The Interaction Economy: Community 2.0

Mack Collier has a great post on his blog today about the distinction between ‘understanding’ customers and true customer engagement. His comments inspired me to think about the topic, and perhaps take it a step further. 

Back in the old days of Web 1.0 we talked about community incessantly. Of course at that time the closest thing to community was you and the other geeks on the discussion forums, though AOL and iVillage and a host of others tried to claim their right to the moniker. The reality of the first iteration of the Internet was that it was more akin to broadcast that conversation, and that the only true interaction was email. Today all that’s changed and new ideas for communities and micro-communities are sprouting up faster than the VC’s can pour dollars into them. So what does all that mean? 

According to Merriam-Webster the word ‘community’ has a number of meanings, but it centers around interaction and common interests. 

1 : a unified body of individuals: as a : STATE, COMMONWEALTH b : the people with common interests living in a particular area; broadly : the area itself <the problems of a large community> c : an interacting population of various kinds of individuals (as species) in a common location d : a group of people with a common characteristic or interest living together within a larger society <a community of retired persons> e : a group linked by a common policy f : a body of persons or nations having a common history or common social, economic, and political interests <the international community> g : a body of persons of common and especially professional interests scattered through a larger society <the academic community>

Wikipedia takes a simpler, somewhat more scientific approach with its definition, but it comes to the same place: interaction and common interests. 

A community is an amalgamation of living things that share an environment. The individual living beings can be plant or animal; any species; any size. What characterizes a community is sharing interaction in many ways. In human communities, intent, belief, resources, preferences, needs and a multitude of other conditions may be present and common, affecting the degree of adhesion within the mixture, but the definitive driver of community is that all individual subjects in the mix have something in common. This is even true in biological communities.

The technologies and behaviors which come together to shape Web 2.0 have in some sense given us the ability to truly have digital communities. Web 2.0 enables segments to form around concepts large and small. These segments are based on behavior and interests rather than demographics and geography. 

What this means for marketers is that we must learn to put our products and brands in the context of these various communities. If as Mack suggests, we join the community and engage in the conversations (and if our products are worth a damn) they’ll sell themselves. Better still the community will help design the products. This is a huge paradigm shift for mass marketers, but if the success of sites like MySpace and YouTube are any indication, it’s one they better get used to. And like Scott Karp says, metrics and monetization will be very different. 

‘What if the best marketing 2.0 strategies for leveraging the social media network are essentially free, and having the audience DOESN’T mean you can “monetize” it.’

Maybe it’s time to get out the dictionary and look for a new definition of success.

 

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Advertising, CGM, Citizen Marketing,, Marketing, MySpace, Social Networking, Web2.0, YouTube.com