The topic of community is very much in the news this week. Many observers of Marissa Mayer's takeover of the Yahoo! CEO position are curious if she can be the savior of Flickr's long-abused (but much-vaunted) community, and questions abound regarding whether the new owners of Digg can resuscitate the community that once made it the most lively conversation on the web. I'm inviting my good friend and community expert Brian Oberkirch to share his thoughts on what makes community so important to web properties, and ask him to invite whoever he likes to try and answer one question: once the fire is out, is it ever possible to rekindle an amazing user community?

Now, at about that time, Ze relaunched his show, and I was struck by the sheer joy produced by the return of 5 year old vlog. Clearly, there was still great power & emotion in the ties he created with his otherworldly goodness that year.

In the background, the Flickr conversation had been happening at least since January of 2010. I recall being at drinks with everyone in SF when it started to get vocal: See you on Instagram. How could such a vibrant/smile producing app wither away in terms of our time & attention? It still 'works'; I post there all the time. But the action is elsewhere. When you crave recognition and validation about your POV of a certain moment, you have to stick it on Instagram.

(con.)

So: Flickr, the site built around rich community interactions, the site who taught us how to deploy social objects, whose goal was to be the eyes of the world, waned.

Which led me to thinking I had been terribly wrong in my assumptions about open social networks. I had vigorously argued that people should own their own contact lists, have privacy settings that travel, apply these metadata to new networks they want to participate in. (We know now, of course, that Facebook became this social dial tone.)

(con.)
And then but so, maybe Dave McClure was right and people don't actually care. Maybe the 'need' to remake your friends list each time was a kind of freedom. Maybe social communities are built to expire, and my sense of archive, longevity, continuity, control was misplaced. Should we expect social communities to endure? If so, how do we design for that? Do we just build Dixie Cup communities as needed? Is it likely that my Facebook graph will end up as dated & inaccurate as my LinkedIn graph and will cease to be a useful starting point? Is the desired state just a simple, case-by-case rebuild of niche networks on demand? Can the value of these networks only be measured in the short term and along highly defined axes?

(Read this first then start back at the top. My first try at branch, and I'm flailing over the character limits)

I first started thinking about this when Jesper tweeted about the disruptive value of a vibrant community (twitter.com). At the same time, the tech hacks were doing their pedestrian math about how much each Instagram member was "worth". And then still at that same time you had vocal members of the community wailing that suddenly the business arrangement that backed their community would 'change everything'. Three radically different ways to think about the value of a community. As a defining strategic wedge, as a commodity that can be bought and sold, as an everyday experience you've come to depend upon.

Communities are fickle. They ebb and flow. From my understanding the few million visitors to digg and flickr still comprise a community. The fun thing is to watch how communities change over time. As long as your product promotes interaction between users, it will happen.
What newer properties have learned is that outreach is key to a *thriving* community. From real world meetups to targeted content to reaching out to virtually high-five awesome people and interactions, cultivating community ensures a better experience for all your users.
I firmly believe it's possible to rekindle community, I've seen it happen firsthand. It won't be the same as before, but that's not always a bad thing.
*Facebook is more a platform than a community to me.

The Flickr community itself doesn't seem to be "against Flickr", even with the lack of feature parity/innovation, or even a halfway decent mobile experience.

FWIW, I loved the connections and random delight of participating on Flickr, but I am not my (or Yahoo!'s) target audience. It depends on if that sort of community engagement is really what Flickr/Yahoo! want, or just what I'd like.

Flickr could claim they're "back" by moving the goalposts of what success looks like: # of active community members, quality of contributions, % increase in paid Pro accounts.

The Flickr blog is still a delight. #stayingpositive
blog.flickr.net

Brian, your comment, "maybe the 'need' to remake your friends list each time was a kind of freedom" struck a chord for me. If you can forgive me for being 'that guy' for a moment: there is something very wabi-sabi about the whole thing. It feels to me like there is truly something very strong and connective in the impermanence and changing of things (and people and communities) over time. So, in that way there is a beauty to watching things break down and fall appart, and then come back together in a new way but with the same essence of the thing before.

In some ways, isn't that how Flickr became a community in the first place?

I think the hard part for many businesses to understand is that the community owns the community.

There are ways to influence these communities by the spaces we create for them to gather, or through the language and actions of cultivating the conversations/membership. But, we cannot "make" a community in our own image and expect it to not change.

So, I think our options are to roll with the party to the next house, or just cleanup after they leave and throw another party.

Interestingly enough, Flickr is hiring a community manager right now: flickr.com

Agreed Thomas, but on the other hand, there are communities that last.
Generally they require structure and leadership, guidelines - I think of real world non-profits, online gaming or open source. Leadership can change but there is usually a handoff or transition of some sort.