BBC Online Community Service?

Dan Dixon, a BBCi technical architect, has posted a blog post with some thoughts on where the BBC should be going with its online community offerings. He starts from the observation that in social networks (or YASNs – a dodgy new acronym meaning ‘Yet Another Social Network’), the people with friends end up getting more friends, with the lonely people left struggling. He calls this ’social capital’.

I’d largely agree with this analysis – it holds for many offline relationships too. It’s always annoyed me that the people who appear on dating shows like Blind Date are always the confident, attractive types, who are probably least in need of dating help. Still, that’s television. Likewise in many things it’s often the people who shout loudest or are most proactive that get places, and not necessarily those with talent.

However, this all brings me around to a discussion I had with my brother the other day about whether blogging networks are genuine communities or not. My brother took the view that communities have defined boundaries and are contained, eg all taking place on one forum or website, whereas bloggers form anarchic social networks, with no outer perimeter.

Whether or not this analysis matches intuitions or not is largely a semantic issue, but I think it raises an interesting question about whether communities are more inclusive than networks or not? Perhaps, by having a clearly defined membership and some kind of shared identity, it is easier for everyone to feel equal and for everyone to take part? In reality, I don’t think this is true. Even within communities, there are levels of involvement, ranging from the super-users to occasional lurkers.

Dan’s conclusion is that perhaps the BBC can help those that don’t have much social capital by making the curve bigger so that those in the tail end of the community get a fatter thin-end of the wedge (to mix multiple metaphors). In practical terms, this would seem to boil down to the idea that we should make it easier for the lurkers and the occasional-posters in online communities to get more involved.

How do we do this? By making the software easier to use. By making new and peripheral users more visible within the community. By integrating the software with more personal platforms such as e-mail and SMS to bring back occasional users. By developing an open and welcoming community feeling amongst staff and users. Any other ideas?