Challenges in online community management.

There are as you stated a number of “beta” alpha or worse, sites currently out there that are suppose to accomplish what your describing to an extent. It appears that they are all having their own parochial interests of how this should occur. Unfortunately there is no current map of the plethora of social networking sites and how they are all interconnected. Having what you’re describing would be a boon to retailers and the private individual alike.

There’s a couple of problems in operation here. One is frame switching; information that appears in one context (Twitter) would be useful in another (a wiki, for example). The marginal cost of switching the information from one context to the other needs to be weighed against the value in the new context. You’re looking for something that reduces the labor involved in making the context switch.

The other problem is filtering, aka information overload, aka the “secret sauce” for success in the Long Tail — “help me find it.” Information that would be useful to you exists in a large body of stuff; you need a way of separating the useful stuff from the chaff. The usual method of doing this is to expend effort in processing the information to determine which parts are valuable, followed by more effort spent changing context to render them more valuable (think of Google searches to find data, followed by putting it into Excel charts which are then embedded in a Powerpoint presentation).

Two suggestions:

1. Consider getting the information created in the right context in the first place. For example, instead of using Twitter to gather responses, which creates work in trying to move the responses from Twitter to another medium, use Twitter to provide a link to a forum where the responses can be posted. By doing so, you eliminate the labor of the context switch.

2. Assuming you’re browser-based and using Firefox, check out Ubiquity. It’s a contextual command line extension that works with selected items inside the browser that could help reduce the effort required to context swap.

Kevin, I love your suggestions. However, One of the goals is to be able to tap not only the information pointed at you, but the extraneous information that is valuable to you. Asking people a question on twitter and having them click through to a form that they would likely have to sign up for in reality is minimal. (people are lazy and busy) Companies are always trying to create their own social networks (Millions of Ning Groups), but how many can any one individual be logging into from day to day. What I would like to see done is plumbing from one service to the next. The twitters and facebooks of the world are where our customers are having conversations. We want not only to be part of the conversation, but also listening. After trying and looking at some services where it is “sold” to be able to take a granular look at the content…they just fall short in my opinion.

Hey Keith,

While I don’t think it’s the answer to what you’re looking for, you might want to try out http://www.Serph.com as a pretty good alternative. At least until the Holy Grail arrives

Thanks for keeping me up half the night thinking about this, Keith! I start with a quote from my hero, Tim Berners-Lee, as he describes his vision for the Semantic Web.

“I have a dream for the Web [in which computers] become capable of analyzing all the data on the Web – the content, links, and transactions between people and computers. A ‘Semantic Web’, which should make this possible, has yet to emerge, but when it does, the day-to-day mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy and our daily lives will be handled by machines talking to machines. The ‘intelligent agents’ people have touted for ages will finally materialize.” –Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web

The Web is an amazing place, and every day continues to amaze me more, in its power to connect people so they can share ideas, create, communicate and build strong relationships. The inherent problem with the Web as it exists today is that though we have access to all the information we could ever want in a matter of seconds, it’s still up to us to disseminate and distribute that information so it makes sense to us and can work within our lives.

The Semantic Web that you describe here IS the Holy Grail. We need to find ways to make information understandable by computers, and therefore allow that information to be processed in such a way that it puts *context* to the *content*. This will mean things can be “put into the right buckets” as you say, and distributed in more effective, meaningful ways.

Here’s a brief example of how it could work. I want to buy a Saturn. Joe wants to sell a Saturn. Joe and I don’t know each other. I go to a site with semantic technology implemented. I put in my ID and the make/model of car I want to buy. Joe has listed his car on an entirely different site.

In behind, the system has access, through semantic technology, to find all of my pertinent information (based on the ID I entered), all of Joe’s information, and then can instantly connect the fact that he may have the car that I want and that we live within 100 miles of each other. It also can go out and find information about Joe’s selling reputation, maybe from previous eBay sales or whatever. It also brings me back results for Saturn dealerships in my area that have the make and model of car I want. It checks my calendar and provides suggestions for when might be a good time to book a test drive.

