online communities & "tribes"

I've been a participant in online communities for over decade (pretty soon after I started exploring the internet seriously in 1996). Being a bit of a freak and therefore poorly serviced by my immediate physical communities, I launched myself into groups concerned with music, chaos magic and other stuff. I was a little surprised when things I learned about this environment could be applied to the KM issues I encountered in my job. Two things have come out in the last couple of weeks that take this a little further.

Beeline Labs, Deloitte & The Society of New Communications Research have a report on the "Tribalization of Business". This does not refer to middle managers covering themselves in paint and hitting each other with sticks (altho the trend for outward bound "team bonding" exercises in the 90s wouldn't make this topic surprising). Rather it's about the involvement of businesses in online consumer/customer communities - for customer service, marketing, new product development, etc. It's actually a pretty solid piece of research - with some nifty presentation ideas (use of Slideshare as a channel, using tag clouds rather than graphs).
Some of the takeaways for me are unsurprising:

• The focus should be on creating a good environment (including seeding the space with good content).
• It's about customers talking to each other (based on social rather than market imperatives).
• You need to support/facilitate them (many organisations seem to be under-resourcing their communities).
• It's not just about your community - but the range of online environments that your customers interact with each other in. You are part of an ecosystem and you (and your ego) have to accept that.

I don't think that we will be replacing Chief Marketing Officers with Chief Community Officers anytime soon for two reasons: i. For most organisations, there is more to marketing than online communities & ii. Online community champions need a different skills set to the traditional marketer. This new role has the following skills:

• Someone who is embedded in the same online environment as your customers outside your community environment as well as inside it.
• Someone who excels at listening, facilitating & doesn't need to hog the limelight.
  
• Someone who understands their own organisation very well.
  
• Someone with some understanding of the role of the community in marketing & new product development & customer service & PR.
• Someone who can pick up the tools quickly and make them work (but probably isn't a technologist).

Meanwhile Seth Godin has a wizard wheeze to promote his new book. Which is on tribes funnily enough. So Seth put up an invite on his blog to join his tribe (on Ning natch). All you have to do is pre-order his book and you're in. Well, you were. The invite was closed after 24 hours due to demand. Seeing as I was probably going to buy SG's book anyway (and I can still cancel it from Amazon if I change my mind) I pitched in. Some observations so far:

• SG's Ning group has nearly 3000 members. Many of them are like SG - shameless self-promoters who sometimes have something interesting to say. It feels very crowded - and already some structures have either emerged or been imposed to cope with that.
• What do these people have in common? Well, Seth. There seems to be a lot of "Seth, Seth, look at me" behaviour. Hopefully this will die down after a bit and people can start talking to each other.
  
• Ning seems to cope with a few hundred people relatively well but less so with thousands.

Things to check out:

• Beeline Labs Tribalization homepage (with webinars & stuff)
  
• Deloitte webinar (with added Intuit)
• Read/Write's observations
• Seth Godin lays out his Tribe thang.
  

Just as "collaboration" will become a much-abused buzz word, so "tribes" & "online community" have hit the peak of the hype cycle. More reportage as it happens.