Building a community
Ross Mayfield of Socialtext — a company that helps create “wikis” — has a post on the blog of Telegraph news editor Shane Richmond (who is on vacation) about how a newspaper can help develop a community online. Here’s an excerpt:
Newspapers have a tremendous opportunity to host and extend the communities they serve. By now, most have taken the baby steps of offering RSS feeds, enabling journalists to blog and reconsidering costwalls. This lets them tap into the conversational networks that may intersect their communities. It is important to be tapped into these networks, but this is just staying on par with the industry, and shouldn’t be confused with engaging their core community.
If you are open to sharing control to create value, the economics favour you. Social software, especially because of the leverage provided by open source, isn’t a significant expense. If you can foster community, participants have a propensity to contribute what you used to call content (and they may simply call conversations).
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