you make this someone’s job you devalue the contributions of everyone.”

I think the heart of Kevin’s post is in the exact right place. However, I think it’s entirely incorrect to say that making community work someone’s job devalues it; it doesn’t change the value at all, it just focuses it in a more useful way for the company.  While Kevin’s “conversational” aspiration is fantastic (and I think can be part of the community job), I think it’s idealistic to think that almost any company can have their best possible relationship with their community without someone focusing on it, at least part time.

For the record, a few things: I work at Flock as a Community Ambassador.  I am certainly biased.  I will refer to the position that we’re discussing here as Community Ambassador, but it has also been called Community Advocate/Evangelist/Manager (I’ll state my take on the “Manager” title later in the post).  I think Kevin’s heart is in the right place, but I truly believe in this position.

Here’s why this job is important:

Community is important
I don’t think Kevin denies this, but I think it’s important to state: your community is what keeps your company afloat, and (hopefully) the goal of your company was and is to make the lives of your community better in some way.  If you don’t listen to your community, you are either going to fail or you will have to get very lucky.  Methods may differ, but for the most part you’ll find that successful companies listen to their community.

Companies are not inclined to state what they’re doing
Companies like to have big unveilings, to surprise their audience, and (frankly) to keep their ideas secret so they don’t get ripped off. Communication between releases is not in their nature. However, it is part of human nature to want to know what’s going on and part of human nature to talk about things they’re excited about.  I know people who are just short of physically upset when they don’t know what Flock is up to, even if it’s as simple as “planning our holiday party”. I mentioned our new Twitter account on our blog last week and within 5 hours more than 70 people had started following it. People want to know what’s going on, and employees want to talk about it…but companies are built by default not to do this. Unless you’re blessed with an executive staff that is open-minded AND takes the initiative to make the time to write and/or approve posts, this isn’t going to happen on it’s own.

Customer feedback is, by it’s nature, raw and biased
Of course my feedback about a product I use is going to be biased…I bought it for me, and it should work for me! But how is Apple supposed to treat my feedback that the new iPod Nano doesn’t fit in the mini-pocket of my jeans? Alongside (probably) millions of other pieces of feedback, where does this factor in? Again, time becomes an issue: does Jobs have time to read and absorb all this feedback and do his regular work?  Unlikely. While I’m fully in support of employees at all levels of a company reading community feedback (which we do at Flock, from QA to CEO), it’s unrealistic to count on this. Having a Community Ambassador to absorb, categorize, and interpret this feedback is key. Nobody at Flock would have guessed that Picasa was important to our community, but through gradual collection of votes (on our site, blogs, and via direct feedback) it became clear that Picasa integration is much more important to our existing community than any other service.

That said, I totally agree that the Community Ambassador should not be the single point of failure. Going back to the point about feedback being biased….even if 20 angry people like me write to Apple asking for iPod Nanos that fit our mini-pockets, that’s ignoring the millions of people who don’t care or even like the size. Both the Community Ambassador and the company they work for must take this all into consideration. User testing should be done, and ideas from directly within the company shouldn’t take backseat to community feedback…they should ride together, as equally viable ideas.

People like to get pumped
I understand where the inclination to stay “hands off” of evangelism comes from. Nothing is grosser than an employee (especially an executive!) putting on a big fake smile and blabbing on about how great the latest product is. However, I think that if you accomplish what Jeremiah suggests in his post on the topic, you are part of your community as much as your company. Once you are a legitimate part of your community, you are taken seriously by them (though you can easily compromise this by not being honest). If you truly are excited about your product (which you should be, or you should get a new job), you should express this to the people whom you know are excited about your product. If I care about, say, the band Queens of the Stone Age, I might join their Street Team or mailing list. If their Community Ambassador then contacts me telling me about how awesome the new album is (especially if it’s “insider” news), I’m going to be stoked! If he tells me they’re going on a new tour that is going to be wild and crazy and gives me the link to buy tickets, I’m not going to feel advertised to…I’m going to click that link and look at the tour dates! It’s all about being honest and genuine and only evangelizing to those who opt-in in some way.

Everybody should be part-time Community Ambassador
I agree with Kevin…the position of Community Ambassador absolutely does not absolve anyone in the organization of interaction with the community. As we do at Flock, the executives should blog, read feedback, respond to customers, and meet the community. This is essential to your organization, and the position of Community Ambassador should not affect this one way or another.

In the end, I understand where these anti-Community Ambassador posts come from. The position is often called Community Manager, which is a gross mischaracterization and invokes scary undertones. Many people claim to be interested in “community”, but describe it as a sort of asset (“Oh yeah, we got one of them community things. I hear they’re good for business.”) And the intrusive, look-we’re-cool-too style of advertising is so pervasive that it makes me physically angry when I hear a 40-year-old on the radio talk about how “sweet” and “stylin’” you’ll be with some “urban groove” on your “sweet mp3 player”. That is not community work…that is lame, dishonest advertising. The Community Ambassador is not an advertiser…he/she is simultaneously a member of the company and the community, and the guide for communication between them. He/she is not the be-all, end-all. He/she is not the single point of communication. He/she is not always right. He/she is just helping the flow of communication between those who make and those who use a product.  And if that’s not an important role, I don’t know what is.

