Why (most) online communities fail

After “portal“, “extranet” or “web 2.0“, “community” became the favorite buzzword of web agencies sales teams, a sesame to convince clients to sign for expensive developments based on the magic user generated content formula. Give a toolkit to your clients and they will do the work for you they say.

Unfortunately reality is very different. In a world saturated with solicitations where people have less and less attention available, most communities fail because they bypassed a few important questions, like “what are we offering users?”, “what is differentiating us from other communities?”, etc…

This phenomena is finally getting noticed and studied:

Wall Street Journal:Why Most Online Communities Fail (via LOIP)

One of the hot investments for businesses these days is online communities that help customers feel connected to a brand. But most of these efforts produce fancy Web sites that few people ever visit. The problem: Businesses are focusing on the value an online community can provide to themselves, not the community.

[...] Thirty-five percent of the online communities studied have less than 100 members; less than 25% have more than 1,000 members

Businesses launching online communities repeat a series of blunders. First, they have a tendency to get seduced by bells and whistles and blow their online-community budget on technology. Moran suggests that businesses spend resources identifying and reaching out to potential community members instead of investing in software that makes predictions, or even social-networking technology.

Moran also recommends that businesses put someone who has experience running an online community in charge of the project. This doesn’t sound particularly earth-shattering, but consider that about 30% of the businesses Deloitte studied have only one part-time worker in charge of their communities. Most other businesses put a single marketing pro in charge of their sites.

Why would anyone think that, because a site is a community, common mistakes like developing the wrong things, bypassing users needs or hiring the wrong people (or good people in a wrong way) would still produce positive results? Right here we are seeing the power of a buzz word. Do a community and life will be easy! No no.