Bryan Person's Blog: CmtyChat

There are plenty of interesting hashtag chats for communicators taking place on Twitter these days--#JournChat, #PR20Chat, and #HCSM (healthcare) among them--but Sonny Gill and I think there's room for at least one more.

Beginning tomorrow and then every Friday from 1:00-2:00pm Eastern/10:00-11:00am Pacific, Sonny and I will lead #CmtyChat, a discussion on the business of online communities.

Among the topics we'll cover each week:

• The role of community managers and their day-to-day challenges
• How brands can tap into the power of online communities
• The build-vs.-join debate for brands and communities
• Real business case studies

The Community Roundtable's Jim Storer kicks off #CmtyChat

For our inaugural #CmtyChat session, Jim Storer will be joining us to talk about the Community Rountable, a peer network for community managers and social media practitioners that he recently co-founded with Rachel Happe.

#CmtyChat rules of engagement

• Chats are held each Friday from 1:00-2:00pm Eastern/10:00-11:00am Pacific
• Tag all your tweets for the chat with #CmtyChat.


• #CmtyChat will be moderated through the @CmtyChat Twitter account, and the moderator will toss out the main discussion questions throughout the hour.
• To have your question considered for the group, please DM @CmtyChat or send an @ message to @CmtyChat without the hashtag.
• A full range of opinions and healthy debate are encouraged. Personal attacks are not.

If you're in the business of creating, managing, moderating, or participating in online communities, I hope you'll join us for the weekly conversations.

I can't wait to get started.

(Cross-posted to BryanPerson.com)

Sonny Gill and I are thrilled to announce that Marshall Kirkpatrick, VP of content development and lead writer at ReadWriteWeb, will join us as a special guest for this Friday's #CmtyChat on Twitter from 1:00-2:00pm Eastern.

Marshall edited RWW's recently published Guide to Online Community Management premium report, so we know he'll have plenty to bring to our weekly conversation. He's also been covering the implications of today's announcement by Facebook that it's opening up status updates to the public--and the search engines--and we'll kick around what the news might mean for community managers and brands.

If you haven't yet participated in a #CmtyChat, here's what you can expect:

#CmtyChat overview and rules of engagement

• Chats are held each Friday from 1:00-2:00pm Eastern/10:00-11:00am Pacific and focus on the business of online communities, including community management and moderation.
• To participate and follow along in the chat, use the #CmtyChat hashtag.
• #CmtyChat will be moderated through the @CmtyChat Twitter account, and the moderator will toss out the main discussion questions throughout the hour.
• To have your question considered for the group, please DM @CmtyChat or send an @ message to @CmtyChat without the hashtag.
• A full range of opinions and healthy debate are encouraged. Personal attacks are not.

Chat with you on Friday!

(Cross-posted to my BryanPerson.com blog)

Sonny Gill and I decided to experiment with #CmtyChat this week by moving the discusson from Twitter to FriendFeed.

And here's the headline takeaway: Although FriendFeed isn't perfect, it is certainly a good platform to support thoughtful threaded online discussions in real time.

As for the specific pluses and minuses of FriendFeed, here's my take:

Why FriendFeed chats work

• Threads. One big drawback of holding "chats" on Twitter is its lack of native support for threaded discussions. While a third-party application such as TweetChat help get around that problem to some extent, it can't compare to the built-in functionality of FriendFeed, which enables users to comment directly into a specific thread.


• Real-time updates. When a new comment is added to a discussion, it appears instantly on the screen. No browser refresh required.


• A FriendFeed room can include multiple live threads at once. This encourages CmtyChatters to go deeper into subjects that interest them and skip over the topics that are less compelling for them. Plus, the chunkable threads can make reviewing the archives a more focused exercise.


• Moderation controls. As the administrator of the CmtyChat room (or "group," as FriendFeed now refers to it), I can delete inappropriate or wildly off-topic threads or individual messages. Our group is also still relatively new and small enough to escape spammers' detection, but should that ever change, I have a way to minimize their damage.


• Search and record keeping. Use FriendFeed's Advanced Search tools to pull up specific keywords/phrases from the group or all messages by a particular user. Searches can also be saved for later recall. Each thread also carries a unique permalink encouraging incoming links.

