Roundtable on Communities of Purpose (4) - Mentoring

We recently wrote a white paper on the issues brands face when managing a ‘community of purpose’: an online community of people with a common, clear, defined goal. In researching that paper, we had some invaluable input from some of the best community managers working in this area. Their insight was so interesting that we hosted a ‘virtual’ round table discussion, to address some of the very specific issues that arise in managing a community of purpose. Each of the community managers we spoke to addressed a specific issue as it related to their own experience.

eModeration: How do you encourage experienced members to help out new members? Mentoring programmes / ambassadors?

Ashley Cooksley: Experienced members are key to the ongoing success of your community. These members have already proved they’re loyal to your community, and harnessing their loyalty and enthusiasm will help in a variety of ways. They can greet new members, answer member questions, and promote new features within the community and even flag up issues and developments to your community manager.

Once you have identified who your experienced members are, replying to their posts with words of appreciation and encouragement will go a long way to maintaining their loyalty. It’s nice to be recognized for adding value, whether in the real world or in an online community. Saying ‘thank you for that wonderful insight’ will make them feel appreciated and valued.

While you must be careful not to demand anything from a member (i.e. treat them like a staff member with definite roles and responsibilities), but rather create ways for them to contribute to your community where they benefit (they feel valued, are seen by other members as an ambassador, etc), where the member benefits (another member is welcoming them to the community, their questions get answered, and they feel “listened to”), and where you benefit.

Consider badges and labels to help identify these members, or even a private forum area where they have exclusive access to discuss the site and issues with your community manager.


Patrick o’Keefe: I always encourage veteran members to set the example for other members to follow. There have been numerous cases where I took a member aside and told them that their actions recently were disappointing and that, at this stage, we expected them to be a good example for members to follow – not a bad one.

Experienced members become experienced by gaining knowledge and contributing. They do this of their own free will. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be experienced members. So, many have the natural disposition of helping people and you don’t really need to encourage them, just let them be comfortable and make sure that they feel that their contributions are appreciated, through public and private appreciation.

My community staff (moderators and guides) is all volunteers. They have guidelines for their responsibilities and part of that is being helpful to members they encounter. The people on my team are all great people – they’ve made it through my screening process and that isn’t easy. So, at that point, they naturally help people and set the example that members can follow.

Alison Michalk: We have no formal procedure in place but our moderation team make a point of thanking members (usually publicly, but sometimes privately) who answer questions, offer support and so on. Our Mods will also often 'call out' a member to help. For example, ‘Sarah66’ might be able to help due to her understanding of this issue.

This approach encourages self-sufficiency among the community and acknowledges that as a community we have a wealth of shared knowledge, not a two directional relationship between 'us' and 'them'.

Blaise Grimes-Viort: We try and provide various tools and programmes, either via reputation or thanking tools hooked up to competitive ladders, or a Host programme backed up by visual badges.

Our thanks go to the community managers that we spoke to and who took the time to share their experiences with us:

Leah Williams, Community and Social Media Manager at Breast Cancer Care; Patrick O’Keefe, owner of iFroggy Network and author of "Managing Online Forums"; Alison Michalk, Director of Quiip and ex-community manager for Essential Baby at Fairfax Digital Australia; Blaise Grimes-Viort,recently appointed Head of Social Media and engagement at WebJam, and Hearst Digital and Vanessa DiMauro, CEO of LeaderNetworks.

Look out for Part 5) in this series: How do you keep members motivated (for example in a weight loss site)?


See also our earlier posts in this series:
Part 1) How do you engage with a community, as opposed to just informing a community?
Part 2) What is the value of that community once someone has reached their goal?
Part 3) How do you make an information-based site relevant to newbies as well as to those who’ve been using the site for a long time?

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The Giddy Social Whirl: Facebook Love

Kate Williams ponders the world of social media, and today wonders... What is it with us and Facebook?


Ach, my dears, sit down: there’s something I have to tell you. I’m tired of living a lie, and you deserve the truth. The fact is - I can barely speak it – I don’t get Facebook. I don’t GET Facebook!

There, I said it. It’s out.

I don’t know what the problem is. Twitter – well, Twitter sets my heart a-flutter. My eyes sparkle, my complexion blooms. But Facebook? It’s like I’m dead inside.

I’ve tried, Lord knows. Every day I flick listlessly through my feed, going through the motions in the hope that today will be the day that I finally feel the spark. I’ve heard that you just have to really, really relax and then suddenly it clicks - but to be honest, I do it now from a sense of duty, with no real hope of the scream of social joy that sets a girl’s soul on fire. It’s just so.. static. There’s none of the back and forth of Twitter, none of the reciprocity – it just lies there, expecting you to do all the work.

And there’s something else. As an interface, it’s a bit needy, you know? With Twitter and its clients, the medium is just the medium. You could be doing it anywhere! But with Facebook, the medium is the message: Look at me, Facebooking! For something which exists in the ether, it’s far too tangible for me, and I confess this puts Facebooking on a par with scrapbooking in my, erm, book.

I can imagine what you’re thinking. Jeez, Earl. This is not the usual urbane tittle-tattle which keeps us coming back week after week, like out-of-town moths to a gorgeous metropolitan flame. It’s like she has an agenda here.  I’m so sorry, really I am. I’ve kept my feelings hidden till now, because I pride myself on the Geistiness of my Zeit. For many years now, Facebook has been the toast of the town, and to be thus at odds with the spirit of the age - well, it was more than my shallow little heart could bear.

But now it seems like I might not, after all, have been as disastrously out of step as I’d feared. Though Facebook stats are, by any measure, stratospheric, it seems you’re not all enjoying such an entirely healthy and fulfilling Facebook relationship as I’d thought.

