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I wish i had found this earlier .

But hey, I got mad at Linked In’s Reid Hoffman sending me a spammy email congratulating himself on recruiting millions of members (it had no unsubscribe link) which was crass as the founder of a connecting together networking organisation who set out to try to avoid spammy approaches by non-trusted third parties.

Great subject for the ThinkLAB’s. I think we have our next discussion topic! :)

I may come from a different perspective but the concept is still the same.

I didn’t say statement of purpose is meaningless, I said some of the points in your post is meaningless should it be analysed in-depth, such as “…an audience is gathered to listen; a community gathers to contribute.” In 21st century everyone must listen in order to live peacefully and happily together; your post and argument around togetherness of communities failed to stand out, unfortunately. This is why I said what I said initially.

I agree when you say in 21st century arguments seem to have a lack of definitions. May I add something to this, and this is because of excessive amount of “wall” created by non-regulatory bodies. Individuals and businesses say ‘my turf my rules’. This is no longer true as we got to consider the consequences of our actions, so creating walls is not the job of anyone other than the regulators – for example the latest example is the cookies law and behavioural targeting. This wall was created very tall in fact; but now is shaking due to the concerns which have been ignored for decades!

No surprise that you can’t recall any long lasting communities, isn’t it because the members tried to be too creative and change things to benefit their own desires as opposed to the “community”? The reason why you and many other people see communities as “for a period of time” is that sense of purpose is lacking in building the community or undermining the initial values set by community founders/members in the past; hence members leaving – other than those who pass away of course. There are still many charities operating in the world for decades simply because they stick to their values and update it as the time goes by and pass it on to the right people who genuinely care about the community and not of own very personal interests.

With regards to the journey comment, everything has a reason and a purpose, without these two we just waste our time and effort; unless one literally means that and it is no one’s business. When we talk about community, everything must be around the purpose of the community, to improve and enhance what is pursued by the members of the community. And that is the destination, meeting goals and giving life to the vision of the community. Then of course the community have to continue its journey in order to remain in minds and hearts of its members. This then leads to sustainability and should it be cared about exist for ever; opposite to your opinion of communities are for a period of time”.

Communities are always for a period of time. I can’t think of one from two millennia ago that is still with us – even the Christian Church has become multiple communities, and probably bears little resemblance to the communities described in early church history. Things always move on and change. Members move on (or pass away), and that brings about change. Communities are rarely static.

On the comment with regard to journey, I’d like you to expand on that assertion. Given that there is a huge body of research and thinking from the marketing and service design worlds about user journeys, I’d like to hear why such thinking might deem someone to be “quite immature”?

I think you’ve missed the point about walls and image – It turns out that McMillan and Chavis touched on these in a 1986 Paper – Sense of Community: A Definition and Theory, which is worth a read.

Further down you nicely discussed the purpose of community; I partly agree with you. The part I disagree, is that “…communities are for a period in time.” If the purpose of the community is powerful enough, and in fact genuine, the community will last for the lifetime of its members and possibly a reason for future members! – A community with an expiry date is not a community, it is just a gathering similar to tweet-ups we all attend sometimes.

You also argued that the process of joining and leaving a community is a journey; although there are some truth in it, but it is quite immature to perceive communities as such; because a journey without A destination is pointless, and in this case the destination is purpose that make everything meaningful and long-lasting. Without the meaningful purpose what’s the point of forming a community?

To my mind “If you have an office without walls or desks, how would you know that you are in it?” is a very poor analogy and “The higher the walls, the stronger the community.” is not realistic in the modern days we live in, unless you would like us to imagine what life liked in stone age. I however can understand the “wall” analogy in the context of rules and regulations, like what ASA and OfCom introduced as a result of ignoring public, whom you referred as “audience.” Therefore listening is symmetrical.

You mentioned about how having certain phones would classify one to a particular community and I give you that. But isn’t it more assumptions and “image” fabricated for commercial reasons which in fact undermines values and culture which lead to bigger issues??

I really enjoyed reading the last few paragraphs when you started talking about real stuff such as consistency and how a community can grow. But your closing sentence again became a bit debatable! “Communities and members aren’t forever.” I agree member of a community aren’t for ever due to various reasons and noise but community can be, or at least depends what you mean by “for ever”! But “there is a time, a place and a purpose” is very true and it must be talked about more often to make sure it happens in every day communications.

@Ann Hawkins don’t you think “People who don’t ‘get it’ don’t participate and stay in ‘audience’ mode” is rather an offensive statement?

Thank you for your post; I quite agree.

Aside from my growing horror at how many of these things have been pouring into my email, the main issue I’ve been left with is wondering what the heck these companies are all doing to make sure this doesn’t happen again.

And how do they *know* that the only information gathered was our email addresses and names, and not more detailed financial and/or medical information?

The added worry, of course, is what the breachers are in fact going to do with my information.

The recommendation to just not open attachments from whomever doesn’t cut it as the sole solution offered. Those of us with even half a clue already know not to do that.

Wendy Hoechstetter, CAPS
Hoechstetter Interiors

What an absolutely brilliant post.

Bernie Mitchell linked me to this and I’m so glad he did. Consumer behaviour and how that affect user decisions (particularly in a social context) is an area I’m really interested in, so this post is something I really appreciated and enjoyed. I’d have loved to have been in on this roundtable talk.

I’ve always had this same idea about the delineation of audience and community, and in fact wrote about it on my Comms Thoughts blog a while ago: http://bit.ly/goWXDp.

I may revisit this on my next Consumer Behaviour post for the #techMAP blog.

Great post, and look forward to reading a lot more.

I’ve been writing a lot on my blog about this recently. Building a business community is about creating a group of informed people around our brands, rather than attempting to communicate with a mass of invisible people.

A business community is a group of people that congregate either online, offline or both around a common affinity and purpose; a brand. They will often share similar values, want to engage and participate in development and will, almost certainly want to share information and build things together. They are cohesive; communities do not extract value, they contribute value.

Nice one Benjamin…great food for thought! :)