World Domination by Collaboration

The last two years of Web 2.0 discussions have been a good foundation for watching it actually unfold. For those of you unaware of Web 2.0 you can read a brief description here.

Many of the panels here at SXSW have to do with organizing communities, managing communities, and dealing with a lot of the hassles that comes along with such an "job." First, a little background. These communities can form around hundreds of thousands of different issues, items or interests. Blogs like dailyKos and Wonkette, who have large consistent followings, are one form these communities take. Second Life is another. Or Facebook and Myspace communities that have since sprung up with thousands of "friends" and supporters.

What's different about these new online communities is that they are increasingly pushing transparency, user empowerment and a strong collaboration with their community members and users. How do you get users?

Jenna Woodul, Co-founder of LiveWorld says that, "its the people stupid."

At the very beginning you HAVE to know your people. If you do establish that rapport with folks when you do hit problems they will step forward to help fix them.

It's also about the conversation you have with your community members. So often, we forget that a relationship is built on a conversation that is goes both ways. You can't simply talk at your members, you have to include them in the conversation and hear their opinions, perspectives and concerns, even if it hurts you to listen. Betsy Aoki of Microsoft (hold your hisses for a moment please) says:

"you can find people who have huge opinions, and they want to share them. They are the ones you want talking to folks, i.e. your customers and supporters. Its not so much incenting people to write, as much as its allowing them and giving them tools to express their ideas, concerns and beliefs around the topic."

By ushering in all perspectives (whether or not they are deemed legitimate or spam is up to the community or the host) the community gains a sense of trust. That's when the community starts to create its own rules or laws which further builds trust and camaraderie. And trust is a key building block to any relationship, online or off.

As the community elects leadership, for instance in the form of a rotating advisory board made up of dedicated community members, the community may also begin to gain power and be legitimatized outside of its niche. For instance, the DailyKos community (who refer to themselves as Kossacks) has emerged as a key power among the liberal left for fundraising progressive candidates running for office. In this way these communities begin chipping away at the power that normally would be held by someone or something else.

Maybe not world domination but collaboration for sure.

Youtube and '08

Youtube has gone political. By creating a hub of all the video content posted by various candidates and their campaigns, YouChoose has made it that much easier for all of us to see our possible future president in his/her finest/worst moments on the campaign trail. The content is put up by the campaign and you can subscribe to each candidate's channel in case you can't get enough of Obama making us all feel warm inside, or Hillary making us all feel empty and cold inside. If you can't bring yourself to watch either one of them, there is always room for Dennis Kucinich.

I like to see/judge which campaign is using this technolgy the best and for that I have a brief set of criteria that I spit out in no particular order or importance:

1. Experience: how many months or days has this candiate's campaign been posting to Youtube?

2. Quality: are the videos all shot on a Treo camera or is there actually some sign of someone who knows what they're doing.

3. Subscribers: who's committed to watching and how many?

4. Diversity: if you put just the campaign speeches up there I'm gonna unsub in a few weeks. Show me different aspects of the campaign trail -- Mitt Romney eats what everyone morning for breakfast? Or how about whats the last thing each candidate does before hitting the sack after a long day of speaking? Keep it colorful....but not a rainbow.

Based on this criteria I'd say Obama is doing really well. He has by far the most subscribers (2,268 -- the next closest is Edwards with just shy of 1,000), has a ton of quality video footage available and its all different stuff. Some of it is created by the campaign and some of it is created by grassroots activists. Other campaigns just don't seem as committed to getting themselves online in a big way. Even Hillary, who received much press on the fact that she announced via a taped webvideo, only has 400 subscribers.

Granted, Obama is quickly wrapping up the student vote and as we all know this generation of students get everything online. Its not surprising that the candidate with the largest Facebook group in history is also the most-subscribed to Youtube channel of any '08 candidates.