Last week Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s velvet-cheeked CEO, announced that the global social megalith now has 500 million active users. Combine this with the faint but discernible outline of a 2011 IPO valued at $35bn to $40bn - and it was something of a triumphant week for The Zuckster and his team.

Which makes it all the more striking that this was also the week in which the American Customer Satisfaction Index ranked Facebook as one of the US’s least beloved companies. In the hierarchy of happiness, Facebook languishes near the very bottom of our love list - just a smidge above the Inland Revenue Service’s tax e-filing scheme.

Lets consider that for a moment: we love Facebook so much that we have increased its user base by an astonishing 25% in under six months - but at the same time so little that it ranks alongside the act of paying tax. 500 million users… as pleasurable as paying taxes. I’d say that these two facts, taken in conjunction, indicate that we're a little conflicted in matters Facebook, wouldn’t you?

Now some of this disaffection can doubtless be put down to the various privacy debacles which The Book likes to wade into every three or four days. Others can be ascribed to the unannounced fixing-things-that-ain’t-bleedin’-broke thing that Facebook is so fond of, and which this week saw some users unable to display their news feed chronologically. All of these are fixable, and almost certainly temporary. Lord knows, Facebook is in no danger or losing its ‘king of the platforms’ crown anytime soon – neither for users, nor the brands that want to reach them.

But the truth is that, while I am conscious that my feelings put me in a minority demographic, we might have to admit that Facebook sometimes struggles a little to bear the weight of our social expectations. And as if to demonstrate this fact, this week saw the release of the thrilling trailer for the upcoming film The Social Network, which is loosely based on the birth of Facebook.

Impressively - and despite the resolutely pedestrian nature of its raw material - the filmmakers have contrived to make the development of Facebook seem hotter, by several hundred degrees, than the final 4 minutes of 24. In fact, they’ve made Mark Zuckerberg seem a bit like the prequel to Jack Bauer, if only people could be prequels.

Have a quick look at the trailer, and then compare it to this video of the real Mark Zuckerberg, in which he demonstrates his mastery of the autocue at the launch of Facebook Stories (a slightly saccharine confection, designed to highlight the ways in which the network has been a Force For Good in the world).

You back? Boy, that is some reality gap, huh?

Now it’s true that my general outlook is formed of a grim admixture of thwarted hopes, bitter umbrage and bilious envy. Also that I am British, and therefore legally obliged to cut down any tall poppy in my path with a sharp aphorism. But despite this, I think it’s fair to propose that Mark Zuckerberg is really not Master of The Universe material. For one thing (I’m whispering now) he comes across as a bit of a prig.

The film-makers, though, have clocked the popular cultural saw which holds that this is the Age of the Geek. The idea that, after many years of having the sand of hipness kicked in his face, a chap like Mark Zuckerberg can now bestride our culture like a giant amongst men. And we’ve invested such a big chunk of our social media hopes in his platform that we’re now pretty keen to believe that its creator is a cultural colossus.

You know, maybe we just need to take a breath here. We’re tired of the old heroes, for sure - ain’t nobody going to be making a film about Wall Street Alphas any time soon. We want a new and improved model – and here comes The Social Network to tell us that, hey, maybe Mark Zuckerberg could be The One! But in our heart of hearts, don’t we know that we’re kidding ourselves? This one is never going to make it to the aisle. Try as we might, we can’t make him into a hero for our times - just like 500 million users, wildly impressive though that number is, can’t quite make Facebook into the social network to set my heart aflame.


A bientôt, mes amis!

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Facebook's ClickCEOP app: such welcome news

On 12th July, Facebook and CEOP announced that they had finally reached a compromise, and the ClickCEOP app was released, along with a new ClickCEOP Page on Facebook which, when "liked" by users, aims to help raise the profile of online safety. The page will look at topics that teenagers care about, such as celebrities, music and exams, and will link these subjects to questions about online safety. The ClickCEOP Page yesterday held its first 'surgery': a one hour live chat session attracting over 100 postings from parents and others concerned about child safety issues.

To make users aware of the existence of the new button, which they will have to consciously add to their profiles,  Facebook will be running an online awareness campaign targeting members. The campaign will include an automatic advert-message appearing on every homepage of users aged between 13 to 18 inviting them to add the application.  When installed, the app adds itself as a tab to your profile.

Although only time will tell how effectively it is being used, it seems to be an excellent gateway to any of the problems which might be facing (particularly young) online users.  The opening page takes you through to a portal offering help on cyberbullying, hacking, viruses, mobile problems and harmful content, with links thru to Beatbullying's Cyber Mentors, Childline, mobile providers, the IWF, NSPCC, GetNetWise and of course CEOP itself.

Users are reminded at each step what is, and is not, appropriate to report to each of the authorities, and that if they have a problem with their Facebook account, they should go instead to the Facebook Report Page.

During the great debate between Facebook and CEOP, we expressed some concern over whether a 'panic button' displayed on each page would be a good idea, chiefly because we felt that users woud misreport content to CEOP and so CEOP would be drowning in issues it cannot directly act on and potentially missing time-crucial grooming complaints.

This, however, seems to be a really good solution, and we hope that the app gets out to all young people, through Facebook, educational programmes, youth media and peer-to-peer 'sharing'.   Let's hope it's given the light of publicity it deserves.

P.S.  Have you turned your phone settings to 'only me' yet? Just saying ...

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Roundtable on Communities of Purpose (3) - Making it Relevant

We recently wrote a white paper on the issues brands face when managing a ‘community of purpose’: an online community of people with a common, clear, defined goal. In researching that paper, we had some invaluable input from some of the best community managers working in this area. Their insight was so interesting that we hosted a ‘virtual’ round table discussion, to address some of the very specific issues that arise in managing a community of purpose. Each of the community managers we spoke to addressed a specific issue as it related to their own experience.

eModeration: How do you make an information-based site relevant to newbies as well as to those who’ve been using the site for a long time? Can you, for example, section the community by experience to keep it relevant to everyone?

