Community Guy – Jake McKee

New site launched: 90-9-1.com

If you play in the community space at all, you’ve almost certainly heard or been part of a discussion revolving around the 90-9-1 Principle. Basically this principle speaks to the idea that there is a “Participation Inequality” in social environments, where some people participate more than others.

After yet another client conversations where I was explaining this idea to them over the phone, I thought “It sure would be nice to have this information all in one place”. After a quick trip to google, I didn’t find anything easy and succinct. After a quick trip to GoDaddy, I realized 90-9-1.com was still available.

Today I’m pleased to announce that I’ve launched www.90-9-1.com , a simplistic site that can be used to explain or share the idea behind the principle.

If you would like to see additional content added to the site, please email me your suggestions!

Please spread the word! This resource is only useful if it gets used!

Guest Post: A Pattern Language for Online (and Offline) Communities

Today I’m happy to bring you another great guest post. This time we have Chris Carfi from SocialCustomer.com weighing in.
Thanks, Chris!

According to Wikipedia, a Pattern Language can be described as follows:

“A pattern language is a structured method of describing good design practices within a field of expertise. It is characterized by:

1. Noticing and naming the common problems in a field of interest,
2. Describing the key characteristics of effective solutions for meeting some stated goal,
3. Helping the designer move from problem to problem in a logical way, and
4. Allowing for many different paths through the design process.”

More on Pattern Languages here

Why might design patterns be useful in thinking about online (and offline) communities?

There are many different technical and social aspects to community development. As such, it’s about time to broadly start to document and share useful patterns (and anti-patterns!) that are found in communities.

What patterns are relevant in determining which features an online community should contain?

A great presentation on design patterns in communities can be found in the presentation attached below. NOTE: This presentation focuses primarily on the technical patterns (ie. “features”) that can be used in creating online communities. It does NOT address the more important issue of the interpersonal and social patterns that emerge.

Fanboy is the new black. Vader black.

First fanboy was made an official member word of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary. Now, there’s a studio film by the same name. I laughed way too much when I watched this. Not surprising, considering my own fanboy credentials…

The interesting thing about this movie is not the level of nerd that I am. What stands out is that nerd culture is truly starting to drive businesses in a highly significant way. The differences between the various parts of the adoption curve have less to do with interests and personality and more to do with timing. Early adopters are becoming the early majority.

I’ve always said that your nerdiest, most hardcore users/customers/fans always speak a level of clarity that the rest of your users simply haven’t discovered yet or don’t know how to properly explain to you.

I’ve done a lot of work over the years with fans, enthusiasts, and the brands they love. The one thing that has never ceased to amaze me is how often brand employees show confusion and often flat out disdain for these folks. I’ve heard terms like “weird”, “nerds”, “freaks”. I’ve heard brand managers say things like “don’t these people have lives?” All because they were spending more money, more time, and more energy using, promoting, and supporting the brand/product.

So when you watch the trailer, think twice about whether they’re weird for their love of Star Wars, or you’re weird because you don’t understand the fascination.

I’ve found my next job

Update: UserVoice has launched a site that collects and rates ideas about what tasks the upcoming Obama Adminsitration should start with. (Think Dell’s IdeaStorm for the new administration) I’ve added a new task called: “Developing a Community Manager for the USA”.

Please go vote it up!

Josh points out a genius idea, and it sounds terribly connected to my previous thoughts about Obama’s Social Media Campaigning:

I call on president-elect Obama to create a community of committed Americans to discuss the solutions to the problems that face us. I call on him to designate a US Community Manager, with a small staff, to moderate and harvest those discussions to solve the country’s problems. Forget polls. With a few million people in my.america.gov, Obama will be able to tap into the world’s largest focus group. Communities are cheap, compared to most of what the government does. Create a space for the brightest people you know; use them to attract the best ideas. And better yet, use this energized community to sell those ideas to America.

I’m quite serious when I say this: Where do I submit my resume??

One thing I’d like to take exception to with Josh’s idea is that the value is tapping into the world’s largest focus group. That’s the politics of (hopefully) the past, and it doesn’t truly deliver on the Social Media Promise. The true value of creating a project like this is that it helps to activate and motivate citizens to positive action.

With a community based on around a better connection to government, the citizenry could combine forces with their elected representatives to make decisions and implement solutions. They could do so together, using the my.america.gov site as a hub for such activity.

Certainly this community would inherently serve a focus group-like purpose, simply because information would exist and politicians could (and should) access it. But it’s more than that. This type of community, guided by successful community management could quite literally change the way a citizen base interacts with their representation.

And now it’s time to change the world.

Grown men crying. Americans jumping for joy. World citizens cheering.

This morning, we wake up to a President-Elect who has run and won a campaign based on the principles of community building and social media that those of us reading blogs like this one hold so dear.

The pitch to the world that social media ideas are significant has been sold. Now it’s time to prove the ROI through implementation. Whether you supported Obama or not, we now have an opportunity to drive our industry forward by leaps and bounds. We have an opportunity to use the success of the campaign to help us excited and influence our colleagues and clients into doing something better.

