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Tuesday, July 01, 2008
The Evolving Role of Online Communities
I had an interesting conversation today with some co-workers about the role of enthusiast communities in the videogame market. We all recognize the value of our most passionate customers who spend their own time and money to build online community sites like Evil Avatar or Gamertag Radio or Talking About Games. In fact, the last three employees I've added to the team have been bloggers or podcasters. Their desire to gather information and share it has helped make the Xbox community what it is today.
As we move into a world where every company has a blog, every journalist has dozens of RSS feeds for instant access to news and inside information, and every customer has a Facebook or MySpace page, we're left considering how best to support these influential community leaders, and how to create and distribute information that resonates with our most engaged customers (while supporting our brand goals).
Several years ago, it was inefficient to share information with customers. It was hard to create, requiring agencies and executive reviews and legal reviews, etc. It was expensive to share, buying mailing lists, paying for advertising, pitching stories to magazines that served millions of people. As online tools developed, customers were quicker to respond than companies.
A few years ago, there were lots of bloggers and small sites hosting forums and discussion groups who were scrappy enough to find bits of interesting information and publish them. Individuals appreciated the targeted information, and loved having conversations about something they were passionate with others like them. As publishers, we found that there were lots of community sites full of passionate customers who loved hearing any kind of news about an upcoming product, so we created our own blog. Perfect match: community with leveraged distribution model who only lacked information, together with a company with lots of information but no easy way to distribute it.
Then along came the Wal-Mart of videogame blogs: Aggregators who were good at finding information from lots of smaller community sites and publishing it quickly. Joystiq, Kotaku, and Destructoid became the "department store" of the videogame community, publishing rumors, reviews, opinions, news, a dozen or more times a day. Pretty soon, Joystiq joined sites like Engadget that re-defined how information is delivered, and began increasing their reach into the millions of daily readers.
Companies like ours began treating sites like Joystiq more as news sites than as a blog, and they soon learned that they had access to official and employee blogs usually reserved for community enthusiasts, as well as invitations to PR events, access to executives and pre-brief information reserved for official news sites.
Fast forward to today. I'm seeing fewer and fewer links from big news sites to smaller community sites. I'm seeing more and more publishers creating their own content, rather than the old method of distributing assets and press releases to press sites in advance. And I see individuals selectively sharing information they stumbled across on YouTube or Twitter with very small groups, maybe just a handful of Facebook or MySpace friends. I've seen podcasters realizing that it's almost impossible to grow beyond a few thousand listeners (after 63 weekly podcasts, my team realized that, and we're rethinking how best to meet the goals we originally set for that kind of content).
We've seen video become the preferred way to consume content, and we've seen the software and hardware required to create videos become available to almost anyone.
Harkens back to my days in Business School, studying perfect competitions and supply/demand curves. What happens when there's lots of information supply and everyone has access to publishing tools? In information, the only differentiator is going to be quality. Who is going to be the best at creating high quality content? Publishers. Who is going to be best at delivering high quality content? Sites with enough money to pay a full-time, qualified staff, or a few charismatic, talented, or hard-working individuals who will be the cream to rise to the top.
The next 6-12 months are going to be fascinating to watch.
Posted at 06:30 PM in Social Networking | Permalink
Comments
I call it the 6 billion channel universe: http://www.jer979.com/igniting-the-revolution/the-6-billion-channel-universe/
Ultimately it's a proportional representation. As the numbers of channels increase, the ability to give your attention to any one channel decreases (all things being equal), which is why "remarkable" (note: not gimmicky) actions are the ones that will garner attention. In that, I include remarkable b/c of high quality.
Posted by: jeremy at Jul 1, 2008 9:04:41 PM
This was a great read, John.
I am glad to see that I'm not the only one who feels like the "little guy" is getting the shaft by the same people who once depended on us to help spread the word about their products.
I have been podcasting for 3 years and the press releases are far and few in-between, which really makes it difficult for smaller sites to provide fresh content for their loyal listeners/readers. Now I have to depend on the 1ups of the world in order to get some form of an insight because they get the type of exclusive interview/previews we can only dream of getting.
E3 is going to be a battle royal for "indies" because we're gonna have to fight for every bit of information and present it to our audience in a unique fashion, in order to stand out. With so many "indie" websites gunning for the spotlight, hustle and luck is going to play a huge role for their success.
Posted by: JVB at Jul 3, 2008 2:57:31 PM
Great points John. I think the habits of the consumers of information have changed significantly also.
RSS has really changed the way we get (and publish) information. Before the launch of the 360, if I wanted the latest news, I had to log into a site and browse the forums for new postings. Now, I can just about everything from my aggregator. It's effective, but the idea of me being a "part" of a community is dfferent. I don't necessarily need to interact now to be plugged into the community. Instead of a 2-way conversation, it's a 1-way dissemination of information.
So, yes, from the standpoint of competing for consumers' eyeballs, the best produced or most-needed content rises to the top. This is the TV model, where your RSS aggregator serves as your cable box. The user, in effect, defines the content.
The big problem is determining whether or not the consumers are really being reached. Good publicity *should* generate community feedback. But how do you measure reach when the technology of RSS has removed interaction (and feedback) from the equation?
Posted by: Matthew at Jul 6, 2008 6:09:29 PM
Well Said John. I agree with you on every point. I am a independent podcaster and videogame blogger too. With so many blogs and podcast out there, getting exclusives is relatively difficult. I realized that the joy in this side of the industry is building a community that enjoys the content that we put out. When industries began to get as popular as videogame podcasting, it eventually will implode. It happened with rap in the the 2000's and other industries. Developers are creating their own podcast, where they can control what is told. I was blown away when listening to the madden podcast in Madden 09'. Although game podcasting is crowded as times square, I really enjoy talking on the microphone. I also listen to over 30 gaming podcast a week(I have a computer job!). When big games come out, it seems like every podcast says the same thing. I listen to so many due to the personality of the hosts and their honesty. Even in a crowded industry such as this, individuality and creativity will always stand out. Thanks for the great article, John.
Posted by: Alfred (GHR Maverick) at Aug 22, 2008 5:34:04 PM