Ashley Cooksley: A newbie joining any community will have needs that a different to those more experienced and long-term members. Generally, they will need a bit more hand-holding so they learn their way around. Having specific areas of the community dedicated to newcomers can be beneficial since it gives them a “safe place” to ask questions and receive guidance. It’s also a good idea to have a community manager and/or experienced members in those community areas acting as “hosts” to help guide and answer the newcomers.

However, specifically for an information-based site, it’s important that the community can grow and new discussions and features are continuously added to please the more experienced and long-term members. Often times these developments will come directly from the community based on a need they have expressed, or from one that your community manager has identified.

Leah Williams: We have sections on the forum, corresponding to different experiences or issues, but they are all visible to everyone.

We do sometimes have to nudge people into moving into a different section – for example, a long-running thread in the ‘newly diagnosed’ section called ‘newly diagnosed – May’ can become particularly confusing for new people, especially when it comes round to May again, so we will suggest they start a new thread or that we move it for them.

We are looking into the possibility of making the experience more customisable. So, for example, people could sign up to follow certain sections or threads and the latest posts in those sections would show up when they sign in. It’s a very sensitive issue though, as some people, when they are first diagnosed with primary breast cancer, feel very strongly that they do not want to see the sections about secondary breast cancer, or ‘in memory’ threads about forum members who have died. On the other hand, some people with secondary breast cancer feel equally strongly that they don’t want their experiences to be hidden away, that it is important that people understand that what they’re going through is part of the reality of having breast cancer too.

Patrick o’Keefe: Sometimes, it’s better to create a natural organization around the topic and the resources available and then let members participate at will. The new people can benefit from the veterans, the veterans can benefit from the new people and both groups can pick and choose where they want to contribute.

On one of my communities, aimed at the Photoshop software, for a while we had a forum called the ‘Beginner’s Section’ and then we had a ‘General Photoshop Discussion’ forum. What we found, over time, was that it was difficult to apply a standard of ‘beginner’. On one hand, people feel less embarrassed that what they are asking may be a newbie question. On the other hand, it had overlap with other forums and degraded our overall organization.

In the end, we opted for new forums based on the type of question being asked and that works best for us. But, that just brings it back to every situation being different. On a community about quitting smoking, maybe it makes sense to have forums for ‘Thinking About Quitting’, ‘Trying to Quit’ and ‘I’ve Quit!’ In other words, divide them into: people who have not quit, but are looking for information; people who are trying to quit and are in the middle of that process, dealing with the challenges and the struggle; and then a third group that has successfully quit, talking about how they cope with cravings and what their life is like now. This would include success stories.

Alison Michalk: Over a decade our forums have been split further and further to ensure there are relevant areas for the breadth of needs. This approach has also assisted with huge membership growth as members still feel part of a tight-knit community through the smaller forums they participate in.

How we've scaled the subject of conception is an example of this: Thinking about trying to conceive (TTTC); Trying to conceive (TTC); long-term trying to conceived (LT TTC); assisted conception (further broken down by those using AC for the first child or subsequent children); donor support etc.

We have over 150 forums but it is worth noting we've only split these when we've felt it was beneficial to both the community and the moderation workload. In some cases having multiple forums can reduce the workload by removing a difficult element. For example those experiencing long-term infertility were often not sensitive to the plight of members new to the issue. This created tension and a sometimes unpleasant user experience. By creating an additional long-term forum it acknowledged those members experience and gave them a separate space. Those who were willing to help new members could choose whether or not they participated in the general trying to conceive forum.

Our thanks go to the community managers that we spoke to and who took the time to share their experiences with us:

Leah Williams, Community and Social Media Manager at Breast Cancer Care; Patrick O’Keefe, owner of iFroggy Network and author of "Managing Online Forums"; Alison Michalk, Director of Quiip and ex-community manager for Essential Baby at Fairfax Digital Australia; Blaise Grimes-Viort, recently appointed Head of Social Media and engagement at WebJam, and Hearst Digital and Vanessa DiMauro, CEO of LeaderNetworks.

See also our earlier posts in this series:
Part 1) How do you engage with a community, as opposed to just informing a community?
Part 2) What is the value of that community once someone has reached their goal?

... and look out for Part 4 :-)

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'How to Avoid a Social Media Disaster' by eModeration, Yomego and Carrot Communications

On 14th July 2010, eModeration, Yomego and Carrot Communications invited around forty brands and agencies involved in social media to an exclusive workshop on 'How to Avoid a Social Media Crisis'. The seminar was held in Churchill's Secret Cabinet War Rooms in London SW1: an underground bunker whose very existence was a secret during World War II. Then, what went on in the bunker stayed in the bunker ...

But not now.

We're going to share our advice from the workshop: how to prepare for a crisis (create your virtual War Room), spot an issue before it becomes a crisis (social media montoring), how to communicate through a crisis (PR and community management), and how to judge whether your actions have been effective (back to monitoring again).

Many thanks to all who attended and we hope it provided valuable insight and food for thought.  Please do feel free to comment beneath and ask us any questions you may have following the seminar.

Here is a link to the white paper from the seminar available to download free, as are eModeration's other white papers. You can find out all about Yomego's social reputation monitoring service here.

And for those who couldn't attend, here's the presentation:

How To Avoid A Social Media Disaster (eModeration, Carrot Communications And Yomego)

View more presentations from eModeration.

And finally, here's a great 'Social Media Survival Guide' poster for you, full of handy tips and courtesy of Yomego's clever designers.  We suggest you keep it handy with your gasmask ;-)

Please get in touch with us if you'd like any more information.  

