The Value of Community by Alex Beauchamp, Girl at Play

Metrics are rarely useful for the community members themselves. Most of what matters is experience. People may revel in the fact that there are over 25 million people signed up at the same service that they are using, but what matters is that their closest friends are using it and that they are getting value out of it. The 25 million people just have the experience in common.

Who are metrics for then? Business people. Venture capitalists. Journalists. Outsiders. People who want a number to tell the whole story (mostly because they are not part of the community itself and it’s really hard to explain the impact of a great community to an outsider). In the end, it comes down to Social Capital and as I’ve discussed, Social Capital is incredibly elusive. It is measurable, but only relative to the source (how do you measure happiness? everyone has a different experience of it), which probably makes it the loveliest, most perfectly decentralized system in the universe, which is where we are headed, but so many people can’t grasp that yet.

But hell, we need to communicate outside of the experienced boundaries of our communities, so we have metrics. We use metrics to entice more people to come and experience our communities beyond the numbers. We use metrics to try and communicate the pride we have in the amazing things happening in our communities. We sometimes have to compare to give others a reference point. But in the end, we know in our hearts of hearts the real measure is in the experience of it. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding (why do they say that, though?).
By Tara Hunt

Fantastic article on community metrics. Need to blog more about this and will. It's been a crazy, busy year thus far and for the first time tonight I've got a moment to think about what it all means and what's next.

October 4, 2007 | Link to this | Filed in Everyday Play

Send to a Friend

Just fill out the form below to send a link to the "The Value of Community" post. Your privacy is important so the email addresses you enter will not be used for any other purpose than the sending of this message. It is not kept or used in any way except to send just this email.