What could be better

• Overload? While the real-time updating feature is generally a plus, there were at least a few occasions today where I was overwhelmed by the volume of new posts at once, particularly when they were spread across multiple threads and I had to scroll up and down to keep up. Plus, FriendFeed's search results pages allow users to "pause" the inflow of new updates and catch their breath, but group pages do not.


• No "comment" button at the bottom of threads. Speaking of scrolling, it's a hassle to read down through several new comments, scroll back up to click the "comment" button, and then scroll down again again to actually post. FriendFeed should take a cue from Facebook, which includes a comment link at the top of a thread and a comment box, by default, after the last comment.


• Missing avatars. Avatars only display next to the person starting a thread. But for users adding comments, we only see a link to their FriendFeed page; there's no image attached. As Jeff Hurt noted, "I'm missing ppls avatars for responses. Liked seeing the human side [on Twitter]."
  

What's next for #CmtyChat?

There's plenty to like about FriendFeed's threaded discussions and real-time updates that warrants giving the platform another go next week.

So if you're interesting in the business of managing online communities, please join us for a lively online conversation in our CmtyChat FriendFeed room next Friday, July 24, starting at 1:00pm Eastern.

Links to CmtyChat on FriendFeed from Friday, July 17, 2009

Note: name indicates user who initiated the thread

• Sonny Gill (moderator): CmtyChat rules of engagement for Friday, July 17, 2009 (11 comments)


• Keith Burtis, Q1: How are people measuring the effectiveness of their time spent community building? (39 comments)


• Sonny Gill (moderator), Q2: How does a CM deal with the challenges of connecting/cultivating community on different platforms? (61 comments)


• Sonny Gill (moderator), Q3, via Daniel Johnson, Jr.: What skills are absolutely essential for effective CMs? (43 comments)


• Sonny Gill (moderator), Q4, via Chuck Hemann: How do you convince a company/your boss that a community manager is needed? (40 comments)


• Sonny Gill (moderator), Q5: How does this FriendFeed chat compare to the #CmtyChat in Twitter? What's worked well for you? What hasn't? (37 comments)


• Keith Burtis: discussion about "lightning speed" of FriendFeed chat (13 comments)


• Sonny Gill (moderator), RANDOM: Feel free to chat amongst yourselves and what not in this open thread. Our main questions will be posted in our Q threads. (24 comments)

My two favorite nuggets out of last Friday's "Cmty Chat" in FriendFeed both came from Richard Millington, an online community practitioner who's currently working with the United Nations Refugee Agency.



1) "Converting offline fan groups into online groups is actually quite easy compared with taking online fan groups offline (meeting at events, etc.). The bigger challenge, by far, is finding and connecting people in the first place."

2) "I see communities of BINGO players, farmers, mommy bloggers, sewing circles, and all sorts of groups that you wouldn't immediately identify with using online communities thriving. I think it's far easier to get an existing offline community to overcome the challenges of technology than it is for an online community to overcome the physical distance barrier."

Richard's insights were mixed into a discussion about how and whether face-to-face groups can also come together and extend their communities online.

In an e-mail exchange following the group chat, I asked Richard to expand on his remarks:

Bryan Person, LiveWorld: Why it is easier to convert offline groups to online than the other way around?
 
Richard Millington: The biggest challenge of building communities is building relationships between members. People that have met in person have a stronger relationship than those that haven't. One hundred online chats can't match one in-person meeting. If you have a group that already meet offline, then adding an online component is simple. Facebook thrived entirely through giving people that have met offline a place to talk online.
 
People that talk offline are usually keen to talk online. People that speak online aren't always keen on meeting in person.
 
BP: What is the right way to go about organizing face-to-face events for members of an online community?  How do you know if it's appropriate to do in the first place?

RM: Well, whether it's appropriate is based entirely on the situation, I can't be the judge of that. I would say that people usually don't meet for the sake of meeting; they need a good excuse to meet.

That's why conferences work so well. If you arrange an event and a VIP of your community's top to speak, a lot of people will turn up. It takes the pressure of meeting for relationships. Likewise, if you arrange a trip or an activity, more people are likely to turn up.
 
From my experience, if none of your members have met up before and if they don't speak offline/communicate individually with each other, then it's far harder to arrange a meeting. So take deposits beforehand!