Future Of The Community

Written by Ridzuan Ashim

Monday, 09 July 2007

I write this with reference to the Ping.sg community although some thoughts could be applied across other communities of similar nature. With the conclusion of the 1st Ping.sg Anniversary Party, what’s next? How will this grow? What factors might affect this? Why am I writing this? Before I begin, I think it’s important for me to identify myself, where I stand in the blogosphere and in the ping.sg community. If you don’t already know, Uzyn Chua is the founder of ping.sg and we’ve all heard the story of how the site was born from the need to solve the simple problem of reading local Singaporean blogs(which is embarrassing because this solution is developed by a Malaysian) It grew from nothing but a programmer’s personal site to one that has around a 1000 users today. Who am I? I’ve been a blogger since what must be 1999 when blogging wasn’t even a term yet. Unlike the bloggers with causes today, I have and still am the sort of blogger that blogs for the purpose of self-expression. I’ve gone under pseudonyms and also jumped from site to site. It’s only in the recent year or so that I decided to use my real name because I began to feel that the blogosphere has reached a point where people have to take responsibility for what they say. I met Uzyn at an unconference event held by E27 some time in 2006. There he was giving a talk about his new web2.0 site and so I joined just for the fun of it. Not knowing that E27 brings young startups and thinking that since Uzyn gave a talk, he must be quite a big shot, I joined to see what this ping thing was about. I liked it. It was simple. And it was extremely targeted – Singaporean blogs. Since then I’ve seen the site switch over to the new design interface designed by Veron(from sparklette.net) and subsequently gotten involved in their outings. My most recent involvement would be in being the pseudo stage manager for the 1st Ping Anniversary. What is the purpose of me writing this article? There are a few key things that I’d like to talk about. Mainly: 1. Who are the key players in ping.sg? 2. What responsibilities exist and who should shoulder what? 3. Challenges for Ping.sg 1. Who are the key players in Ping.sg? There are, in my opinion, 3 key groups of people - The core, the active members and the passive members. Let me define these in greater detail. The core. These are the guys who actually conceptualise, design and implement. These would include the people who actually commit in the long run to do the design work, the programming and also map out the implementation schedule. Without this group, the community site would cease to improve. Under this, I’d say that only Uzyn himself falls within this group. He is obviously the one who does all the development work, the hosting work, and the financing and while Veron designed the present interface, she is not a permanent member of the team. Perhaps this group will expand if permanent developers are hired or something. The active members. These are the people that are actively involved either online/offline or both. They’re characterized by their participation in the shoutbox, forums, adding each other to IMs, going out for outings and being involved in planning for outings/events. Some go so far as to offer logistical support for such outings/events. Here, people like Chinmay, DK, Adrian and whole lot more…I’m not going to name them all because this is really a dynamic list with people who are clearly in it and some who transit between being active and passive depending on external commitments. The passive members. These are the users who’re in ping.sg simply because they want to ping. They do add value to the community because their articles get aggregated but they don’t add much in terms of actual social interaction on the ping.sg site as well as to offline activities. In short, they’re there…but they don’t to interact with anyone else. (Replying on their blogs don’t count as much because that’s really just adding value to their own blog and not to the ping.sg community) 2. What responsibilities exist and who should shoulder what? This is really 2 questions. So I’ll begin by identifying the general areas of responsibility before identifying who should be responsible for what. From where I am, there are 4 main areas of responsibility – Administration, Site Development, User Growth and Community Development. This is made on the assumption that ping.sg will not be a moderated platform and therefore will lack the emphasis on the quality of articles that get aggregated (which, by the way, is one distinguishing factor of ping.sg) . Administration – Like the word suggests, this pertains to stuff like financing, backup of the database, answering of queries, etc…I think this is quite self-explanatory… Site Development – This area of responsibility will encompass things such as identifying new features for implementation and subsequently actually implementing them. This will include the handling of all server related developmental issues (e.g. what happens when there is not enough bandwidth?) as well as fixing any bugs that have been identified. Other responsibilities here will include the handling of issues such as what happens when the crowd gets so huge that the present interface can no longer service the needs of the