Home » Community » Why Community Matters from Chris Tolles

Why Community Matters from Chris Tolles

Posted by sbeinhacker on Mar 2, 2010 in Community, People, We Media Miami 2010 | 4 comments

Chris is the CEO of Topix, the leading news community on the Web, connecting people to the information and discussions that matter to them in every U.S. town and city. He came to Topix from Spoke Software, a business social networking company, where he was a co-founder and VP of marketing. Before Spoke, Chris was a Director of Marketing at AOL/Netscape for AOL Music, Netscape Search and Directory Products. Chris was a co-founder and VP of Marketing at NewHoo, and led the sale of the company to Netscape. After the acquisition, NewHoo was relaunched as the Open Directory Project at Netscape and became the world’s largest human edited directory of the web, and is still used by companies like Google, Alexa and AOL. Chris graduated from the University of California at San Diego with degrees in Computer Science and Economics, where he was awarded the Michael J. Addison award for his senior thesis about the online information industry.

At We Media Miami, Chris will moderate a session on “Why Community Matters” with Ben Ilfeld of The Sacramento Press, C. Renzi Stone, from SaxumPR, and Anders Gyllenhaal, Executive Editor of the Miami Herald. I spoke with Chris last week and asked him to talk about the burning questions on his mind as he prepares for the upcoming conversations.

“When I think about ‘Community Matters’, it occurs to me that the question is what is the purpose of community? Is it to extol content for the community? Or is it to generate content that the community creates? And then, the larger question becomes how to monetize ‘community’? There are 2 billion users coming online in the next ten years. How do we monetize the value of their content? And, further, how do we deal with “truth” in community-generated journalism? On a community site, truth is subjective. Newspapers must be very cautious about libel issues, and objectionable content is muted. I’m a “freedom of speech” guy, and its cost is hate speech and libel, but I’m good with that because libel kills a free flowing debate. Journalists are fighting with one hand behind their backs. In a community-based media company, rather than “truth seeking”, there is “advocacy building.” I’m looking forward to having this conversation with my colleagues on our panel, some of whom are working for traditional news media. Should be an interesting debate!”

PDF

sbeinhacker

http://www.billhandy.com Bill Handy

Interesting and thought provoking post. The concepts of community purpose (vs. value) and monetizing content are some of the topics I have been trying to wrap my arms around. Truth be known we have to look outside PR/Communication circles to even begin to scratch the surface. (sociology, anthropology and philosophy are at the top of my list) First stop is simply how we now define community. Interacting organisms, different species, an organized society? The list goes on but it is important to have a fundamental understanding of community before you tackle this argument. For this I think you have to look at community in a hierarchical level – the more you move up the chain the more like minded the community becomes.

As we look at content – data being generated by the masses, it is in such supply it truly has no monetary value. Supply/demand dictates this. As an aside, when we talk about the free aspect of this content, it is well beyond the concepts of free as outlined by the book of the same name.

So, to answer the question, with 2 billion users coming on line how do we monetize the value of their content, the answer is we can’t. So then the question becomes how do we monetize the value of their community. Since smaller communities are built of like minded individuals really nothing new ever emerges from the community. Sure, they can report what is going on but it will all be framed the same.

So what really has value? You elude to this in the statement regarding truth seeking (value generated from data) vs. advocacy building (just more data). However, in order to do this you still must have more than media/journalists doing the heavy lifting. Any contributor of data is responsible for this and, as contributors of data, has a moral and ethical responsibility to proactively engage in conversations with others outside the like minded community and at the origin of the conversation.

Think of it this way – I make a statement on my blog – fact, conjecture, rhetoric, opinion, take your pick. This is data. You visit my blog and propose an opposing point of view. We now have a conversation or debate. If we can, through this conversation/debate, create knowledge and wisdom, we have value. This isn’t a clean process, it is hard work and forces all involved to think through their commentary and path of commentary.

The path most of us take is simply post at our own site or within our own community counter points negating the original post or a regurgitation/summary of the original post applauding their content. Whether we do this for ego or narcissistic reasons, feeling of safety in our post, etc. is beside the point. What is the point is we have, by not engaging in the conversation at its root removed all value at every level leaving us with just more data.

Simply put, when we have the opportunity to engage or respond to an article, post, etc. we should do it at the point of reference – it is here where the collective data has the opportunity to be monetized.

