Online community ”deaths” and planning exits

Miia Kosonen Presentation at Community Manager Master Class II

1st Jun 2015

Moments of community death

Inception Establishment Maturity Mitosis

Preece, 2000, Kosonen, 2003, Iriberri & Leroy, 2009, Gaspers, 2012, Millington, 2013

No commitment, lost sense of community, no participation, unpurposeful contributions (Anne-Sophie Gaspers)

Community is asleep, platforms have changed, the bugdet runs out, the hosting organization no longer exists (Jenn Pedde)

Why online communities die

1) The core group excludes new members with inappropriate behaviour

2) Self-satisfaction: the community overestimates its own value *

3) Development and progress in the hosting organization may turn out as severe conflicts in the community

4) Community managers and admins tend to be most committed to the community, and at times they just need to take a break.

Martin Belam, 2015

* Example: less than 0,004 % of visitors produce 20 % of comments on Guardian’s site

Why online communities die

External factors – e.g. platform no longer supported

Organizational factors – e.g. no more host organization

Social factors – e.g. bullying, excessive trolling

Lack of resources – no one to cultivate conversations

Members are bored or their needs already met

Not capable of renewing itself – exclusive core group

Reasons for community crises

Types of community deaths

Naturally Forced

”For a community to die, it must have been alive first.” This is not so common as one might think!

Tight online communities are built around strongly emotional aspect, not just any social-media content or nice-to-know information.

• Most common way: typical for loose online networks and temporary communities e.g. around events or projects

• The community does not actually die – it rather fades away.

• Social factors, e.g. unresolved conflict

• Organizational factors, e.g. budget runs out, host organization no longer exists

• Technology, e.g. platform out of use, no longer supported

Do not be afraid of community deaths and crises. They are ways to learn and renew. For members, those moments are often the most memorable ones!

As a Community Manager, share your experiences openly and tell what you have learnt from the crisis.

People spend less time within the community No active participation or only a few active

participants * Less interaction: ego-posting and monologues

* Network structure determines community viability, not e.g. growth rate (Kairam et al. 2012). The most valuable medicine against community deaths is a strong main clique where a broad base of members all know each other but also have connections outside the core group. Use social network analysis and consider exit when there is a critical change!

When to start implementing exit plans?

The community is most viable when having a strong but non-exclusive clique.

Select timing Develop crisis plan with a schedule Create communication plan: how to keep the

community up-to-date Evaluate whether you need an optional platform

and organize information transfer Create substitute profile for contacting people Organize ”farewell session” to bring members

together Copy and store the necessary information

Exit plan

As a Community Manager, you need courage to decide when it is time to exit. Also do not hesitate to say if you are tired of hosting!

Preece, Jenny. 2000. Online communities: designing usability, supporting sociability. Chichester: John Wiley.

Kosonen, Miia. 2003. Virtuaaliyhteisön kehittämisprosessi [Virtual community’s development process]. Master’s thesis, Lappeenranta University of Technology.

Iriberri, Alicia & Leroy, Gondy. 2009. A life-cycle perspective on online community success. ACM Computing Surveys, 41(2).

Kairam, S., Wang, D.J. & Leskovec, J. 2012. The life and death of online groups: predicting group growth and longevity. WSDM’12, February 8-12, Seattle, Washington, USA.

Gaspers, Anne-Sophie, 2012. How online communities work: how do online communities evolve? Community life-cycle model. http://thinkonlinecommunity.com

Millington, Richard. http://FeverBee.com

Pedde, Jenn. http://communitymanager.com

References

Thanks for your attention!

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Contact me:

Miia Kosonen PhD, Knowledge Management, Trainer, ResearcherRuokolahti, Finland

https://twitter.com/MiiaKosonen http://slideshare.net/miiakhttps://fi.linkedin.com/in/miiakosonen koomikoo ( at ) gmail.comBlog mainly in Finnish: http://tohtorilletoita.wordpress.com