How do the big boys do it?

I was looking for an article on how to get User Generated Content to actually work, but the site has apparantly died. I stumbled onto this interesting site though:

Community Building and Social Networks

This is actually a community in which they discuss the strategies, failures and successes of the big online communities we all know. For example Twitter, Facebook, MySpace etc.

Maybe this could help us in our own project! So glad I found this site.

The Commercial Black Hole

Well, after being sick, sicker and sickest I'm back to just being sick. But, able to blog. So here goes nothing.


What I noticed this week is that tv.com tries to get their users involved with the look and feel of the website and the community. They're doing this by asking their members for feedback on for example the redesign. But, what I wondered about is; do they actually DO something with these opinions, or are these threads only there to create the illusion of having a voice in the community?

And thus, I explored. And as I suspected, the entire forum is filled with complaints from users, and zero response from the people who run the site. So it is an illusion of power. Not great.

I found out that the site is run by management from CBS, one of the biggest USA TV networks. That alone speaks volumes. Of course it's going to be one commercial megamonster. And of course there's no room for a close knit community. A few things I'd like to point out:

• There's too much irrelevant information for anyone to discuss anything in great detail.
• There's no two-way communication between 'staff' and 'members'.
• They claim to be a User Generated Content website/community. BUT, if the users don't generate, the staff will. Logically, the users are lazy and don't exactly jump to be the best contributor.

I think a lot needs to change here in order to get members more involved. They need to care more about this site, in order for the community to really start to evolve.

More on this later.

Are You Lonesome Toniiiiight?

Pff. I'm getting lonely at TV.com.

I don't feel like a part of anything yet. My profile doesn't feel like a personal thing. I would love for this site to put me in touch with some members who share my interests, since they asked for them in the first place. I've told them what I like, but they don't use this information in any way.

All you can do is search for another member's name. I don't know any names, because I don't know anyone. Duh. So how do I get to know people? So I thought, maybe their forums will provide me with some interesting people to share my hobby with. I checked out their 'Shows in development' forum, since I'm always on top of all the news surrounding these new tv shows. At least 2.179 threads seems inspiring, right?

I immediately spotted something interesting! A Buffy Season 8??! I didn't know about that! When, how, why, where and with whom??? This I have to get into.

Well. That was a disappointment. These people are dumb as a pickle. There is no season 8 and they were hyping over a few comic books. Which haven't even been published, nor will they ever be.

But I have to find something interesting to get into, because I'd really like to see if the members of this community are open to newbies. A lot of TV communities have their regulars and hardly 'waste' their time on getting to know someone outside of their club.

I can do it though, as I have many times before :-)

But so far, all I can find is that someone starts a thread, shares some news, for instance that a new show is going to air next month. Then a few others will say "I will watch that" or "I hate that show" and then the thread dies. No real discussion there. So, I'll be moving on to another forum category...

...which I will blog about later!

Stay frosty.

Community Managers

I found this article on community managers that could be helpful to us, since we discussed moderators in Niels' class yesterday. Turns out these people hate calling themselves Community Managers, because it sounds like they rule the community, which is not the case. They stick up for the community as a whole, they act as a mediator between different parties, etc. etc. Their job is more than just getting people to follow the rules.

What is a Community Manager?