I had tea this morning with Susan Mernit. I caught her before she was off to lunch with Tara Hunt, another person I’m a big fan of.
I’m still humbled that I can grab someone like Susan Mernit, sit down with them – and they are nice enough to have a good brain-jog with me. Anyone who has their own wikipedia page is all around rocking in my book – and I feel lucky to get any of their time.
One part of the conversation stuck out (among many things) was how Susan characterized the difference between successful and unsuccessful community sites. There are a lot of factors, of course, but one that she harbored on was if there was "pent up need" for it.
The best examples: Bayosphere (and the larger Backfence initiative) versus OhMyNews in South Korea. One was unsuccessful and the other has changed South Korea dramatically. The difference wasn’t in the technological breakthroughs of OhMyNews – it was that one community had a pent up need for those communication tools, while the community in Palo Alto for various reasons, didn’t.
All this might seem very obvious once it’s stated. Sounds like the ‘duh’ statement of the century, right? But I don’t think the message has really hit home. We are still in this Cambrian period of internet evolution (where there is an explosion in species variation) but we seldom ask ourselves (especially big media organizations that want to stratify) "who are we serving and are we giving them something new."
Increasingly it will only be media organizations that serve that ‘pent up need’ which will find any community to serve at all.
Interesting. Following up on your evolution theme, managing the “ecosystem” seems to be a big component of success as well, but I haven’t found a by-the-book set of rules for that.