02 Mar 09 Growth and fragmentation of social communities

As the web expands and online communities grow, it is likely that they will become far more numerous and fragmented (much like media is fragmenting today). The main thing holding back  a rapid change to this trend is that currently the tools for building your own social communities still leave a bit to be desired. While Ning provides a great platform for managing your own community, it lacks Facebook connect, which would encourage growth, however, more importantly, it lacks the ability to truly customise to provide tools that solve whatever the issues are that a niche community requires.

There are some things that are universal between communities online, but almost always there is one specification that is unique to that communities needs. Allowing for easy widget integration in these communities would accelerate the growth in niche communities. Open source frameworks that clone Digg are readily available and are providing the basis for many new communities like www.saysthou.com and www.dotnetkicks.com etc.

The reasons for the emergence of communities like this are due to different cultural reasons with each tribe, and due to tribes being victims of their own growth and unable to support egalitarianism. Digg was significantly better when it was young because the Tribe was united with one common cause -  remove the need for editors in mainstream media, let users drive the 24hr news cycle. However, as it grew, it became apparent that all users were not equal, as groups of influencers worked in concert, – the disenfranchised left and found new tribes, or went back to old tribes (like www.fark.com where I actually like the editors).

 

The other solution was for these people to create their own tribes, and to address the issues that made them leave the former. Like Digg addressed the needs of those that left the mainstream media tribe, emergent tribes will address the issues that plagued the one before them in an evolutionary, and Darwinian fashion towards a truly egalitarian framework for the distribution and allocation of power/ influence with respect to a shared ethical framework.