Tamara Littleton (eModeration), Steve Richards (Yomego) and  Richard Houghton and Kate Hartley (Carrot Communications)

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The Giddy Social Whirl: China and Spice

Kate Williams ponders the world of social media, and today asks..


China: do we have a Plan B?


Global ripples of shock this week, as the People’s Republic of China accidentally posted the details of its plans to use the internet for - you'll never guess! - propaganda purposes. Repressive regime puts technology to work in attempt to limit dissent? No shrimp, Shar Pei.

Wang Chen, the deputy director of the Propaganda Department, has apparently concluded that the internet is a useful tool “for unifying thinking, consolidating strength, assisting in our diplomatic battles and safeguarding our national interests.”

Let’s pause a while, and grudgingly admire both China’s signature oratorical stylings, and its bracing lack of guile in naming the department responsible for propaganda ,“The Propaganda Department” – a frankness which, one speculates, could conceivably alert some citizens to the reality of their project.

Then let’s finish the pause, and attempt to place this latest snippet of info in the context of what else has been going on, China-wise – a whole which, seen in toto, appears to show that China is sharpening its focus on the world wide web.

In the latest instalment of Google’s Chinese Adventures, the Ministry Of Information has renewed Google’s license to operate in the country - but only after the search behemoth promised to cease automatically redirecting Chinese users to its uncensored Hong Kong site, a tactic it adopted following its decision to stop filtering its results in January of this year.

The Google.cn site is now back online – but, in what the Chinese are spinning as a rather humiliating climbdown, returns only music, products and translation search results. That’s right - no web-pages at all.

Since web-pages are really the only category which the authorities could have a serious interest in censoring, this does, in truth, seem to be something of a Pyrrhic victory for Google. The uneasy compromise at first appears to be ameliorated by the inclusion of an option to run the search through the still-uncensored Hong Kong site, but even this patched workaround is compromised. Yes, it allows the Chinese user to choose whether to run an uncensored search - but it also contains the implication that the responsibility for complying with censorship regulations rests with the individual user, while Google steps back and whistles nonchalantly.

It’s hard to imagine how Google can effectively spin this as a victory to its users and investors. China 1, Google (maybe) 0.5.

And it’s not only Google who must now be anxiously checking their stats. As the mobile sector in China continues to grow and smartphones take an increasingly hefty share of the market, mapping services look set to muscle up to search, in terms of their relative potential.

Unsurprisingly - and despite the fact that Google’s mobile mapping service currently boasts some 2 million users – its name was conspicuously absent when Beijing announced its updated list of approved mapping providers. More worryingly, not a single foreign firm has so far been judged to be of sufficiently ‘excellent quality’ to pass muster. No Nokia, no Microsoft, both of whom, according to the Guardian, were thought to be in the regime’s good books. China is clearly having a bit of a think about this whole internet thing.

Equally ominously, China’s Academy of Social Sciences recently turned its basilisk gaze on social networking sites, alleging that they were US-backed hotbeds of “political subversion” during last year’s Iranian protests, and during the violent unrest which led to 200 deaths in Xinjian. To be fair, you don’t have to look to hard to find a trigger for that last one: US defence secretary Robert Gates' recently commented that Twitter and other new communications developments amounted to a "huge strategic asset".

Aaanyway - the Chinese appear to have social networks firmly in their sites.

This week, China’s growing army of microbloggers were shaken when two of the country’s Twitter lookey-likeys were unexpectedly taken down ‘for maintenance’ – an excuse commonly given when sites have fallen foul of the authorities. At the same time, several well-established microblogging services began displaying a mysterious ‘beta’ icon. Last year, before it had a chance to go mainstream, the authorities blocked Twitter itself - but not before it had spawned several home-grown competitors which – though they self-censor in accordance with Chinese rules – have rapidly gained popularity. Now rumours are flying that the services have been told to purge themselves of ‘sensitive’ content, and users are rushing to back up their feeds and contacts.

The moral? Hard, yet, to tell. While the renewal of Google’s Internet Content Provider license draws a line under that particular debacle, it’s quite clear that this show ain’t over, not by a long chalk. Not yet time to run around screaming, but if you are CEO of one of the many Western tech companies whose expectations of profitability-to-come are intimately interwoven with China’s future - there’s never been a better moment to rifle through that drawer marked ‘Alternative Options’.

Old Spice: The Smell of Social Success

Squeal! Could there be anything more delicious, more utterly knowing, more entirely hip to the hop than this spring’s Old Spice ad, in which the astoundingly handsome Isaiah Mustafa hypnotically intones that he is the man our man could smell like, if only he’d avail himself of some of that good Old Spice stuff?

Why yes, Mesdames-‘ssieurs – yes, there could!

This week, Wieden + Kennedy, the chaps behind the phenomongously viral campaign, displayed their utter mastery of both mood and moment with a flurry of personalized videos that the Spicemeister tweeted out to individual members of the blogocracy, as well as to various internet randoms who’d name-checked him. Not only is he kicking these videos out at a rate of knots, but they are clever, sexy and wildly funny – check out the one he made for goss-hound Perez Hilton here.

Mashable reports that the 180-odd videos have attracted - wait for it - 5.9 million views. Spice man has moved with enviable self-assurance and sinuous grace into the social media space, where he’s rearranged the furniture, kicked off his shoes, mixed himself a Cuba Libre and generally made it his own. This is advertising which winks at you with just the right amount of a come-on to make you genuinely and uncomplicatedly happy. Agencies: look at this ad, now back at me. This is the success your success could smell like, if only you didn’t smell like a lady.

Shock News just in: Spice Man has thrown in the towel, thus adding a delicious understanding of the Zen-like beauty of the short-lived to his long list of accomplishments. I'm too choked up to say more than that - sorry.