We can use this post as an example – I found this through Renzi Stone’s blog at Saxum. I could have read his post, retweeted it and moved on. Data upon data. Or I could have posted this response on my own blog at http://www.billhandy.com and tweeted it out. Again, data upon data. I could have posted this response on his blog but his blog doesn’t carry the entire original post so we are only getting part of the story. The action I am taking is to respond at the point of origin in the hopes of generating a conversation/information from which will come debate which creates knowledge and when applied is an act of wisdom. (as an aside, this doesn’t mean Renzi was wrong to blog about it, in fact he was right to do so but there are actions he could have taken to direct others to engage the original post)

I could go on and one but I have taken up enough of your space.

So this brings us back to media and journalists. How do they monetize their data. I think the above is a good place to start. In my opinion they are in a fine place to generate and hold this debate since their “community” (for some/most, especially at the local level) isn’t made up of like minded individuals. Does it mean we have to look at media differently? Yes. Is it a radical change? Nope, more of an evolution. Does traditional media have to reinvent their business model, I don’t think so, some simple shifts should take care of testing this in an experimental phase. Is the web a better place because of their actions? Most definitely. Now that I think of it, it seems it may not only be evolutionary but also cyclical.

There is much more to this and as I said, I am still working through the finer points, actionable items, etc. Notes upon notes piled up around my desk and saved on my computer but the bottom line for me is a whole new approach to blogging. One which has more value and less data.

I hope someone will continue this conversation, here, where it started.
http://www.twitter.com/eblakejackson Blake Jackson

What Bill is talking about, I believe, is the concept of “fishing where the fish are.” Except that instead of focusing on this concept as it pertains to single-party community engagement, he’s focusing on multi-party community ENRICHMENT.

In other words (to continue the fishing metaphor), instead of staking out our favorite fishing spot and then bragging about how many fish we’ve caught, we should be sharing the location of our favorite fishing spot… and providing fishing lessons to boot! There’s no question which has more value.

In my career, I’ve had the good fortune to be on both sides of this discussion, first as a media member participating in online communities and now as a PR/Marketing type doing the same on behalf of a corporation (Chesapeake Energy Corporation). In both cases, I’ve found Bill’s point about online communities to be true, so much so that it has become an integral part of Chesapeake Energy’s overall social media program strategy.

In the short time that we’ve been participating in the space, we’ve had quite a bit of success, not only in the communities associated with our brand, where we represent the “thought leader,” but also in communities owned and operated by others, including traditional media. Because we don’t have a consumer product, per se, that “success” is not measured monetarily. But it IS measured in multi-level interactions, and by that measure we’ve done quite well.

Excellent post, Bill. I’m looking forward to hearing more about it and hearing more from Renzi about WeMedia in the coming days and weeks.

(Side note: I believe members of the traditional media should NEVER feel threatened by social media. Focus more on OWNING the story and less on being the first to report it and you will never have to worry about being replaced by “citizen journalists” in social media).
Virginia Hoge

Why community matters? coming from Chris Tolles? lets hope not! Let us all hope that Topix does not succeed, nor determine our communities! This is not an ethical company, far from it, and I can prove it.

Something way funky is going on over at Topix.com!
http://open.salon.com/blog/virginia888/2010/05/18/something_way_funky_is_going_on_over_at_topixcom

excerpt:
“Topix practices a form of censorship called “shadow-banning”. A commentator will be blocked from the forums, without any contact or warning notice email from the Topix company. They will then, continue to see on their computer, every comment they write posted to the forums. Unbeknownst to them, they are the only ones who can see these comments, every other Topix viewer does not see their comments. This programming dirty trick, can fool a banned commentator into commenting for months and months without realizing their writing is not being seen. I have been twice shadow-banned from Topix. The first time it took me over two weeks to discover it. I was lucky, it could have been months. Topix is also able to shadow-ban a single comment, the commentator sees it, no one else.”
Susie

In an era when people are committing suicide over cyberbullying, Topix makes a profit off of it. Freedom of speech does not mean you have freedom to libel another individual. The attacks on many of the topix forums are brutal. That should not be allowed. Anyone who would attack an innocent person or anyone in general over the internet has some serious issues. Topix is making a killing off of the suffering of people and that is disgusting and shameful and there is no justification for it.