Social Density In Online Communities

Social density is the number of interactions within an area.

Offline, a lot of people talking in a small room produces many fascinating behavioural changes. Online, it has a unique importance.

If your social density is too high (i.e. you concentrate too many interactions within too few areas of your community platform) it feels like a frenzy of activity. It becomes difficult to keep up and follow conversations. The community becomes a frustrating experience. It's hard to form genuine relationships. Members drift away.

If your social density is too low (i.e. you spread the same level of interactions over too many places to host them, such as forum categories, chat rooms, status updates, twitter etc...) the community feels empty. It takes longer to get a response to your posts. Members get bored and leave.

There are two challenges here. The first is to reach an optimal level of social density, the second is to maintain a consistent level of social density as your community grows. This means you need to identify niche topics within the community and create separate places for them. 

Comments

[Rosemary ONeill]

A simple point, but important! This concept is one reason I always tell people to start their forum-based communities, for example, with a small number of forums and then let the members and activity demand more when the time is right.

[Womens True Religion]

The Sixth Circuit has held that work being done “periodically,” as an “ordinary part of plant maintenance,” is regular or recurrent. Granus v. North American Philips Lighting Corp., 821 F.2d 1253, 1257 (6th Cir. 1987). In Daniels, a panel of this Court held that emissions testing was a regular or recurrent part of a contractor’s business on the basis of its manager’s affidavit stating that testing had occurred on fourteen occasions in 28 years. Daniels, 933 S.W.2d at 824.

[Alison]

As always, great post Rich, thanks. Monitoring social density is not spoken about much but it's vital it comes to managing growth. A Community Manager needs to decide when a particular area has reached critical mass and could sustain separation.

Figuring out that the activity is flowing too fast, members are missing out on opportunities to participate, and members can no longer follow a lot of the activity is an indication of this point.

As you & Rosemary point out however - always start with only a few areas of activity.