We have a mission, and now we have a grand case study. Let’s get out there and continue changing the world, one client and/or colleague at a time.

Change can happen.

LinkedIn adds Apps….and relevance

Let me say this right up front: LinkedIn is a solid platform, and I’m a member of the site. I keep my profile updated, I happily forward connection requests, and I follow Mario’s updates. That said, I don’t consider myself a “user” of the site. I don’t visit unless I’m responding to something, and rarely do I think to open up LinkedIn to see what’s new.

Fortunately, that may have all changed. LinkedIn has jumped on the App Platform bandwagon, announcing that you can use add-on applications, similar to Facebook, to do more with the site.

By jove, I think they’ve got it!

With this addition, LinkedIn has created relevance in a way that other sites and app platform attempts haven’t. TripIt and Dopplr are great sites, but the idea of creating yet another social networking profile in order to share things like where my contacts are traveling was just a whip. Using Facebook to connect to business contacts was more than a little uncomfortable. And as mentioned, using (rather than “maintaining) LinkedIn was largely fruitless.

But being able to put that very strong business network to work automatically through add-on apps is impressive indeed. Here’s a few examples that I get excited about, just from the announcement below:

• Certainly the LinkedIn Answers was helpful at times, but never really seemed to sing. Using the Huddle app for private workspaces make it much more interesting.
• Maintaining my Dopplr account has always been a non-starter for me. There never has been a truly compelling reason to do so, and recreating my network on Dopplr is just painful. Tapping in that type of functionality via my existing (and robust) LinkedIn network and TripIt is pretty awesome.
• Using a tie-in with Six Apart to be able to skim blog posts from contacts based on my network could yield some truly interesting business opportunities.

This is an exciting development, and I’m looking forward to seeing it in action.
For the official word, here’s the LinkedIn announcement:

Today we’re announcing many more ways to interact with your network on LinkedIn. Whether it’s a new way to create projects and collaborate, share information, customize your profile, or gain key insights, the new LinkedIn Applications deliver.

Click here and you’ll be able to add applications that enable you to:

Work collaboratively with your network.

• Box on LinkedIn: Share files and collaborate with your network.
• Huddle on LinkedIn: Private workspaces to collaborate with your network on projects.

Share information and keep up to date with your network.

• Amazon on LinkedIn: Discover what your network is reading.
• TripIt on LinkedIn: See where your network is traveling.
• SixApart on LinkedIn: Stay up to date with your network’s latest blog posts.

Present yourself and your work in new ways.

• Google Docs on LinkedIn: Embed a presentation on your profile.
• SlideShare on LinkedIn: Share, view and comment on presentations from your network.
• WordPress on LinkedIn: Promote your blog and latest posts.

Gain key insights that will make you more effective.

• Company Buzz by LinkedIn: See what people are saying about your company.

Get started by clicking here to visit the Application Directory and add any of the applications listed above.

Regards,
The LinkedIn Team

Blog Commenting 2.0 cometh!

Yesterday was a very exciting day for bloggers of all stripes. HUGE things are afoot for every one of us, and most of you probably missed the news.

The global commenting system IntenseDebate was acquired by Automattic, the company that owns WordPress.com and drives the WordPress.org project. This is literally going to revolutionize the way blog commenting takes place on blogs worldwide.

I know that sounds like a bold statement, but trust me, things are changing. You may remember that I wrote a few months back that blog comments are broken. The short version of that post and point is that it’s just too hard to keep up with even a minor amount of blog commenting activity. Over even a short time with even minimal blog commenting, we leave our mark all over the Web but have very little ability to collect and follow-up with those comments. We’re currently in an era of Blog Commenting 1.0.

Here’s what I wrote about the solution to bringing us to Blog Commenting 2.0:

In my mind, the solution lies in a (better implementation of the) global commenting system. I’ve switched my comments to Disqus because I believe they are dang close to being the right global system. Here’s why:

• It works wonderfully and is easy understand, even for the technology lightweights.
• It does a great job of keeping you logged in across multiple blogs, so you’re always ready to go with a comment without having to fill out name, email address, and URL
• Threaded replies
• See all your comments in one location
• Fantastic integration process – it’s super easy to add to a blog, forum, etc.

But those things said, we have to eventually plant a flag somewhere around something. Any global system is only as useful as the number of people using it. Look at how good Akismet, the spam fighting functionality included in WordPress, is at fighting spam. Every user they add helps every other user.

At WordCamp Dallas this summer, I even raised this issue with Matt Mullenweg of Automattic. I asked him flat out if he intended to use the power of the WordPress reach to deliver for blog commenting what Akismet has delivered for spam. My point was that if Automattic was to buy or build a global commenting system and implement it into the open source WordPress software and/or the WordPress.com platform, we very nearly solve the broken blog comment metaphor overnight.

At the time, he said he wasn’t interested.

