Sunday 25 February 2007

The power of communities

The communities do exist and their development has become more important with the internet tool.
But what are the determinant of a community?
With the emergence of the blogs, the internet users became more and more important at the expense of the classical actors (journalists, politicians, ...)

The behavior of the internet users:
An analysis of their behavior on internet explain how is built a community: it s a grouping of people looking for the same interest and seeing regularly the same websites. Their common interest can be video games, books, movies, etc ....

The interactivity:
These people gather some information or can sometime improve a content which already exists.
The best example is Myspace where the internet users are actors and creators of the content. By using the new tools of the web2.0, the virtuous circle of writing/reading/writing can be set up. This will attract new readers and keep the "old ones" attracted.

These two components are the basis of a community. The will of the users to improve the community (by posting regularly, commenting, designing the website) makes the difference between an ordinary community and a famous one.


Some business have already find how to use a community to create profits.
Pickspal is a "new" (since november) US website on sport betting based on a very interessant concept.
Its main interest is the convergence of ideas and the comments of subscribers.
The principe is very simple:
  1. Some experts make a bet
  2. The subscribers comment it
  3. The total of comments gives a general tendency
  4. This tendency is used to bet
At the end, the compilation of the fans can be better than experts' one!
This example show us that communities have a real power and can be a profitable market. Knowing how they operate can provide a huge business for companies.

2 comments:

TJessi said...

That is totally cool! I think that idea the Wisdom of the Crowds is totally neat applied to sports.

VĂ­ctor Cegarra said...

It's a very interesting post,

I think that in "real life", there exist a lot of secret or at least elitist communities that have their copy in Internet. For example, there are a lot of communities as "A small World" that are only allowed to some people...and you can only enter with an invitation of a member. So, I will also find interesting to include the explanation of privacity or accesibility of communities. I think that depending of the viewing status of the community (if everybody is allowed to enter...) the content and practices can considerably change.