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Tags: CommunityAmbassador, community, “Community Manager, Flock, “Jeremiah Owyang, “Kevin Gamble, customer, “customer feedback

A session on Microformats. If you look closely you can see folks from Songbird and Flock.

The floor at IDEO.

The obligatory crowd shot.

The bathroom signs at Socialtext.

The remains of lunch, sponsored by Google.

The wall of schedules.

Find the rest of the photos I took at my Flickr. If you see yourself or someone you know in these shots, add a note, tag or comment!

Blogged with Flock

More info on BarCampBlock at http://barcamp.org/BarCampBlock

Seeya there!

Blogged with Flock

Tags: BarCampBlock, Evan Hamilton, Flock

Seriously though, I’m actually excited to see this screen. It means we’re reaching the final bits of development for Flock 0.8. Now that I’ve resolved the memory issue on my machine (it was due to Norton Antivirus 2003 and we’re looking into how to fix it for other people) I’m really getting to use the product constantly. It’s looking great: Pretty, simple, powerful! Those who are still using Flock 0.7 are going to love 0.8.

Meanwhile, the new Flock website progresses…it’s starting to come together and look pretty nice. We also have lots of neat research projects set up that are letting us get some great data on what people want to with Flock now and in the future. I never thought I’d be so excited about data, but I think it will really make the Flock experience now and in the future really amazing.

I’m bummed that I haven’t been able to blog more, but once the rush to get everything in my court done for 0.8 is over, I’ll really be able to sit back and talk to the Flock community, write a bit, and explore all the new things on the social web.

Keep on Flockin’!

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Tags: Flock, Flock Web Browser, flock, “Norton Antivirus, blog, “Spalsh Screen, 0.8

(cue Law and Order orchestra hit)

Community Next was organized by the (in?)famous and high-energy Noah Kagen.  Sadly, I didn’t get to chat with him for very long, but he graciously cleared up some registration problems (not their fault) quickly for me, so he gets points for that.

Squeezed into Stanford’s Annenberg Auditorium, Community Next was definitely underestimated.  As I heard it, the waiting list was 3x the size of attendees…not a bad feat for a first-time conference.

After some cute “social networking” activities that didn’t quite catch on (finding the attendee with your “weird fact”, signing “Hello, my name is” shirts) and a generous collection of Noah’s Bagels, the varied group of Web2.0ers shuffled their way into the auditorium.  This was defintely the right crowd for this conference: strangers meeting left and right, reluctant to move from the idea-riffing of the hallways into the confines of the presentations.

After the somewhat appropriate notes of The Who’s Baba O’Reilly (“The exodus is here/The happy ones are near/Let’s get together/Before we get much older”) faded out, Noah briefly introduced the conference (saying something about cheating girlfriends and the Amish) before giving the floor to Josh Spear and Aaron Dignan.  As would become the standard, the two presenters ran down a quick list of their top rules and were shuffled offstage before they could go into much depth.

Highlights (paraphrased):
“Be authentic…your social networking site should be built by lovers.”
“Let community create you (integrate, don’t infiltrate)”.

Tara Hunt ran into the same time constraints, making it very obvious that this conference should have been two days long (and probably will be next year, if this year’s success was any indication).

Next was a very interesting panel discussing “creating, analyzing, and marketing your own online community” featuring Hiten Shah of Crazyegg, Matt Roche of Offermatica, Mike Jones of Userplane (who looks like Jason Statham in The Transporter but is actually less terrifying), and Joe Hurd of VideoEgg.  A much more business-minded group than the semantic openers, the highlights of this discussion included the suggestion to build one user at a time…literally.  MySpace and Friendster, one of the panelists pointed out, started adding their friends one by one.  “I would see Tom on IM at 3 in the morning, plugging away”.

“Ask your users about advertising” was another theme (reiterated by Heather Luttrell of 3jam and indieclick later in the conference); they know you have to pay the bills, and they’d rather have input than have it sprung on them.

And one of the best quotes of the conference came from Matt Roche: “MySpace is a massive popularity contest…like digital binders covered in stickers.”  So true.  What does that make Facebook?  A pretentious art student’s portfolio?

I won’t go much into his presentation, but Nikhyl Singhal of SayNow has an amazing product that links fans and artists by voice…they sent my band, Monsters are not Myths an invitation a few weeks back, and now I’m fully convinced.

Lunch was delicious Hawaiian BBQ and a significant amount of social networking.  I felt really dumb not having any business cards yet (that’s definitely on the list for today).  Oh well.

Things got much more exciting after lunch, as we were treated to the best presentation of the conference: “The patent-pending skinnyCorp method for creating online awesomeness and other cool stuff” by Jeffrey Kalmikoff and Jake Nickell of Threadless.  These guys could go into stand up comedy if they weren’t making tons of money from Threadless, Naked & Angry, and Extra Tasty!  But they weren’t just funny: they were right.