A bientôt, mes amis!

For more social media snippets, follow @emodkate - or for general twittery, @KateVWilliams.

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The Giddy Social Whirl .. Microsoft: What were they thin-Kin?

Kate Williams ponders the world of social media, and today rifles through the week's social stories.


Unconfirmed, but by no means ludicrous, reports have emerged that Microsoft had sold a paltry 503 of their Kin phones, before pulling the plug just six weeks after its launch.

I am, you may already have twigged, accustomed both to Promethean levels of over-reach, and to all forms of crushing failure - but even to my ears, 503 sounds risible. Search the varnish stockpiles of the world and you won’t find a product strong enough to put a gloss on that little number.

An anonymous member of the core development team – who’d migrated from original developer Danger when that company was acquired by Microsoft, expressed his frustration thus:

“We were working in such a screwed up place. Yes, we took long lunches and we sat in conference rooms and went on coffee breaks and the conversations always went something like this… "Did you hear that IM was cut, YouTube was cut? The App store was cut?" "Can you believe how mismanaged this place is?" "Why is this place to dysfunctional?"

Another insider neatly encapsulated Microsoft’s mammoth product development fail:

“No one thought it was a great product to launch anyway to begin with… It's one thing to incubate products and bring them to a proof-of-concept to see what works, but it's something else to launch."

It now seems certain that Microsoft will announce another round of redundancies any time now, following last year’s brutal cull.

Which business model car-crash might perhaps give Google pause for thought, because frankly I’m watching these Google Me developments from behind my hands. It’s beginning to feel eerily like an episode of the Simpsons: the one where Homer tries to build a social network.

Dodgeball. Doh! Orkut. Doh! Jaiku, Buzz, Wave.. Doh! Doh! Doh!

Let’s hope they’ve got Lisa in charge this time, because it’s increasingly clear that there’s only so long that search will remain the go-to place for recommendations: put simply, people trust their friends.

Indeed, a slideshow by one of their own researchers spells out - with additional semaphore for the hard-of-understanding – that Google needs to get with the social programme pronto, or risk a slow and painful death by irrelevance. But please, Google, look to the past - then scramble for the future.

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The Giddy Social Whirl: Facing Up To Being iPowned

Kate Williams ponders the world of social media, and today rifles through the week's social stories.


Facing Up To Being iPowned


Last week - following the shrug Apple gave to reports that the iPhone 4’s reception crashed when held in the left hand - we gently suggested, with the heartbreaking emotional honesty for which we are rapidly becoming renowned, that Apple is just not that into you.

Then, on Monday, Apple declared that the drop-off was simply a software issue: most regrettably, we’d all been accidentally led to believe that our reception levels were (considerably) higher than they actually were, and therefore in poor signal areas, it may have appeared that there was a sudden drop-off. Their Bad!

We all nodded our heads earnestly – kudos for the hands-up, Apple – before thinking it through.

Whirr-click.

“Now hold on just a dog-gone minute! This over-calibration thing? Sure, it’s says a deal about Apple’s vaunted infallibility – but it speaks only to the iPhone’s general performance, and not to the near-vertical reduction in reception which is, in fact, the issue at hand. In sum, isn’t this the consumer-tech equivalent of an airline company responding to the discovery of fatal flaws in their wing design with an assertion that poor in-flight catering led to the perception of a mid-air near-miss?”

To which Apple replied, “Erm, yup.” Yesterday it confirmed to Gizmodo that, while a software update will correct the signal display issue, it won’t resolve the underlying, you know, signal issue.

In the light of which, we present two amusing items for your consideration- both of which we feel might represent something of a sea-change.

First up: this very-much-NSFW but hugely viral skit, created by a subsequently-suspended employee of Best Buy, about the impossibility of persuading consumers to buy any other smartphone than an iPhone – despite its comparative specificatory inferiority.

The second is an entirely SFW clip from the latest series of Futurama, which riffs on a similar theme.

Enjoy! You may be witnessing the moment that popular culture brings iPhone credulity into the spotlight, and thence - perhaps - to an end.


Prince declares the internet dead


The singer formerly known as “Who?” this week told the Mirror newspaper, with some hubris: "The internet's like MTV. At one time MTV was hip and suddenly it became outdated”. Now, I’m no pop historian, but this strikes me as pretty close to a definition of the pot calling the kettle, you know, purple.

The diminutive falsetto has refused to distribute his music via the web since 2007, when he firstly threatened eBay, YouTube and the Pirate Bay with lawsuits, and subsequently rejected even kosher paid-for options like iTunes.

And - waddya know? Stack heels notwithstanding, he now looms considerably smaller in the public imagination than he once did - and I doubt I am the only one to wonder if the two facts are somehow related.

We are agreed on one thing, however: “All these computers and digital gadgets are no good. They just fill your head with numbers and that can't be good for you." Quite right, your Eminence.


Summer Wedding Protocol

Finally, it’s the weekend! And as the summer Wedding Season gets emphatically underway, let’s just take a moment to remind ourselves just how important it is to exercise restraint in the presence of a free bar.

Till next time, mes cheris!


For more social media snippets, follow @emodkate - or for general twittery, @KateVWilliams.

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Roundtable on Communities of Purpose (2) - Reaching Goals

We recently wrote a white paper on the issues brands face when managing a ‘community of purpose: an online community of people with a common, clear, defined goal. In researching that paper, we had some invaluable input from some of the best community managers working in this area. Their insight was so interesting that we hosted a ‘virtual’ round table discussion, to address some of the very specific issues that arise in managing a community of purpose. Each of the community managers we spoke to addressed a specific issue as it related to their own experience.

eModeration: What is the value of that community once someone has reached their goal? For example, is there value in a member of a ‘stop smoking’ site once they’ve stopped smoking? How can you keep them engaged (so they can recommend the site to others trying to stop smoking)?

