Creating Community Communication Silos
Every day, I seem to receive at least one email or invitation to a new “social network” of sorts – and just about every one of these networks are networks unto themselves. That is to say: they’re community silos, not community expanders.
This is frustrating – and I don’t see the trend changing anytime soon. As someone who has always had a community (or network) of friends, both real and virtual, the last thing I want or need to do is split them up. I don’t need another proprietary chat room – I don’t need another proprietary commenting system.
So, each of these “Web 2.0″ efforts wants to be the next success story – right? Why, then, do they not understand that the “Holy Grail” of social networking is in eliminating the walls between social networks? It’s not just about doing yet another mashup – it’s about bridging existing gaps.
Chat (active interactive) and Comments (static interactive) seem to be communication devices that some people already have (but not everyone, admittedly). Still, for those of us who already have solutions in place – why make yet another silo for us? Why not break down that barrier and allow us to use the tools we already have in our stable?
Dunno. I’m not down on the whole idea of social networking – but I am down on the idea of creating yet another social network to get to the people who are already in my social network. Gawd, that phrase means absolutely nothing to me anymore (I’ve said and heard it enough times).
I understand the validity of creating rich, live chatting experiences – but not at the expense of abandoning (read: ignoring) my existing IRC channels at irc.wyldryde.org. IRC has been around forever – imperfect, but widely adopted. The only reason Twitter “works” for me is that it allows me to receive updates via my IM network of choice. Imperfect, but already running on my desktop.
If you decide to integrate some kind of live chat within your service, at least let people choose to use their own instead of yours. If security is an issue, then you shouldn’t be doing chat in the first place. Live chat, of any kind, is only as strong as the room’s active members and moderators.
Stop creating community (communication) silos, please? Please?
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16 Comments
New Tech News Blog Network ~ Lockergnome
November 24th, 2009
at 11:27pm
When is the Best time to Buy a New Computer?Your Favorite Ice Cream FlavorCooking VideosPirillo’s Picks for 04/27/2007Beginning of a New Network: UndoTVEmpowering WomenSoul Mate BlogsRetirement IdeasCreating Community Communication SilosPlaying Halo 2 for Windows Vista – Live!Screen Capture SoftwareVideo Help and VoicemailScreencasting SoftwareShopping Coupons and Codes
Michael’s Meanderings
November 24th, 2009
at 11:27pm
When is the Best time to Buy a New Computer?Your Favorite Ice Cream FlavorCooking VideosPirillo’s Picks for 04/27/2007Beginning of a New Network: UndoTVEmpowering WomenSoul Mate BlogsRetirement IdeasCreating Community Communication SilosPlaying Halo 2 for Windows Vista – Live!Screen Capture SoftwareVideo Help and VoicemailScreencasting SoftwareShopping Coupons and Codes
The Chris Pirillo Show
November 24th, 2009
at 11:27pm
Personal Blog Cooking Videos Pirillo?s Picks for 04/27/2007 Beginning of a New Network: UndoTV Empowering Women Soul Mate Blogs Retirement Ideas Creating Community Communication Silos Playing Halo 2 for Windows Vista – Live! Watch This Letter from a Disgruntled TechTV/G4 Viewer Contact Us on eBay or MySpace Google Calendar Security Notice Cingular BlackJack Phone Problems Streaming Live from the Podcast Hotel
Epicenter - Wired Blogs
November 24th, 2009
at 11:27pm
$3.02 billion in sales, a 32 percent jump. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said, “We’re pleased with our overall strong growth and especially with the number of people joining Amazon Prime.” The much feared bubble may indeed be in effect (as Chris Pirillo points out, there are but so many social networks a person can join), but if Google, and now Amazon’s numbers are indicative of real trends, the tech space is on solid ground. Photo: Etech
SocioBiblog
May 6th, 2008
at 3:10pm
What would be the one fundamental principle every social networking community must have for maintaining its integrity to the people who are using that site?”. To me… the answer is simple. Related Content:The Most Awesome Social Network EverCreating Community Communication SilosPownce: Social Networks aren’t Identity NetworksWhat is Social Networking?Alex Kummerman on the ClicMobile AreYouHere Social Networking Platform
dturnbull.newsvine.com - Donald Turnbull
November 24th, 2009
at 11:27pm
[IMG Comments][IMG ]
SubWolf
April 24th, 2007
at 12:39pm
Agreed, I signed up at Facebook & Virb only a few weeks ago, not seeing the point of signing up for yet another silo community.
Jaiku is helping by aggregating your various sources together, but still….
Paul Stewart
April 24th, 2007
at 12:39pm
Gateable Addressing.