Whether he was just hiding negotiations or whether my genius question changed his mind, it doesn’t matter. We now have a significant move towards a true global commenting system that will hopefully move us to Blog Commenting 2.0.

It’s a good week for bloggers.

New Whitepaper: Six techniques for creating culture through online moderation

I’m proud to announce that I’ve released a new whitepaper, written together with my friends at eModeration.

Six techniques for creating culture through online moderation (download)

This paper focuses on six methods of doing more with your content moderation staff than just asking them to hit “accept” or “decline”. Given the proper training and rules of engagement, your talented moderation staff and help build fantastic culture.

The staff at eModeration (including my wife) are a fantastic group of moderators working a wide variety of client projects. What I find most intriguing about their work is their desire to have a closer connection to the brand they’re working with. They stumble across many instances where they’d love to do more with the communities, but aren’t given the trust by the project owners to do so.

This paper outlines both the reasons it’s powerful to allow your moderators room to engage, as well as the techniques for sucess.

You say it’s my birthday?

(Original photo)

I’ve heard the theory that there’s birthday people and there’s Christmas people. If you’re a birthday person, the biggest celebration comes on that special day, while others get far more excited about the holiday season. Personally, I’ve always been a sucker for the holidays. Every year shortly after Thanksgiving I get all giddy in preparation. Birthdays? Never really blew me away.

Today’s my birthday. And I think I might be seeing the light.

I’ve been absolutely overwhelmed with the fantastic outpouring of well wishes that my friends, old and new, have shown me today. A great deal of ink has been spilled about the significance of our “friends”, those instant, seemingly pointless connections made by clicking “accept” on one of any number of social sites. Many have claimed, and in at least some part rightfully so, that these connections are largely pointless, a way to collect rather than connect.

Maybe that’s true, but today I have been humbled at the number of connections who have taken time to think about me enough to drop a line to wish me a happy birthday. People I’ve not met in person, people I knew from the LEGO community, family members, college friends, and long-time friends. The steady stream of quick, kind thoughts today has shown me that while each one may represent only a small social activity, in aggregate they’ve absolutely made my day.

Thanks everyone for the fantastic reminder of how amazing this social web can be!

What if the White House had a community manager?

The NPR “Fresh Air” podcast recently had an episode made up of a collection of interview snippets from former White House press secretaries from Marlin Fitzwater to Scott McClellan.

As a huge fan of The West Wing, I was always fascinated by the role of CJ, the fictional Press Secretary. Here was a person largely responsible for the way the entire world perceived the actions of the White House, yet was only allowed (or able) to exert minimal control over the actions that lead to those perceptions. In listening to this podcast, it was fascinating to hear how these men had struggled to deliver on their sense of duty to country by being honest with the press, while simultaneously creating marketing for the White House.

This “caught between two worlds” feeling kicked my empathy production center into overdrive. I couldn’t understand why until it dawned on me that community managers and press secretaries have quite a lot in common.

• Both roles walk a thin line between “outside” (press corps/fan community) and “inside” (White House/company).
• Both roles bring the ire of both sides because they don’t seem to pay enough attention to “us” (whichever side is “us” at a given moment).
• There is an honest desire to both stick up for the outside, while defending the inside.
• Both roles are granted perceived power far greater than their actual job description probay grants them.
• Tenacity and the ability to take a good beating are a crucial skill.
• Both roles rely on a certain passion for the topic and a certain faith in the organization.

The similarities were eery, and made me want to learn more about how press secretaries hone their skills. Here’s a few things that I’d love to learn if I had a chance to sit down with a White House (or other governmental department) press secretary:

• How do you build mental stamina when people are yelling at and distrustful of you by default?
• How do you find a balance between representing the official position and your own beliefs?
• How do you add personality to the interaction with your external audiences without seeming disingenuous?
• Can you truly become any sort of friends with your external audience?

Without question community managers could learn many positive things from the press secretaries, but it’s also clear that they are a harbinger of doom as well. At the heart of the role, the goal of the press secretary is make the administration (or department) look good. Above all else, they are a defensive tool that has, at least in the past, inherently blocked true transparency. True discussion has not been the discourse of the day. Hell, they’ve been lampooned as heartless, half-alive robots who are absolutely unable to get off their talking points. See this hilarious video from The Onion for proof.

Perhaps that’s starting to change. Perhaps the rise of the social web principles have started to take root in government as well. Ann Compton, president of the White House Correspondents Association, said that Bush administration press secretary Tony Snow was “the first press secretary who chose to use the podium as a way to argue the president’s case — not just in the president’s words, but in his own.”

I would imagine that the White House will always have to have a press secretary. But can you imagine if the press secretary was replaced with a community manager? Someone charged specifically with doing a better job of connecting, explaining, discussing the issues of the day… oh to dream.

WIth the way the Millennials are impacting and redefining culture, maybe this is more than a silly dream of a silly community guy…

UPDATE: Thanks to @transitioner for pointing out the Citizen’s Solution Council.