Community
Speaking of Catster, a few weeks ago, I visited Ted Rheingold, Top Dog (i.e. founder and CEO) of Dogster and Catster (think MySpace for pets). The San Francisco office is this large open space, and just like you’d expect, the moment I walked in, a friendly lab ran up to greet me, wagging his tail.
Ted is a cool combination of artistic and friendly. He was doing freelance web coding when the idea for Dogster came to him. Ted still seemed surprised by just how big the community has grown. He told me a story about how a few of members who were previously strangers came together to rescue a group of dogs that were becoming homeless. One member spent hours driving the dogs to another member’s house who was going to foster them while another member was going to look for a permanent home for them, etc.
“People just want to help,” Ted said. Familiar words that got me thinking about the power of community.
Take a company like Google. While their stock has shot through the roof, Google’s community doesn’t yet extend far beyond the googleplex in Mountain View. Google, despite its amazing success, can still learn from the pet enthusiasts at Dogster and Caster. Like many other companies, its big challenge is to build a community, which is no easy feat.
How can companies build these types of communities? I see three pillars:
1. Shared Values: Ted’s community loves pets, MySpace members value music and free expression.
2. An Ability to Contribute: The more people are able to contribute to the community, the tighter the bond they’ll develop with it. Think craigslist, Wikipedia, and spiritual communities.
3. The Network Effect: This is the really sticky part. The network effect means that every new member adds value to the community. That is, one phone isn’t very useful, but a thousand people with phones are. EBay has the network effect, but Yahoo has never been able to achieve it.
My head is still going on communities. In the meantime, my friend Noah Kagan (who rocks in so many ways) is putting on a conference called Community Next. It’s going to be amazing. He has speakers like Guy Kawasaki, Ted from Dogster/Catster, and one of my favorite thinkers on community, Tara Hunt. I can’t wait.