Ashley Cooksley:  Someone who has been an active participant in a community, has gained valuable support and motivation from other members, and then achieves their goal should be encouraged to become a role model and resource to other members. It’s likely that these members may already see themselves this way, but a Community Manager should encourage the member to continue to participate to offer valuable experiences and advice on how they achieved such an amazing goal (cancer in remission, ran a marathon, reduced their weight to a normal range, stopped smoking, wrote a novel, etc). Journeys don’t often end when a goal is met, and part of these members’ journeys could be how to live everyday with their new goal and how to be an advocate and role model for those who have not.

They are likely to be experts on the site and how it works. Encouraging them to share information with newcomers about how to use the community will also provide them with a purpose, and will help the newcomers feel more comfortable within the community. (Of course, don’t forget that a Community Manager should also be helping newcomers!)

As a Community Manager, consider creating community areas for these members so they can discuss their achievements with others who have also achieved the goal, and the effect it’s had on their life, etc. These members may appreciate a new community area dedicated to them so they don’t seem like they’re “bragging” to other members who may still be struggling.

A popular weight-loss program in the US offers lifetime membership to members who have achieved their target weight. In addition to a special badge marking their achievement, these members are encouraged to remain in the community to offer support to those members who have not yet reached that goal. It’s a great way to involve members throughout the “life cycle” of a community of purpose.

Leah Williams: People use the Breast Cancer Care forum when and how they need to. For some people, leaving the community (or perhaps only coming back infrequently to browse or post) is an important step in moving on with their lives. Other people still like to be part of a community that understands them, and understands that life doesn’t always just go back to normal once treatment has ended.

Some people like to stay around to help out newer members by sharing their experiences. Others continue to need the support provided by the community, for example if they have been diagnosed with secondary breast cancer, which can be treated but can’t be cured.

We do think there is value in people continuing to feel connected to the community, whether it is about helping out newer members, or about feeling it is still a place they can find support when they need it. For example, people often find they need support in the days or weeks leading up to check-ups, or when they hear that a friend or relative has been diagnosed, or that someone they met while having treatment is ill again or has died. So it is important that they feel there is still a place for them, even many years down the line, and we will be working on building new ways for that to happen.

Patrick o’Keefe: The overriding principle is that, generally speaking, your community is more than its purpose. Having a purpose is great, but people build relationships that go beyond that purpose. They bond, they discuss other things and they engage with people on different levels.

So, even though they may have accomplished their goal, the friendships they made on that road have a strong possibility of being special to them. They still want to talk with these people in the same venue they always have.

I think it’s natural for some people who achieve something to want to help others achieve that thing. Maybe, by the time they’ve achieved that goal, they may be a moderator on the site. They benefited from the site and now they want to give back by making sure it remains that kind, helpful place that helped them to accomplish something.

For these reasons, and others, some members are bound to stay on the community beyond simply accomplishing their goal because the community isn’t just a goal, it’s a part of their life.

Alison Michalk: As parenting is an issue that raises so many questions we've found that the life cycle of members is quite long as they stay for years as they have subsequent children. As Amy Jo Kim said: 'they come for the information and they stay for the relationships'. We find that once most members get beyond the toddler stage with their children they are more likely to gravitate towards other forums such as the self-interest areas: general, entertainment, house, gardening, money etc.

There are however a proportion of members who stay involved in particular forums to pass on their advice, as they have become passionate and knowledgeable about a given subject. This forms part of the 'reciprocity' element of forum participation. For example topics such as premature babies, homebirthing or children with special needs' forums (the list truly goes on when it comes to children and parenting!).

These members are vital as clearly an event-based forum (e.g. caesarean) needs to attract members who've had the experience and can talk about it, alongside new members seeking information on the forthcoming event.

Blaise Grimes-Viort: Members often enjoy going over their old contributions and being able to follow the process they have followed to reach their goal, such as planning a wedding. Opening more generalist areas for members to remain in touch can help keep them engaged and provide help and support to new members.

Concentrating on side effects to their lifestyle, such as exercise and healthy eating in the case of your smoking cessation example, can also extend their community lifecycle.


Our thanks go to the community managers that we spoke to and who took the time to share their experiences with us:

Leah Williams, Community and Social Media Manager at Breast Cancer Care; Patrick O’Keefe, owner of iFroggy Network and author of "Managing Online Forums"; Alison Michalk, Director of Quiip and ex-community manager for Essential Baby at Fairfax Digital Australia; Blaise Grimes-Viort, recently appointed Head of Social Media and engagement at WebJam, and Hearst Digital and Vanessa DiMauro, CEO of LeaderNetworks.


See our earlier post in this series:
Part 1) How do you engage with a community, as opposed to just informing a community?

and look out for the next part: How do you make an information-based site relevant to newbies ?

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COPPA attempting to update itself

I got up early over the weekend intending to finish up a spanking new guidelines template for eModeration.  But instead, my eye was caught by two stonking posts from two divas of moderation and online youth culture.  I just want to shout them out here and give a digest to anyone who didn't catch them when they were published last week.

Amy Jussel reports on her Shaping Youth blog  on COPPA coalition's new request to the US FTC and Izzy Neis gives a superb run down of the moderation issues of Live Chat for tweens & teens.

I'll try to summarise Izzy's post  later this week, but Amy's first.

I'm assuming anyone coming to this blog knows that COPPA is the US Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, with which websites collecting data from children under 13 must comply.  First enacted in 1998, it requires that parental consent be given for the registration of children onto websites.  However, thanks to the growth of mobile phones, interactive games, and more sophisticated tracking and targeting technologies. it is now seriously out of date.

