If you’re like us, you probably have some unread red-dot notifications in your Slack sidebar. A few are work-related, a few are from social groups or communities, and a few are ghost-town workspaces you keep forgetting to remove.
Community software is very lacking, Circle is probably the tool that is heading in the right direction to cater for all the ‘functionality’.
But at the same time I’m not convinced we need more functionality for all the things. We need more people understanding and getting better at building communities.
I’m more in favour with simplifying things, but maybe that’s me getting old. 🥴
I think success for communities is mostly driven by community design, modeling/rewarding good behavior, seeding with the right initial members, etc., not based on the platform itself. But, functionalities to support admins in doing their work and making these things easier are still much needed :)
totally agree — to the same point with the rate communities are growing, software needs to get better at enabling community managers to do their job faster & teach best practices. Slack def isn't it. Imo we need software that's opinionated enough to teach less experienced community mgrs what a strong community looks like & gently guides them in the right direction. Favorite quote around this from Wendy Woon — "you have to craft a space that invites participation by design"
Bless!!! Most of our platforms are built for chatter not connections. We think it's enough to have a space to share notes back and forth. We need sustainable spaces that support the real work of a community manager.
Love this post Li. My team and I at https://joinharness.com/ are moving towards these things (initially in support of innovation & entrepreneurship communities) and I would love to connect to hear your thoughts on what we're doing.
Currently working with 26 universities, 3 accelerators, 1 city.
This is was so valuable and aligned with my product roadmap for TheClub. We've built a community that enables DJs and Entertainers to monetize their audience through hosting virtual parties within the app. The features you outlined are SPOT ON! Great job!
Another item for the list: community safety & moderation. There’s so much discussion about moderation right now for social media, but I rarely see it called out by platform vendors.
I hope it's if i do a shameless plug here considering the relevance of the topic. At Edition (https://edition.so) we are doing the exact thing, we built our product around empowering community managers. We interviewed 10+ community managers and realized there are multiple tool-set community managers require to build successful communities beyond just slack.
We provide building blocks for community-building such as members directory, events, newsletter/email digest, discussion board, resources, tiered members-only area, etc. Would love a chance to show you our product. my email is kuldeep@edition.so
YES! So far, none of the options we tried even seem to be focused at (possibly) including knowledge hub, member tiers/sub-groups and matching/conversation suggestions. We use Circle, but now moving (back) to Wordpress mostly because of the knowledge hub functionalities we have. But IF this was included in ONE tool... gosh :) Keen to stay posted on this topic.
Hi! I'm building a startup in this space and everything you've said rings so true, especially as we look for the communities we're the right match for. We're not building a tool to exactly address the needs you laid out (a la Circle), but more a tool for interacting *within* those spaces -- making remote events more interactive. I think we might be useful for your "smarter conversations" bullet and event thoughts.
I will be launching my community next year. I am thinking a lot about Design. Too many times the categories and areas are traditional. For example, why not have a "Strong Opinions" section and have moderators move posts there? Why not have an Evergreen board and instruct members to leave long-form posts there, then have the mods move anything long from there after a month? I don't know if all this has been tried, but there are lots of design ideas that will do a lot of the work, depending on the domain. I'd be interested if anyone has similar ideas (Twitter: @hamishfrob).
In the Hyperlink Academy Forum some Algo checks your post and suggests all previous threads on a similar topic. That seems an easy add-in for most community software, but I'm no technologist, so maybe not.
I also didn't realise that no one is doing Member directories today. Many forums based on the 1990s technologies still have them.
Really nice piece. I love the concrete elements here!
If I may suggest one thing is to move away from Slack to Discord. I participate in many communities using Discord chats gated by social tokens. The custom options and bots on Discord will solve for the following: onboarding flow with bots, automated roles for better permissions, analytics (Server Insights is native to Discord and has great metrics), Member directory through attributing roles and adopting specific handles...
In @jammsession_ we are working on a custom bounty system for a community curated newsletter. If you want to chat DM me @albiverse :)
Community software is very lacking, Circle is probably the tool that is heading in the right direction to cater for all the ‘functionality’.
But at the same time I’m not convinced we need more functionality for all the things. We need more people understanding and getting better at building communities.
