Small World Labs

When I first joined Twitter in 2009, it was fairly easy to keep track of people, follow ongoing conversations throughout the day, and engage meaningfully. Oh have times changed. I by no means have a large number of follows/followers compared to many people, but unless I have Hootsuite open 24/7 (which is difficult to do, whether in a client meeting or yoga class) I find it difficult to interact as much as I would like. And truthfully, even as a social media proponent and general addict, I have no interest in decreasing the quality of my face-to-face interactions for the sake of not missing a RT of some funny comment.

This is where the value of online communities really comes into play. Early on in my Twitter life I was fortunate to develop a community around competitive fitness, my particular interest. But as Twitter grew, as did my connections, and it became difficult to maintain those conversations with the stream moving so fast. A branded online community provides the same opportunity to interact with a specific group of people over an even more specific topic or interest, but slows down that constant stream to enable the return of indepth conversation and inquiry. A sign-in, perhaps closed, community can also offer the added benefit of requiring qualifications and providing privacy for members.

I fully appreciate the crowd-sourcing features of Quora and the shear numbers on Twitter, but bigger isn’t always better. Sometimes you want quality over quantity, and topic-specific communities provide these benefits.