“The Commission should enact new rules for COPPA that draw upon its current investigations into behavioral marketing and other current digital advertising practices,” said Jeff Chester, Executive Director of the Center for Digital Democracy. http://www.democraticmedia.org/FTCkidsprivacy. “It’s time for the FTC to do a better job of protecting the privacy of children online, especially given the dramatic growth of new techniques for tracking and targeting them through mobile phones, video games, and virtual worlds. This review of COPPA by the Commission is a test case for the agency.”

The groups also urged the FTC to develop a separate set of privacy protections for children 13 and older. Although adolescents’ use of and response to media may differ from that of their younger peers, teens are no less vulnerable to marketing, the comments explained:

“Many teens go online to seek help for their personal problems, to explore their own sexual identities, to find support groups for handling emotional crises in their lives, and sometimes to talk about things they do not feel comfortable or safe discussing with their own parents. Yet, this increased reliance on the Internet subjects them to wholesale data collection and profiling.”

Commenters made it clear that the COPPA model of parental consent would not be appropriate for adolescents. However, they did call for a set of Fair Information Practices for teens in line with those developed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

“Policy should focus on protecting data, and regulating data collection and use, rather than discouraging teens from participating online,” the groups argued.

The coalition is asking the FTC specifically to:

• Extend COPPA’s privacy protections to mobile phones, online gaming consoles, interactive television, and other new digital platforms that are increasingly used by marketers to track and target children.
  
• Update its definition of “personal information” to reflect contemporary marketing practices in which persistent cookies, IP addresses, geo-location data, and even seemingly anonymous combinations of data such as age, zip code, and gender can be used to identify and target individuals.
  
• Use the criteria developed for its 2008 report to Congress on food marketing to clarify the definition of websites and online services “directed at children” in the COPPA rule. These criteria include audience demographic data (i.e., when 20 percent or more of a site’s visitors are between the age of 2 and 12), and content characteristics (e.g., child-oriented, animated or licensed characters or celebrities highly popular with children; language such as “kid,” “child,” “tween,” or similar words; models or characters who appear to be younger than age 13.)
  
• Close the loopholes on when and how a website can contact children multiple times without obtaining parental consent, and to investigate whether some marketers are circumventing COPPA’s intent by using this exception to the rules to engage in ongoing data collection and personalized marketing.
  
• Require major websites, ad networks, social networks and other online service operators to periodically inform the FTC about their data collection practices.
  
• Investigate the efficacy of Safe Harbor programs and require operators to reapply for continued authorization.

Thanks to Amy for highlighting this - you can read her original post here.

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The Giddy Social Whirl: Apple's just not that into you

Kate Williams ponders the world of social media, and today asks: is our relationship with Apple just a little dysfunctional?


If Steve Jobs’s emotion-receptors hadn’t been decommissioned during his last upgrade, he’d doubtless have been experiencing crushing embarrassment this week, after it emerged that the new iPhone 4 – whose launch had attracted the kind of wild hyperbole usually reserved for…well, every other Apple launch - stops working if you look at it a bit funny.

For those of you who’ve not been paying close attention to the unfolding drama, it appears that this device is rather sensitive, in that it loses reception when you hold it with your, um, hand. Specifically, your left hand. If you’re left-handed, this is a bummer.

A brief experiment at Social Towers reveals that holding an iPhone in one’s least-dextrous hand is both uncomfortable and annoying. In the absence of a claw-like iPhone-holding implement, or a perhaps a Heath Robinson-esque head-brace, you’d be disgruntled. And indeed, many were.

As you may already know, Steve Jobs has recently taken to responding personally to customers who email him directly - an idiosyncrasy which seemed both cute and excitingly World 3.0 for a while, but whose giddy novelty must now be wearing a little thin for all concerned.

His first pass at customer relations in this matter is best described as “maladroit", consisting as it did of the instruction to “just avoid holding in that way”. He didn’t actually articulate the implied corollary ‘stoopid!’ - but you can bet your bottom dollar he did the ‘stoopid’ face.

Now this is the kind of advice which, for a left-hander, must rank as high on the offensive chart as ‘oh FGS, give it back here and I’ll scrape the ham off” does for a vegetarian - and which, for me, vividly recalls the time an international retailer of Scandiwegian homewares told me I had broken a rug by walking on it.

It’s the kind of thing which turns a displeased but still receptive consumer into a fiery ball of stuttering fury, who will be quite happy to spend the rest of his days dissing you, your products and the benighted barque which first brought both you and them to these accursed shores. Perhaps realizing the scale of his error, Steve Jobs eventually changed tack - but with little improvement. This time he told a customer: “There is no reception issue.”

Now a class action suit has been launched, which amongst other things accuses Apple of the thrillingly machiavellian-sounding "Fraud by Concealment”. This may (or of course may not – I’ve as firm a grasp of The Law as I have of The Plumbing) relate to a directive which was sent to all Applecare employees, and which seems to imply that Apple have been aware of the antenna problems for a while.

In the light of which, Steve’s ‘there is no reception issue’ comment begins to seem suspiciously like an attempt to reconfigure our reality. Like in those films where the bigamist-husband tries to send his second wife mad by moving around all the furniture, and subsequently denies it to her face while staring very hard into her eyes.

Finally, a string of emails between Jobs and another weepy customer came to light on Thursday; emails in which Jobs – in tones which will be eerily familiar to those of us who have experienced episodes of romantic disharmony - tells his increasingly frustrated correspondent to “calm down”, swiftly followed by the frankly enraging “it is just a phone."

Could it be that some of that lustrous shine is about to be rubbed off Apple’s organically-curved, sits-gorgeously-in-the-palm (of your right hand) reputation? Are we all about to discover that, while Apple, you know, digs us and all - it doesn’t actually adore us like we adore it?