Jeffrey and Jake hammered in this major point:

“Your Project Is Not Good Enough”

No, they weren’t trying to get us down.  Their point was that you are never “finished” with your product unless you’re shutting it down.  They’ve started a number of projects because they wanted to use them (iparklikeanidiot.com being my favorite), and every time one of these projects became stupid/useless/uninteresting,  they shut them down.  The ones they didn’t shut down they continue to expand and enhance (and they’re making a lot of money from it).

Their four commandments (“We figured out that because we have four commandments, it means each of our commandments are 2 1/2 times more powerful than each of Moses’ Commandments”):

1. Allow your content to be created by it’s community
2. Put your project in the hands of it’s community (actually, not just pretending)
3. Let your community grow ITSELF
4. Reward the community that makes your project possible

I would have loved to chat with these two later, but they were swamped with questions.  Truly the best work of the conference.

We were swung through a couple short presentations next: Heather Luttrel spoke about monetizing with ads (and not pissing off your audience), Fred Stutzman of claimid gave us some figures about social networks, and Jake Mckee emphasized how important even a small but evangelical percentage of your community can be.

Ted Rheingold, John Vars, and Steven Reading of Dogster (and Catster) went through a (slightly too long) discussion of how they started the two sites.  It was very impressive, offering a few relevant points and one slightly painful statement: “I’m so sick of everything being beta”.  Flock 1.0 is coming soon, I promise!

Lastly, we had an interesting panel moderated by the funny and incredibly intelligent Guy Kawasaki.  Akash Garg of hi5, Sean Suhl of Suicide Girls, James Hong of HotOrNot, Markus Frind of PlentyOfFish, Max Levchin of Slide and Drew Curtis of Fark meditated on how they reached 5 million members.  The answer was mainly: right place, right time, a concept they would enjoy, and a lot of experimentation.  Also, the best quotes of the conference:

Curtis: “Basically, we’re a complete waste of time.”

Suhl: “I was working for a big sportswear manufacturer in Portland…”
Guy: “And you decided to ‘Just Do It’?”

Hong: “How HotOrNot started…I was drinking.”

Curtis: “Actually, I could have flipped a coin…and had a Curry Recipe Database instead of Fark.”

My conclusion: Community Next, while a bit rough around the edges, is definitely Hot.  It’s great to see so much emphasis placed on community and so many minds thinking about it.  Here’s hoping we see an expanded conference next year with more presenter time, more space, more organization, and more Hawaiian BBQ.

-Evan

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Tags: community, communitynext2007, CommunityNext, Evan Hamilton, Erwan Loisant, Tara Hunt, Baba O’Reilly, The Who, Noah Kagen, Aaron Dignan, Josh Spear, Crazyegg, Hiten Shah, Offermatica, Matt Roche, Userplane, Mike Jones, VideoEgg, Joe Hurd, Guy Kawasaki, Akash Garg, hi5, Sean Suhl, Suicidegirls, James Hong, hotornot, Markus Friend, plentyofish, Max Levchin, slide, Drew Curtis, fark, Heather Luttrel, Fred Stutzman, Jake Mckee

“Community has turned into a garish buzzword, leading hungry marketers by the snoot down a new path of public/commercial boundaries being crossed.”

Will Pate and I were just talking about Community as a bad word today. We’re trying to choose the name for the next version of the Flock.com page currently called “Participate”. I’m against using participate (it brings to mind memories of “Participation is 20% of your grade”), but I’m nervous about using the word community. Do we have a community? Yes…a small but dedicated community. Why do we put so much emphasis on it? Mainly because it helps to drive quality in the product and support, and because it makes Flock that much more fun to use and talk about. But is part of it because we (and/or the higher ups) think community sells?

This section of Tara’s article defined what we need to be doing:

“We have to be willing to lose ourselves to the community. We need to become community advocates. We need to reverse the line of communication and bring word back to our bosses and our clients that their products are hurting the environment, exploiting labor, not acceptable to be tested on animals, falling apart, causing addiction, causing health issues, hurting our children, driving us further apart, etc.”

This is totally true. This is my goal. This is Will Pate’s goal. It’s probably unacheivable in any company without getting fired, but we’ll try.

Don’t get me wrong: I think Flock is headed in a great direction. I’m not concerned about Flock specifically so much as the general direction of Community/Company interaction. The most wonderful thing is occuring right now: companies are finally noticing their customers and even interacting with them via blogs and the like. We just have to be careful that this communication stays open and honest and does not become yet another vehicle for overzealous and heavy-handed marketing (see all the MySpace spam accounts as an example).

Here’s hoping we can win the fight, at least at our small level. Keep telling me what you like about Flock. Keep telling me what you dislike about Flock. Keep telling me what’s important in your world and what should be important in mine. Keep telling me about cool stuff you found on Digg (though I probably already saw it because I’m addicted to Digg). If we listen to each other, we can do more than create a great product: we can create an awesome community that is more than a marketing ploy. And wouldn’t that be fun?

-Evan
evan at flock dot com

Blogged with Flock

Tags: Community”Community Marketing” Flock “Evan Hamilton” “Will Pate” “Tara Hunt” www.futureofcommunities.com Marketing “Community Ambassador