Where do Online Communities go to die? Facebook?
Online Community Closed?
My Monday mornings started as any regular work-morning except I received an email with a subject titled “ASPCA Community Closing January 31, 2010.” Closing? How do online communities close? This is strange…<sip coffee>
In case you don’t know what the ASPCA stands for it is The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. After getting this message I began to think about how Facebook, Twitter and other social media vehicles are in competition with themselves. In fact the email sent by ASPCA was in good spirits and really just directed their community of approximately 35,000 members to their Facebook and Twitter contacts. The big question is why? Is it cheaper? Easier to manage? Legally easier to deal with? They didn’t really give an answer to the members who are apart of the site.
Admittingly I have only made a few very small contributions to this online community. That right there, the lack of participation of its members, might be the reason for its closure. In analyzing this further, could this be a dangerous trend of having online communities swallowed up by the big two (FB and TW)?
Putting all your eggs in two baskets and having no real control over what happens to the content doesn’t seem like such a great idea. I have to admit that from a user standpoint a community that has commonality among other communities has something attractive about it. Trust is easily gained by the user who is using a well established site and all information is fairly uniform. However, as an administrator something about it is unsettling. We all grew up with a mild distrust for companies that comprise a monopoly. In the free-information community business, Facebook and Twitter sure stand out as monopolies. So should we worry if and when owner-operated communites begin to close and move to the other more established communities or just embrace it? Definately, something for thought… <sip coffee>