community? How will the influx of new articles be presented? User Growth – truth be told, the number of people in an online community is often a key indicator to it’s success. Here I refer to both Active and Passive members. This area of responsibility will encompass the key question of, “How do we get more people to join?” In a way, it’s about marketing ping.sg and converting them into people who have an account and ‘ping’ their entries to the site. Community Development – This is, to me, a critical area for ping.sg to look at. What really distinguishes this online community from the rest is that there is a high value in the relationships between users in ping.sg. There is a significant number of people who’s not just there to use the ping-pong service they’re also engaged with each other online and offline. This area of responsibility would include running online/offline events and activities that promote the creation of relationship value between people. If User Growth is about increasing membership, Community Development is about converting passive members into active members. (Inside joke: They turn the shoutbox lurkers into real talking members) So…who’s responsible for what? I’m tempted to say that we’re all responsible for everything as I’m sure Uzyn would think that he’s responsible for everything as well. But let’s be honest. This is a community driven effort and this naturally suggests that all parties have a stake. For the purpose of this article, I will only make a distinction between the 3 main parties that I’ve identified earlier. I’d say that both the duties of Site Development and Administration would fall on the shoulders of the Core group. Suffice to say, they’re the only ones who should be able to do this. While parts of site development could actually involve other parties, the end decisions have to be mapped out by this group. It is, at the end of the day, their baby. Both passive and users are responsible for growing the numbers. There’s a myriad of ways to do this. The simplest way I think would be to put up the community widget or logo somewhere on their blog. It’s a simple indication of their participation in ping.sg and it also serves to inform non-members of the existence of ping.sg. Since passive users are just there to use the service, that’s the most that I expect they should do. Active users however, will probably take a more aggressive stance. I think they will actually tell people personally about the value of the community and why people should be part of it. Community Development. This is something that involves everyone. In a sense, it’s somewhat a position that’s always moving and will always be changing. The vision of what the community is and what it’s going to be will always be a fight between the Core and the active users. That said, the passive users will not be spared. Some people will want the community to be small and cosy. Some want it big and cosy. Some want it to have lots of money making value. Many will want it to be many things. At the end of the day, it becomes everyone’s responsibility to push for what they believe it should be. 3. Challenges for Ping.sg There are challenges for both the core team as well as the rest of the community. For the Core Team I think much of what has transpired started from a hobby. Unfortunately (or fortunately), it has come to a stage where the core team has to start making a transition from a hobbyist mindset to one that’s more structured. More rigorous and practical in it’s execution. I go so far as to say that a corporate approach has to start to sink in so as to make this a sustainable and growing entity. The unique challenge for the core team however, is that unlike the traditional dynamics of normal companies, a community is about relationship building (between members) and collaboration (bringing about a unique and useful local blog aggregator). How will this be driven forward by the community without the core team itself losing control over the site and the vision which started it? Much of the site’s development has been based on goodwill. Hosting fees, development costs, server costs. While some recent changes has been partially financed by new advertisers, how big a role will ‘goodwill’ play on a larger scale? Will goodwill even be practical on a larger scale? The rest of the community While the community has it easier, it too has a challenge. As the community grows in size, how will it strengthen existing relationships while forming new ones without losing the cozy environment that’s one of the unique selling points of the site? How much accountability will it attribute to itself and how much of it will be attributed to the core team? On a personal note, I pose a question to the ping.sg community, “As we grow in size, will we be a reflection of the Singapore as we know it – a community of people who will complain and expect the higher powers(akin to the core team) to solve the problems – or will we be more pro-active in making change? Will we work towards preserving the warm fuzzy feeling amidst the growing diversity - or will we let it fizzle out and blame a rapidly growing community for it’s loss?” So how will ping.sg move forward? I guess we’ll have to wait to see what happens when they have their 2nd Anniversary Party…

 

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