supereric

This is an interesting study, if you can call it that. It tracks the engagement level of a community. Then, it shows the gradual unplugging of people after the community manager leaves. I can see from the comments that some people question the value of this data. I think it’s valuable even if it’s incomplete data (although I would like to know more about this particular community).

Many commenters here seem to believe that communities should run themselves. I hear that kind of talk a lot. The idea is that crowd-sourcing will somehow create auto-magical efficiencies, which will completely eliminate the need for costly communication plans or marketing or customer service. I don’t believe that’s actually possible, and I feel like setting up those kind of expectations can be dangerous. It’s fun to sell community in this way because it makes you seem a bit like a visionary, but it doesn’t seem realistic. Is Flickr running itself now? That’s the most successful community I participate in, and I am guessing they haven’t laid off their community people just yet.

What’s realistic to me is that community managers are needed on a fundamental level to keep trying experiments in communication, to keep changing the conversation, to keep highlighting the new and exciting. No single strategy will work and keep on working forever. People are too fickle.

Read it for yourself and see what you think.