Online community death
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Transcript of Online community death
Online community ”deaths” and planning exits
Miia Kosonen Presentation at Community Manager Master Class II
1st Jun 2015
Moments of community death
Inception Establishment Maturity Mitosis
Preece, 2000, Kosonen, 2003, Iriberri & Leroy, 2009, Gaspers, 2012, Millington, 2013
No commitment, lost sense of community, no participation, unpurposeful contributions (Anne-Sophie Gaspers)
Community is asleep, platforms have changed, the bugdet runs out, the hosting organization no longer exists (Jenn Pedde)
Why online communities die
1) The core group excludes new members with inappropriate behaviour
2) Self-satisfaction: the community overestimates its own value *
3) Development and progress in the hosting organization may turn out as severe conflicts in the community
4) Community managers and admins tend to be most committed to the community, and at times they just need to take a break.
Martin Belam, 2015
* Example: less than 0,004 % of visitors produce 20 % of comments on Guardian’s site
Why online communities die
External factors – e.g. platform no longer supported
Organizational factors – e.g. no more host organization
Social factors – e.g. bullying, excessive trolling
Lack of resources – no one to cultivate conversations
Members are bored or their needs already met
Not capable of renewing itself – exclusive core group
Reasons for community crises
Types of community deaths
Naturally Forced
”For a community to die, it must have been alive first.” This is not so common as one might think!
Tight online communities are built around strongly emotional aspect, not just any social-media content or nice-to-know information.
• Most common way: typical for loose online networks and temporary communities e.g. around events or projects
• The community does not actually die – it rather fades away.
• Social factors, e.g. unresolved conflict
• Organizational factors, e.g. budget runs out, host organization no longer exists
• Technology, e.g. platform out of use, no longer supported
Do not be afraid of community deaths and crises. They are ways to learn and renew. For members, those moments are often the most memorable ones!
As a Community Manager, share your experiences openly and tell what you have learnt from the crisis.
People spend less time within the community No active participation or only a few active
participants * Less interaction: ego-posting and monologues
* Network structure determines community viability, not e.g. growth rate (Kairam et al. 2012). The most valuable medicine against community deaths is a strong main clique where a broad base of members all know each other but also have connections outside the core group. Use social network analysis and consider exit when there is a critical change!
When to start implementing exit plans?
Select timing Develop crisis plan with a schedule Create communication plan: how to keep the
community up-to-date Evaluate whether you need an optional platform
and organize information transfer Create substitute profile for contacting people Organize ”farewell session” to bring members
together Copy and store the necessary information
Exit plan
As a Community Manager, you need courage to decide when it is time to exit. Also do not hesitate to say if you are tired of hosting!
Preece, Jenny. 2000. Online communities: designing usability, supporting sociability. Chichester: John Wiley.
Kosonen, Miia. 2003. Virtuaaliyhteisön kehittämisprosessi [Virtual community’s development process]. Master’s thesis, Lappeenranta University of Technology.
Iriberri, Alicia & Leroy, Gondy. 2009. A life-cycle perspective on online community success. ACM Computing Surveys, 41(2).
Kairam, S., Wang, D.J. & Leskovec, J. 2012. The life and death of online groups: predicting group growth and longevity. WSDM’12, February 8-12, Seattle, Washington, USA.
Gaspers, Anne-Sophie, 2012. How online communities work: how do online communities evolve? Community life-cycle model. http://thinkonlinecommunity.com
Millington, Richard. http://FeverBee.com
Pedde, Jenn. http://communitymanager.com
References
Thanks for your attention!
So you need CM? That’s a deal!
Contact me:
Miia Kosonen PhD, Knowledge Management, Trainer, ResearcherRuokolahti, Finland
https://twitter.com/MiiaKosonen http://slideshare.net/miiakhttps://fi.linkedin.com/in/miiakosonen koomikoo ( at ) gmail.comBlog mainly in Finnish: http://tohtorilletoita.wordpress.com