SandlinesMy post on Friday sparked a couple of conversations offline about participation in communities: how do you get people to contribute in an online community?
There’s a huge surge in interest in the ecommerce community, for example, in posting customer reviews on web stores. A couple of interesting businesses in particular (ReeVoo and BazaarVoice) are based around this concept, and both seem to be doing quite nicely thank you.
Over at the IMRG, I’ve participated in/listened to some discussions around the issues involved here – and a big initial concern for e-retailers is around the nature of things that people will say. The assumption is that consumers are far more likely to post negative comments than rave about good stuff. Apparently this assumption is false.
And yet, away from the direct retail environment, one of the themes I’ve heard from new (and new-ish) businesses is around the difficulty in getting conversations started at all. It seems that once they’re underway, it’s somewhat easier to keep it going, but seeding the discussion is a tougher proposition.
What does the Sandlines audience think? I’d love to hear back from people about their ideas on this? Or experiences?
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Hmmm…both ReeVoo and Bazaar Voice have different models from Dooyoo, Ciao and Epinions (and Helium, reviewcentre and so forth) in that they try to ensure that the consumer has actually purchased the product in question. There is no way for folk like thee and me to simply add our own reviews. This has upsides and downsides – the upside being you reduce the crazy person quotient (and downright liar or copier), downside being, as you point out, that it can be harder to get content, and to start discussions. I’d love to know more about how those sites do as compared to the more (at least in my experience) traditional model.
I’ve certainly run across cases where retailers have either threatened suit or (in one case) actual violence when receiving negative reviews – perhaps this is less likely in the models you mention, since the companies in question positively solicit reviews (by paying the review site for inclusion, and so are confident about their products. Dooyoo and its ilk, on the other hand, pay its members (pennies, but nevertheless) to try to encourage participation. The question (debate…argument…fight…) then becomes: is all participation good participation? Given that the dooyoo (et al) model is funded by advertising, what price ‘bad’ content? Is there such a thing as bad content? It is a dilemma that rages in fora and amongst management and staff. Also, how do you monitor content, once membership gets large? And finally, does the site exist for the advertisers, for the companies that pay for inclusion (in the examples you mention), the membership/writers or for the mythical ‘typical consumer’? These questions have taxed many minds for as long as I have been involved in the consumer site world, and that’s been since around the turn of the century. I don’t think the question has ever been completely resolved.
The internet is an inclusive beast – people, in general, want to ‘play’ – they like adding content, and seeing their own name (or username – do a search for “mattygroves” (all one word) and you do get mostly me) in virtual lights – how many people google their own names (I think you’ll find quite a few!).
Ultimately, as you point out, if such businesses can get the content started, they’ll struggle to stop it. And there is a core group of people who will participate in every such site going (especially if there is money to be made). It’s getting everyone else that can be the challenge – I have seen one review site fail for that very reason.
That’s my ramblings, anyway, and rambling it is.
Cheers