How Online Communities Are Changing The World

Online communities should have a better reptuation. Everyone should be in one. They're profoundly changing the world for the better.

Everyone has examples, here are a few of mine:

• I loved online gaming when I was 15. I was a bit lonely. I found online communities of gamers. I wrote for gaming community websites, ran events, managed gaming teams found a place to be appreciated for my passion for games.
• Before coming to University, I found people staying in the same building as me and started a small online group. It made the first day easy and fun. Today, this is normal.
• At University we launched Facebook groups for courses. These became the places where we shared advice, helped each other with essays, traded rare library books, exchanged articles, arranged study-groups and spoke with former students who gave advice.
• In 2008, I collaborated with Seth Godin and a group of virtual interns on an interesting project. We stayed in touch. They're a really remarkable bunch (they’ve published wildly popular eBooks, spoken at TED, launched their own start-ups, developed communities with a six-figure income). These are the sort of buddies the internet lets you have.
• When I moved to Geneva I joined an online expat community looking for advice about finding property. I found this superb apartment at a bargain and received lots of great advice from locals.
• I moved to London earlier this year. I browsed meetup to find about 5 meets I was interested in attending. In less than a fortnight I had found a good group of friends interested in similar things.
• Despite community management being a relatively new job, it takes a few minutes to find an online community for the profession here in London. Without any formal association or even an agreed understanding of the job where else would we be able to connect?

We need to share more of these stories. Online communities should be natural, you should be able to pick up your (i)Pad in a few years and talk to people from your sofa. No technology barriers, just communication with people with like-minded interests who don't have to live near you. 

Comments

[Haroldkip]

Spot on Rich! "just communication with people with like-minded interests"

It's what we've always done: in prehistoric times we sat around the campfire sharing common interests with our clan.

Nowadays the campfire is the internet but our clan is still made up of people with similar interests.

Internet has made our world smaller right?

[Anna]

Rich you are exactly right. Checkout our grassroots-community- collaboration effort to change the world in developing a solution for the oil spill.

www.Stopthegusher.com

[Terry]

Thanks for sharing! Question and answer communities are one of my favorite types. It's amazing how many people out there are willing to help others, share expertise and experiences. Communities are making the world a better place. =)

[Asa]

I am to the internet what Jeremy Clarkson is to flower arranging and ornithology, but this short Richardness makes me realise i want to get the skills to build a nest on the world wide web, and dare i say gain some of the advantages of its use.

And on that bombshell... Goodnight.

[Kimmo]

Hi Rich! Thanks for another good post!

Here's an idea for next posts: I would be interested to learn more about using Facebook (and other existing platforms/networks) in creating communities. You mention here briefly your study groups on Facebook.

I'm mainly interested in communities as support for learnig and studying. Creating communities where the students already spend much of their time might sometimes be the wisest option.

[@LStacey]

Is it that online communities are changing the world or that the world is changing and online communities are just a part of that logical progression?

[Kaushik]

Thanks for this amazing blog. I have recently become a subscriber to this blog and i have spent the last two reading every post on the site. I am just getting started with communities and believe in the power of communities. I believe when C.K. Prahlad (new Age of Innovation) was talking about co-creation and R=G, N=1 he was really talking about communities. I have been struggling a bit with Peepaal (http://www.peepaal.org) but hope to revive it soon.

[Pablo Edwards]

It really is fascinating to see how Online communities are shaping the world. It long matters if you have any real friends, you can be the most popular guy in the world. Its our job to figure out how to work within those means.

[Edavidove]

Hi Rich. Online communities are changing my world as well. Your post inspired me to write a post to share my examples. Here is a link in case you are interested in reading how online communities are changing my world.

http://tiny.cc/5maqt

[FertilAid Reviews]

Wow great post! Thanks for sharing your thoughts and ideas..This is so interesting!