If so, will we keep on mooning after it anyway, evincing shockingly low self-esteem, if not mild self-loathing - or might we say ‘pah!’ to dysfunction, and begin to look around for someone who maybe isn’t quite such a hunk of gorgeous, but who treats us real nice - and loves us, warts and all?


Till next time, mes cheris!

For more social media snippets, follow @emodkate - or for general twittery, @KateVWilliams.

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Roundtable on Communities of Purpose (1) - Engaging

We recently wrote a white paper on the issues brands face when managing a ‘community of purpose': an online community of people with a common, clear, defined goal. In researching that paper, we had some invaluable input from some of the best community managers working in this area. Their insight was so interesting that we hosted a ‘virtual’ round table discussion, to address some of the very specific issues that arise in managing a community of purpose. Each of the community managers we spoke to addressed a specific issue as it related to their own experience.

eModeration: How do you engage with a community, as opposed to just informing a community? For example, if a community is focused on information around an illness, or a dieting community, how do you get members to interact with each other rather than just pulling information down from the site?

Ashley Cooksley: A community of purpose could be seen as easier to engage with its audience than that of a general interest community. People visit the community with a purpose – while the original intention may not have been as specific as “I'm going to post on forums” or “I think I'll reply to other member’s blog posts”, it may not be such a hard 'sell' as a community which is trying to prove value to its members on a more general level.

Community managers must keep some important human-interaction principals in mind when trying to engage with community members:

It’s all about them, not you. While we all enjoy a nice story or anecdote, we are more interested in how it will relate to our own life and what story we can share off the back of your story. “How can I relate to what you’ve said?” and “How does it apply to me?” Providing 'gateway' anecdotes that are seeded within community areas from members and community managers with genuine interest and stories (nothing manufactured, please!) will help to start the conversation by allowing other members to not only empathize, but relate and then share.

Your opinion is valuable. Let community members know that their contributions are important to the health of the community. Ask engaging questions about their personal experiences, and place emphasis on how appreciated their views are by the community. Reply quickly to their posts with “well done” and “thanks for sharing” replies to reiterate value.

Statements don’t engage as much as questions. Talking AT your community makes for a boring conversation. Taking WITH your community, and, more importantly, allowing your community to take the lead is key. Your role as a Community Manager is to plant that 'spark' of interest, allow members to contribute, reiterate the value of their contributions, and leave them to it. The Community Manager is there to stoke the fire, not to be the fire itself.

Leah Williams: To be honest, we don’t really find it a challenge to get members to interact with each other. People do want clear, accurate information, and our website provides that. But when they come to the forum, they want to talk to other people who understand what they are going through. Whether it’s people who have been diagnosed at the same time, or with the same type of cancer, or who live in the same area, or who have the same type of family set-up, people want to give and get support, share experiences, talk about current issues and get practical tips. That’s what brings people back day after day.

However, in common with most communities, we have a lot of people who browse, read and take away information but don’t post. Some of them use the private messaging function instead, and we’re also looking at introducing smaller steps to contributing to get over people’s initial fears.

Maintaining a friendly, open, welcoming and supportive atmosphere on the forum is also extremely important, and this is something we put quite a lot of energy into. At a time when people are feeling quite vulnerable, they really don’t want to step into the middle of a brawl.

Patrick o’Keefe: Everyone is different. They are the ones that have to decide if the kind of assistance your community can offer will be beneficial to them. And then, if they do, they must also decide how much they wish to share of themselves since these can be sensitive, personal matters.

The best thing you can do is make them aware of the possibility of interaction and the perceived benefits of doing so and provide them with the opportunity. Perhaps most importantly, maintain a safe, friendly and supportive environment where one can feel free to share of themselves without fear of being ostracized.

Alison Michalk: Research has shown that Mums in particular value the opinion and experience of other mothers. This has been vital to the success of our community as members value the varied, multiple responses rather than reading an expert or professional piece. They also want to be able to ask more questions so even articles written by Mums don't provide the same level of engagement that members' seek.”

Vanessa diMauro: Engaging members in ‘doing’ something low to mid risk is often a gateway activity to greater participation. It’s important to create opportunities for member participation for all people in the member lifecycle – from newbies to experienced members. This includes creating a portfolio of engagement opportunities that combine low risk and higher risk activities. 

By low risk, I mean engagement activities that do not require a large leap of faith to participate, but enable a member to make themselves visible on the community. Low risk activity is focused on providing activities that allow the member to DO something online. A low risk engagement might include taking a poll, rating content, or suggesting a resource.

Mid-risk engagement is participating in forums on a topic with no right or wrong answer. For example, a mid-risk discussion might focus around the use of a tool or resource, or asking for a specific commitment to join the discussion.

By higher risk engagement, I mean an activity that requires the member to expose a detail of their practice or share something about themselves – an idea or a point of view. This is focused on supporting members’ ability to think online. For example, a high-risk engagement is something that provokes curiosity and stimulates discussion about a critical, controversial or intriguing topic; or a rich theme – a question or dilemma with no simple answer; sharing a personal experience; or a question that stimulates thought and ideas.

Our thanks go to the community managers that we spoke to and who took the time to share their experiences with us:

Leah Williams, Community and Social Media Manager at Breast Cancer Care; Patrick O’Keefe, owner of iFroggy Network and author of "Managing Online Forums"; Alison Michalk, Director of Quiip and ex-community manager for Essential Baby at Fairfax Digital Australia; Blaise Grimes-Viort, recently appointed Head of Social Media and engagement at WebJam, and Hearst Digital and Vanessa DiMauro, CEO of LeaderNetworks.

 Look out for part 2 in this series: What is the value of that community once someone has reached their goal?

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