A rich and complex social structure of computer-mediated-communication has evolved over the past several years, allowing people to share their personal and professional interests with other members of a community that exists only in the minds of the users and through the communication lines that bind each to all. The most significant of these communities has been The Well, an eclectic and energetic virtual gathering place. See Howard Rheingold's authoritative book, The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier for the definitive overview of virtual communities.
In the last two years we have witnessed a gold rush of commerce on the web, with literally thousands of new business ventures attempting to stake a claim in the electronic mother lode. There is emerging interest in developing commercial enterprises that include some of the successful attributes found in virtual communities.
Using excerpts from case studies, this session will examine efforts in the publishing industry to develop viable, active virtual communities in which a significant motivating force is not just the bringing together of people with similar interests to share a social experience, but also, to increase market share and enhance awareness of specific products and trends.
The Virtual Community Lab of the Thomson Technology Services Group, a division of the Thomson Company, was formed in 1996 to develop a strategy for enhancing the products and services of Thomson Companies by adding a virtual community component to their online presence. Our mission is to develop company-centered virtual communities that demonstrate the best and most useful features of technology which contributes to community building including electronic conferencing, training, company-oriented calendars of events, prototypes and real or virtual symposia to name a few. The Virtual Community Lab works collaboratively with participating companies to build and improve business practices and expertise to develop new and more cost-effective ways of delivering products and services to their customers.
There is no clear and absolute definition as to what a virtual community is within a business context. Virtual communities are sometimes seen as an "add-on" to the core business. Instead, a virtual community should be seen as a component of an interactive business strategy that includes:
This "community of communication" provides value to the company by giving it insight into user needs and expectations, direct and immediate feedback about problems or successes, and a means to promote new product development. Above all, the virtual community needs to be understood in terms of how it might improve, change, modify or affect the business process, not simply as a set of technological tools.
A scan of web sites, and a review of the literature indicates that efforts to build revenue-enhancing virtual spaces are moving quickly but with mixed results. Product or service delivery is obviously the core of building an electronic presence. Many companies are experimenting with varying results. The aspect of building community is much more nebulous at this point. While there are some sites that can truly be called virtual communities based on the classical model, business-centered virtual communities are profit driven, thus we are discussing communities composed of users who share some commonality regarding a particular product or service. Users identify with the product, and immediately recognize its uniqueness. An old quote from the Chiquita Corporation sums it up best:
Louis Gerstner Jr., president of IBM was quoted in The Washington Post on December 15, 1996: "We're going back to doing what I consider to be at the heart of any successful business-that is, we are listening to customers. There is an almost maniacal focus in this company today on how do we provide value for customers, as opposed to how do we just create technology and throw it over the wall like a lot of companies in this industry." This statement, while addressing other current marketing issues, aptly captures the intent behind the rather sudden shift to create business-related virtual communities.
Another endeavor worth watching, is Howard Rheingold's venture into electronic commerce with the creation of Electric Minds. Rheingold is without question, the definitive voice on virtual communities. At this site he brings together the virtual equivalent of an evening of truly exceptional conversation and debate among friends.
It is wise to keep in mind that creating a virtual space should be done with the goal of enhancing already existing services and products. While profitability is usually a motive, in this case a virtual community might be built with the idea of reallocation of certain functions or resources, especially regarding support and customer service. In talking with various webmasters, marketing personnel and others involved in creating virtual communities, the aim is to draw users in and provide something of value that causes them to identify with the site and return frequently. One marketing director with Reuters' stressed that their mission was to develop content which may be licensed to a former competitor to enhance that competitor's web presence, an ironic but vivid example of cooperatively competing.
The interest in virtual communities as a business presence is growing rapidly as companies strive to find their niche. The publishing industry is already well represented as a business presence on the web, but examples of good and thriving virtual communities are still somewhat scarce. While many publishers have established visibility on the web and some offer various sorts of lures to attract users, such as offering the free searching of periodical databases with fee-based document delivery, or free access to useful reference databases like Books Out of Print as provided by Reed-Elsevier's Bowker, examples of lively interactive communication among customers is still somewhat rare. A possible exception is ZDNet which may owe its success to the particular customer community it serves.
The following examples reflect key characteristics and features of businesses that have made the shift from traditional product delivery to the web as well as unique web-based endeavors. The cases range from a long-established niche-market publisher to a community specifically created to serve its very specialized clients via the web. These examples also illustrate unique web-based endeavors and ongoing exploration and experimentation.
| Site | Old Farmer's Almanac |
|---|---|
| Target Audience | General public, gardeners and hobbyists |
| Overview | The site is the newest incarnation of the oldest continuously published magazine in the United States. |
| Background | Selected by PC Magazine as one of the 100 best sites on the web. The OFA has been in publication since 1792. Originally started as a means of publishing tide tables and moon phases for fishermen and farmers, the almanac guaranteed its place in history by providing accurate forecasts of weather. The publication's founder, Robert B. Thomas is said to have devised the means for developing forecasts that were more accurate than competing publications. Mr. Thomas provided the Almanac with a good foundation, serving as it's editor and publisher for 50 years. In establishing the Almanac he declared, "Our main endeavour is to be useful, but with a pleasant degree of humour," adding interesting stories, folklore and information to the publication. Today's publisher confirms that this is still a primary goal.