Paul Stewart
April 24th, 2007
at 12:42pm
GaAdd
Ruben
April 24th, 2007
at 1:31pm
Glad someone sees the Twitter : IRC similarities.
Shawn Oster
April 24th, 2007
at 3:05pm
There seems to be an issue of keeping community focus vs. allowing different types of communication.
On one hand a lot of community sites are aiming to bring people together around a central theme or idea. myspace.com was all about music, corkd.com is all about wine-lovers, giveness.com is all about those that want to give to a charity while shopping (cool idea by the way). Keeping that focus helps your chances of connecting with like-minded people. It also means you can offer tools that are unique to that focus, like corkd’s ability to recommend wines or giveness’s ability to suggest products to buy via Amazon, which in turn benefits a charity.
Once you make those connections though you are now left with that communications issue. You already have a blog, a comment system, three IM names, two IRC channels and 8 forums you watch… now you have yet another set to monitor? That also means more passwords, more user names, more sites to remember.
I feel RSS has been a great step towards a more interoperable web, there are many sites I’d never visit if it wasn’t for having an RSS feed. What we really need is an IM and commenting backbone similar to RSS. Something vendor agnostic and simple. While I’m a huge fan of IRC it’s something only a very, very small percentage of the social networking crowd even knows about. Plus, setting up an IRC server isn’t nearly as easy as setting up a comment feed or even grabbing an off-the-shelf live chat package. I notice a lot of sites allow you to list your Yahoo, Messenger, ICQ, AIM, or (network of choice) user name, yet those only facilitate one to one communication.
Twitter could probably come close to a new type of backbone, as it’s basically the MySpace commenting system minus the actual MySpace. The biggest issue of course with Twitter is that it’s, well, Twitter. It’s a site, not a standard, so at any time they can decide to start charging, block their network to outside users, crash or get bought-out.
Hmmm…
Stan James
April 24th, 2007
at 6:12pm
So true. For my 2 cents, I think the 3 key barriers to this are:
1. There is no way to establish identities across various networks. So when you sign up for the new Iguanaster.com social network, it has no way to know that you really are the “chris” from MySpace. This may be solved by OpenID, but there’s a long way to go.
2. There is no standard way of exchanging social network information. FOAF is the relevant standard, but no one seems to be doing it anymore. But more important is:
3. Terms of Service that prevent automated reading of data. So even if Iguanaster.com was willing and able to scrape your friendlist off MySpace, it simply isn’t allowed. Newer networks like those of del.icio.us and Twitter are open, so hopefully this trend is reversing.
[and... 4. It's just easier to build a site as a silo, so they do!]
Here at Lijit we pull together your various identities and the content you create, but with the more modest goal of making it all searchable. Our infrastructure also allows us to ingest multiple networks; right now this includes your blogroll and delicious networks.
In any case, our auto-identity finder is fun: http://www.lijit.com
(Love the chris.pirillo.com/live …. keep it going!)
Julian Bond
April 25th, 2007
at 6:10am
+1 for Twitter = IRC. Except that it really isn’t. I would love to see someone combine the responsiveness of IRC/Skype chats with the social group forming of Twitter’s Friends and followers. An IRC where channels were formed around your social group rather than around a topic. I’m hoping that if I keep talking about this, somebody will actually build it.
Meanwhile, I’ve experimented with using IRC within a social network (Ecademy). It failed because IRC is too geeky for the mainstream. And web-embedded IRC clients are universally horrible. I’ve had much more success getting the members to use Skype Public Chats and while they are great they are also closed and stuck inside the Skype proprietary/architecture wall.
As for moving profile and friends data between social networks, good luck. I reckon OpenID profile exchange and sync is still at least 6 months away but it is coming. Sadly, FOAF is looking increasingly like a dead (write only data) end.
Jeff McNeill » Blog Archive » links for 2007-04-25
April 25th, 2007
at 6:21am
[...] Creating Community Communication Silos ~ Chris Pirillo Apr 2007 (tags: socialmedia) [...]
Suggested Reading | Chris Webb: Publishing, Media, and Technology
April 27th, 2007
at 5:46pm
[...] Creating Community Communication Silos (tags: web2.0 socialnetworks) [...]
Tara (PassPack)
April 28th, 2007
at 4:12am
People will keep building the newest coolest thing… until it stops being new and cool. Then they’ll move onto the next trend.
What gets left in their wake is a a bunch of fledglings, many will die off, others will grow a little, and a select few who are able to find real solutions will mature.
Until that happens, it’s up to the users to be creative and find their own solutions. This example made my head spin:
http://www.orient-lodge.com/node/2250