Published on Friday, February 16 2007
There’s an interesting study reported in the February 2007 Communications of the ACM: “Encouraging Participation in Virtual Communities”
(Jack Vinson’s written about it as well)
The authors, Joon Koh, Young-Gul Kim, Brian Butler, and Gee-Woo Bock, conducted a field study of 77 virtual communities in Korea.
The findings, while not revolutionary or completely unexpected, are interesting.
It turns out that the role of the individual leader was not a major influence:
Contrary to our own expectations, the efforts of community leaders were not directly associated with community posting or viewing activity. We conclude that community leadership affects a more foundational building block of the virtual community, while virtual community activity (such as posting or viewing) is directly affected by individual members’ needs (usefulness) and experience (offline interaction).
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Published on Thursday, February 15 2007
At the risk of turning this blog into a list of upcoming conferences, I wanted to make sure to mention BarCamp Boston 2.0
Ok, this time the 2.0 isn’t just another reference to the next generation of something which now feels old fashioned – it really is the second annual BarCamp in Boston.
This year it will be held at the Stata Center, Saturday and Sunday March 17th and 18th. (That’s the weekend after SXSW, unless you’re staying through the end of the music festival) .
Check out the Wiki for sessions, registrants, and other necessary info.
Published on Wednesday, February 14 2007
News from late last week that NowPublic, a Vancouver BC based participatory news network, has partnered with the Associated Press, which calls itself “the essential global news network.”
You can read the press release from the AP, or track reactions to the story at NowPublic.
While the releases so far have been rather light on specifics, this seems like a great partnership, assuming it brings some the APs resources in contact with some of NowPublic’s participants.
Published on Tuesday, February 13 2007
I’m looking forward to attending two conferences coming up toward the end of February in the Boston area.
The first is the Public Media 2007 conference, from February 20th to 24th, at the Marriott Copley Place.
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Published on Monday, February 12 2007
A few weeks ago, at the AlwaysOn Media conference in New York, there was a panel titled “Can Brands Get Away with ‘Buzz Marketing’ in the Blogosphere” – it was moderated by Jeff Jarvis (BuzzMachine), and included Rick Murray (Womma, me2revolution, Edelman), Gordon Gould (ThisNext), Barry Reicherter (Porter Novelli), and David Weinberger (Joho the Blog).
I was intrigued by an article in Information Week (“Blogger Smackdown at AlwaysOn“) which concluded:
The debate quickly escalated from a discussion of whether buzz marketing was feasible to whether marketing through blogs even made sense. Online blog marketing firm PayPerPost was savaged by both Jarvis and Weinberger, with PayPerPost’s CEO present in the room trying unsuccessfully to defend himself.
The video from the session is online at the AlwaysOn Media site, though they don’t provide any simple way to link to or bookmark a specific session. Instead, go to this webcast archive page, scroll down to where the session title is, and click on the icon in the video archive column. (Actually, there are lots of good sessions available – including the keynote on “Surviving the Media Disruption” – but beware, the volume varies wildly).
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