In the 1850's the new editor experimented with a new cover design, and added the term "Old" to the original publication. Once satisfied with the cover design, it has remained the same since 1855. Editors of the Almanac experimented in various ways with the content, but it has essentially remained unchanged over the years. The Almanac enjoys a circulation of approximately 4,000,000 per year and is available via subscription, as a bonus for subscribers of Yankee magazine, and from newsstands, feed stores and similar retail outlets. |
| Look and Feel | The interface, designed by Digital Island, is extremely pleasing and easy to use, giving the user the sense of exploring the print edition with the ease of clicking the mouse. |
| Forum/Chat Software | NetThread |
| Strengths and Weaknesses | The Old Farmer's Almanac has quite successfully made the transition from print to electronic media. Customers can order publications, interact with staff and one another, and something of value is available to anyone who wishes to drop in. The appeal of this site is that it manages to capture the flavor of a publication that has successfully survived more than two centuries by providing a specific and rather narrow product, is quite comfortable with its place in our lives, and has determined that it can thrive in the electronic world. |
| Site | ZD Net |
|---|---|
| Target Audience | Computer professionals of all types, general public. |
| Overview | Users of the site can read selected articles from Ziff-Davis publications, and receive information on the newest trends and developments in the industry. The site is fresh with absolutely current documents and sources. |
| Source of Revenue | Advertising. |
| Background | ZD Net News - High profile news stories from ZD publications, as well as new and existing products from Ziff-Davis, including recommendations, a software library offering a wide variety of products to download for trial, information of special interest to Mac users; contains product updates and more.
The site also includes Community Center and the Quick poll, weekly poll on electronic issues. Forums and chat areas, the Whole Web Catalog and news specific to web development as well as a great site for downloading new games, and of course, articles from selected Ziff-Davis publications. |
| Look and Feel | Intuitive, professional and easy to maneuver. |
| Forum/chat software | Proxicom Forum by Proxicom. |
| Strengths and Weaknesses | ZDNet provides an excellent example of bridging the distance between the traditional and electronic publishing environments. It proves to be an superior model for publishers who wish to understand what a virtual community means in this environment.
The forums are heavily used with a broad range of topics. Opportunities to participate in live chat with experts are also available and offer extremely timely and high interest topics. |
| Site | BioMedNet |
|---|---|
| Target Audience | Biological and medical professionals. |
| Overview | Biomednet's mission is to provide both content and community as opposed to a service like Reuter's Health Information Services which serves as a content provider and is in the process of developing a relationship with Biomednet. At this point they are projecting that the service will meet the needs of their users and be profitable. |
| Source of Revenue | User fees for document delivery |
| Background | Full text searchable library, shopping mall with links to sites such as Blackwell's online bookstore, calendar of events and job exchange |
| Look and Feel | Excellent user interface with easy-to-navigate buttons for moving through the site as well as clear instructions. |
| Forum/Chat Software | NCSA's Hypernews with customization. Under construction are chat component and meeting rooms that can be booked for private discussions. Includes thorough instructions for downloading Netscape's chat tool. |
| Strengths and Weaknesses | On the whole, the site is easy to navigate with information of real value available to the user both in the form of low-cost retrieval of articles, or being able to browse through the shopping area for specific book titles, software, lab equipment or services, including a "virtual advertising agency" (KMP Associates). It is clear that they have ambitious plans for growing and changing to meet their users' needs. |
Because building a business presence on the web seems to be the thing to do, most businesses, even perhaps those that should not are doing it. Adding a virtual community component should directly relate to the company's mission. If it is not clear from a quick visit to the site what the product is, what kind of value-added service the user is going to receive, or why the user should opt for this means of product or service delivery over traditional means, the battle for market share will be uphill all the way. Too often there is, in Gertrude Stein's words, "no there there."
Many sites suffer from these common problems:
Conversely, sites that employ good virtual community practices furnish real value for their customers, provide immediate product recognition and identification and give the user a reason to return to the site, presumably to purchase new products and services, but also to participate in the community conversation.
Because the tools and expertise needed to build a compelling electronic presence are in their early stages, it is essential that we constantly mine the depths of electronic commerce to extract the best that is being developed. Just as the robot programs used by search engines are really in a primitive stage of development, so is building a best practices arsenal for virtual community expansion.
Much of what has been written on virtual communities relates to the social aspects and the ways in which people communicate online. As businesses recognize the opportunity to build communities of customers, more information is emerging on how this might be accomplished.
Following are electronics links to sites with valuable information, or references to printed works that might be of interest, thus the use of the term Webliography.
Hagel, John, and Armstrong, Arthur. Net Gain: expanding markets through virtual communities. Harvard Business School Press, 1997.
Rheingold, Howard. The Virtual Community: homesteading on the electronic frontier. Addison-Wesley, 1993. Full-text version is available at The WELL.
Smith, Mark and Kollock, Peter. Communities in Cyberspace. University of California Press, Winter 1997. A look at the sociological aspects of virtual communities. An excerpt can be found at http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/csoc/cinc
Turner, Ian. "Strategy and Organization." Manager Update, Vol. 7, No. 3, Spring, 1996.
A Business Researcher's Interests
http://www.brint.com/EmergOrg.htm
This site offers an abundance of information on virtual organizations from a business perspective, discussing the value of virtual communities as well as other trends in technology. Follow links from "Virtual Corporations & Network Organizations."
Cyberspace Innkeeping: Building Online Community
http://www.sfgate.com/~tex/innkeeping
John Coate's 1993 essay was written before the Web as we know it today. However, it offers a compelling history of online communities within their social context.
What is an Electronic Community?
http://techweb.cmp.com/iw/583/csc2.htm
A brief summary of background on virtual communities and the business
opportunities they contain.