One of the most elusive concepts I face when researching community building strategies is the idea of the relationship many-to-many and the nature of communities.
In short, if web 2.0 was the amazing door to communications one-to-many (the rise of followers and fans and netizens), what we are experiencing with the communication many-to-many in digital communities is something of another breed.
What does it mean to be many-to-many? How do many-to-many work? Why should anyone care about those ‘many’ talking and creating for other ‘manys’?
————————[manies? manes? what’s the plural for many??]—————————
For me, those weren’t simple nuances of community-building initiatives, but the very core for understanding these efforts.
Yes, I know there is a ton already written about these relationships between nodes. Maybe, one of my favourites go-to essays is the one crafted by NƒX about Network Effects: “The Network Effect Bible”.
But I wasn’t looking for what is the structure of the network (many-to-many) nor its intricacies.
I cared about why the hell these structures work on a human level: why do I value being a node in a network? Why do I care about some communities and not so much about others, despite the similar graphs, same topics, related points of view?
I. Persons are fluid nodes
It is interesting, is it not? We can be interested in similar topics, belong to very close graphs (be in the same cluster), and yet not connect at the same level to the same communities.
Ben Thompson wrote an insightful essay about this at Stratchery some months ago: “Social Networking 2.0”. There he says a ton of important points for discussion, but there are two critical items for the sake of my research:
“social interaction in any medium is always a balance between self-expression and the accommodation of others”
“…it is the interest graph where Twitter has always had the potential to differentiate itself…”
The first point refers to identity; the second one to interests and interest-based connections.
“I am who I am” mean a lot of things online. My identity is not a solid rock, it is a fluid project. (For me, that’s one of the beauties of the internet, it helps reflect our always-pro-jected nature).
Yes: I am a founder and impact enthusiast, but I am as well the Minecraft player and the amateur composer. I am passionate about building communities, but also about the delights of solitary contemplation. I could be framed as a blink, but also I am crazy about Mahler, Gabriela Ortiz, and many contemporary composers. I am an entrepreneur, but also a father of 5 (two deceased, two with severe disabilities, one healthy) and a husband. “I am all those who I am”.
The second point addresses a critical issue: interests create clusters. My Minecraft community is not the same as my classical composers’ community. My family does not overlap with my fellow founders… but this is not a rule, I believe.
Ben drew something to explain this:
Inspired by this, we drew our own “Ben Diagram” [pun intended] for Wizdem:
Ours is not as simple, but I think it conveys a tad more information: our identity connects to different groups that can be themselves connected to other groups… just as our identity is fluid, our clusters can be (should be?) fluid as well.
As a matter of fact, my Minecraft community have a small overlap with my fellow founders’ cluster, for example.
II. Community is Personal
So… all this being said, what all this verbiage has to do with the main questions of my essay?
I think the answer lies beneath the interest-identity quid. Communities rely on the identity of their members to create value and rely on the interests of their members to create bonding.
The identity and interests of the members mold the community: the community is in the mode of its people. If a community is toxic is because its members are toxic (they behave toxically), if a community is creative is because its members are creatives, if a community is inclusive is because its members include.
Being said that, if the community is and works and creates value based on its people, we can assert that communities are personal. And being that, there are three very important features of any community:
Communities do not emerge, they are created (nurtured) by persons.
Communities are not the product of a well-connected cluster of individuals with similar interest. And, as I stated in my past essay, communities are not networks per se.
One mistake I’ve seen happening in many, many places and one we fell into in Wizdem is the belief that communities can emerge as the result of the interactions of close-related individuals.
In one of our first iterations, we assumed that if we connected these kinds of people they should grow into a community. What a mistake! We learnt that in order to be a community there should be at least one community builder. A freaking builder! Someone responsible to nurture the development of identities around common interests. (Of course: this someone can be several people as we see in Reddit).
Communities are for a specific person, not for “a mass” nor “a group” nor “everyone”.
In every successful community value is focused, not broad.
What I mean is that each member personally receives the value of belonging to the community, for example: “you” can play Minecraft with Dream if “you” have the winner ticket… yes everyone could win the ticket, but you- very specifically- could be the lucky one. Another example, I am a “swifty” because I receive directly some value (I enjoy her music, I can comment on a thread and boost her work/protect her reputation/etcetera). We are a community only because every I receives value.
Communities are a continuum: they are greater than their members and relationships alone
What I mean by this is that you can’t separate the community on its parts. Just as a human is not the sum of flesh and bones and any other part physical or spiritual you may identify, the communities are more than nodes and links and identities and interests in relation.
Communities are a new whole thing, greater and more valuable than the separated sum of its parts.
This is very important because to build and develop a community we shouldn’t focus on its parts alone, but on the system as a whole. Being a community builder is not to be a relationship manager, nor a PR master, it’s something new (something more).
Being a community builder is something personal.
III. Closing thoughts
I know that there’s much yet to say about the value and community development. I think a good first approach should visit the works by Alex Osterwalder and research around motivations and human behaviour
Communities may be easily fertile fields for biases and vices precisely because of their personal nature.
Communities may create natural barriers for newcomers: they are, by definition, not-members, not-one-of-us. This creates two things I believe:
A growing proof of value for every new member (it’s easier/cheaper to join a nascent community than a strong one)
A growing risk of “echo-chambering” (sorry for the awful term) and elitism that could kill the community in the end
Oh… and one last but not least thing. The title and inspiration for this text came from Zecca Lehn