I’m more in favour with simplifying things, but maybe that’s me getting old. 🥴
I think success for communities is mostly driven by community design, modeling/rewarding good behavior, seeding with the right initial members, etc., not based on the platform itself. But, functionalities to support admins in doing their work and making these things easier are still much needed :)
totally agree — to the same point with the rate communities are growing, software needs to get better at enabling community managers to do their job faster & teach best practices. Slack def isn't it. Imo we need software that's opinionated enough to teach less experienced community mgrs what a strong community looks like & gently guides them in the right direction. Favorite quote around this from Wendy Woon — "you have to craft a space that invites participation by design"
Bless!!! Most of our platforms are built for chatter not connections. We think it's enough to have a space to share notes back and forth. We need sustainable spaces that support the real work of a community manager.
Love this post Li. My team and I at https://joinharness.com/ are moving towards these things (initially in support of innovation & entrepreneurship communities) and I would love to connect to hear your thoughts on what we're doing.
Currently working with 26 universities, 3 accelerators, 1 city.
This is was so valuable and aligned with my product roadmap for TheClub. We've built a community that enables DJs and Entertainers to monetize their audience through hosting virtual parties within the app. The features you outlined are SPOT ON! Great job!
Another item for the list: community safety & moderation. There’s so much discussion about moderation right now for social media, but I rarely see it called out by platform vendors.
Hello, can I introduce Crowdstack, which covers about 80% of what you've outlined above?
Yes! Li@li-jin.co
I hope it's if i do a shameless plug here considering the relevance of the topic. At Edition (https://edition.so) we are doing the exact thing, we built our product around empowering community managers. We interviewed 10+ community managers and realized there are multiple tool-set community managers require to build successful communities beyond just slack.
We provide building blocks for community-building such as members directory, events, newsletter/email digest, discussion board, resources, tiered members-only area, etc. Would love a chance to show you our product. my email is kuldeep@edition.so
just joined the waitlist, looks great!
YES! So far, none of the options we tried even seem to be focused at (possibly) including knowledge hub, member tiers/sub-groups and matching/conversation suggestions. We use Circle, but now moving (back) to Wordpress mostly because of the knowledge hub functionalities we have. But IF this was included in ONE tool... gosh :) Keen to stay posted on this topic.
What plugin are you using for your knowledge hub?
Hi! I'm building a startup in this space and everything you've said rings so true, especially as we look for the communities we're the right match for. We're not building a tool to exactly address the needs you laid out (a la Circle), but more a tool for interacting *within* those spaces -- making remote events more interactive. I think we might be useful for your "smarter conversations" bullet and event thoughts.
Would love to talk: cecilia@slideswith.com
Thank you for your post, it was very helpful.
I will be launching my community next year. I am thinking a lot about Design. Too many times the categories and areas are traditional. For example, why not have a "Strong Opinions" section and have moderators move posts there? Why not have an Evergreen board and instruct members to leave long-form posts there, then have the mods move anything long from there after a month? I don't know if all this has been tried, but there are lots of design ideas that will do a lot of the work, depending on the domain. I'd be interested if anyone has similar ideas (Twitter: @hamishfrob).
In the Hyperlink Academy Forum some Algo checks your post and suggests all previous threads on a similar topic. That seems an easy add-in for most community software, but I'm no technologist, so maybe not.
I also didn't realise that no one is doing Member directories today. Many forums based on the 1990s technologies still have them.
Ambi.network has you covered. Coming soon to a school near you!
Love the concept! Wish there were some ladies represented on your team though
hah!--that day is coming!
Yes! We need more people talking about this.
Discourse doesn't get enough love in these conversations. They already have the potential & would benefit from more resources.
Li, we are building Unsolved to power founder communities.
One of the first things we focused on was to enable context of who is inside Nd what they are working on.
Bunch of your features are on our roadmap. Would you like to take a look
Hey there!
Really nice piece. I love the concrete elements here!
If I may suggest one thing is to move away from Slack to Discord. I participate in many communities using Discord chats gated by social tokens. The custom options and bots on Discord will solve for the following: onboarding flow with bots, automated roles for better permissions, analytics (Server Insights is native to Discord and has great metrics), Member directory through attributing roles and adopting specific handles...
In @jammsession_ we are working on a custom bounty system for a community curated newsletter. If you want to chat DM me @albiverse :)
Overall definitely feel the same about the need for custom tooling. There was a great piece written by Toby Shorin https://subpixel.space/entries/come-for-the-network-pay-for-the-tool/. And here is mine focusing on why Web3 adds value to this: https://soci3.substack.com/p/beyond-just-tokens-community-legos.
Cheers
Oh and, I highly suggest you join the community club! www.commsor.com
I'm using Tribe. Well, where about to. :)