Street Gangs in the Community

There is a good deal of conversation going on regarding communities. Jeremiah Owyang is at the center of much of it, and as much as I admire him, I think he may be focusing on issues that are not at the core of the matter.

Along with Jeremiah, continuing probe, there seems to be an increasing influx of complex graphs and Corpspeak terms. That would indicate that--drawn by the fragrance of money--traditional marketers and branding pros are beginning to queue up at the wide open gates of online communities.

Instead of getting cranky about it, as Jeremiah sometimes accuses me, I am going to write a series of posts to explain my thoughts on communities and the dangers they face. I'm going to tag them all "community conversations" and I invite you to do the same if you choose to join the conversation.

This post will sound the most cynical. I see a great future for commercial efforts in online communities. But I see grave dangers that traditional brand managers and marketers will try to drag in the same crap that they have used with steadily diminished results elsewhere, tactics and perspectives that can muck things up as they are evolving in online communities.

It is a bit of an exaggeration to liken marters and brand managers to street gangs. The violence online is not so brutal. But there are simlarities, and the impact of marketers on virtual communities may be as damaging as a street gang can be to an urban neighborhood . Gangs stake out turf by tagging everything. They show colors as a form of brand extension. Both groups think in military terms. Both often behave viciously to competitors. Both often provide goods and services to members of the community that are detrimental to the common good of the community. Both deplete all sorts of community resources.

It is often futile for one person to try to go against the power, numbers, resources of brands or gangs. It takes a village to stave defeat a damaging incursion.

There is one significant difference between online and real world communities. It is easy for an online community to just up and leave. If unwanted elements muck up your online neighborhood, you and the people you encounter can just go somewhere else.

In my community, a good many of its members was enamored a few short months ago, with Facebook. When spammers, direct marketers and data mners began to invade, many of us left and now hang out on Twitter.  If something goes wrong on Twitter, we will migrate either to an existing site or some smart entrepreneur will build a new neighborhood hangout for us.

Sometimes a whole neighborhood just leaves because something better has come along. For example, Seesmic has become a pillar of my community, and many of us are spending much less time at YouTube.

This defense is important for branders and marketers to note.  For years, we could only use bathrooms and refrigerators to avoid TV ads. In online communities, if you intrude, manipulate, buy or pervade, we can just leave.

That's why I keep saying that the power has shifted from the organization to the community. That's why I keep saying the most generous community members are inevitable the most powerful. For branding and marketing efforts to succeed rather than corrode in a community, they are going to have to undergo a fundamental change in approach.

Comments

[Jim Turner]

I was thinking along these lines as well Shel, but I was seeing it as people hanging out in cliques. Kind of like it was in High School. Looking forward to reading the series.

[Douglas Karr]

Outstanding post, Shel. I agree with you and believe this may be one of the weak links of SaaS applications where global updates are rolled out without recognizing the overall impact (e.g. Facebook Apps and Google Reader Share feature).

Companies need an iterative, controlled release of features as well as the ability to concentrate smaller, more niche solutions. This way users can migrate as they wish and where they wish rather than a company losing them altogether.

Great post.

[Geoff Livingston]

A good deal of Now Is Gone revolves around this concept of communities. For me, it comes down to attraction versus promotion.

If companies engage in communities and try to be a part of, to be of service, to fit in; then it's likely they will attract interest. Participation becomes marketing.

Treating communities like audiences to market towards creates big issues. Street gangs as you say.

[Jonathan Trenn]

Shel

I'll very likely be writing several posts on communities and joining in the conversation. I've long felt that the concept of community is misunderstood and thus misused. Looking forward to this.

[shel israel]

Jonathan,

I'm grateful that you are joining the conversation. Please use "community conversations" as one of your tags, so that others will find both of us.

[Ben Greenberg]

I'm really looking forward to this discussion. I've been having some ongoing discomfort with lack of distinction generally made among organic online communities, nptech and its constituencies, and commercial marketing.

About the metaphor. Are we talking about street gangs or racketeers? To me, racketeers sounds more like an outside influence, trying to prey on the resources and vulnerabilities of a community. Street gangs seems a little more loaded in its connotations.

[Jonathan Trenn]

I'll be sure an add that tag. Looking forward to this.

[Jay Smooth]

A key difference is that gangs thrive by *providing* a sense of community, and family, to young people who can't find those things wherever they live. So where marketers may see thriving communities as their ideal targets, for street gangs it is the opposite, they thrive in places that *lack* community.