One click, and the computer is doing all the work. I no longer have to do multiple searches, and aggregate everything into feeds myself. The Web is now able to connect me with a complete package of information based on one simple request by me “I am Suzemuse. I want a Saturn.”.

Are we there yet? No. Are we close? There are a lot of really smart people working on it. Are there issues? A ton. Does Joe really want me to know everything about him at the click of a button? Privacy is a big concern. Regulations are going to be a huge part of this.

But in terms of the search for the Holy Grail…we at least know its general vicinity now. Today – content and conversation are king. In the future, context will be king.

Thanks for indulging me in this long comment. I’m glad I got that out.

Again, I think there are a couple of things in operation here.

For conversations we initiate, I think we can ask people to help us get it into the right context. Yes, we’ll lose some people when you ask them to do extra work. If you can make the barrier to entry low (use a Google Group, for example, which relies on a Google ID which many many people have) that reduces the loss. And you can balance what you lose in number of responses against the reduction in your labor – hundreds of responses on Twitter that you cannot use are worth far less than dozens of responses in a searchable, indexable, threadable forum.

The other issues you are addressing is actionable information locked inside conversations that are happening inside closed systems — Twitter, Facebook, etc.

For those, I don’t know that there is an answer ready-made; it depends in part on what you are wanting to do.

[...] a Community Manager for Best Buy, has some good thoughts here to stimulate your conversation. Challenges in online community management.: [...]

[...] Challenges in online community management. by @KeithBurtis [...]

Wow, Suze. I guess I am looking very much for the “Semantic Web” However, much of this seems a long way out. At least for internet time. I find the relationship between power user and developer to be interesting. Seems to be few communications there. There has to be things we can harness now to make our lives easier. So far bringing specific RSS feeds (Tracking) into a Mail program seems to be the best way to capture items. I am surprised no one from radian 6, Salesforce, or any of the other online monitoring groups haven’t commented **wink**

Off the top of my head, given we are working with RSS/XML, what occurs to me is a set of XSLT XML transformation scripts that could take the feed data from various sites, and transform it into something more useful, like one master feed, or even a set of SQL statements for saving to a database. Maybe an Adobe Air client to run it all.

What I should have added is that the XSLT would likely need to be tweeked for each desired feed.

Awesome John, great to hear from a developer using these tools. Is there any way to say this in plain english? Thinking most wont know all of the XL… Acronyms.
Thanks

Hi Keith,

We’re here listening, don’t you worry. And special thanks for including me among such a dynamic list of people. Many of them are people I look to often for insights and guidance myself, so you’ve assembled quite a list.

And I know you had a chance to speak with Marcel today, but I’d love to talk with you anytime about the challenges of community and information management, related to Radian6 or otherwise.

Thanks again and cheers,
Amber Naslund
Director of Community | Radian6
@AmberCadabra

First, thanks for updates on the plane crash-glad you and your family were safe.

As for the holy grail, I may be misunderstanding what you’re looking for, but if I’m right, Yahoo pipes may be part of the answer. I’m using a configuration that someone else set up that taps into some social networks including twitter, friendfeed, flickr, digg and bunches more – free of course – so perhaps someone could start with that configuration and crowd source a more industrial strength version by assigning api calls (or however you phrase it) to different programmers-

it’s called “Social Media Firehose” at yahoo pipes.

I’m wondering if our conversations would be radically different if we talked at the beginning of our work day rather than after a day and a half?!

I’m glad to have been able to provide you with the ‘bucket’ concept. I like SM2’s capability of being able to subcategorize information by topic & then the ability to review them.

Have you seen what Salesforce has added?

I look forward to meeting you next week,
Connie
Community Strategist, Techrigy

Hi, Keith, As I read this what leaped to my mind was YAHOO PIPES. As I read the comments, I saw Kevin thought the same thing. So give it a try, eh? I’m sure you’ll have to tweak it a few times, but could do the job for you.

[...] Burtis has a great post on online community management based on his experiences as community manager for Best Buy [...]