When you next meet with your buddies this week, will anyone be tracking the number of conversations you have?
Will someone be keeping an eye on which conversations people like the most and try to have more of those conversations?
Will anyone report how many people showed up and will you work together to try and increase that number?
You hopefully answered ‘no’ to all three.
We know in the real world that the quantity and popularity of people and conversations bears little relation to the success and value of the group.
So if you wouldn’t track it between your close friends, why would you track it between total strangers?
What really matters is whether members enjoy one another’s company, whether they help and support each other, whether they can explore exciting new ventures together and whether they feel they can belong.
Not as easy to measure, but with surveys, interviews, and sentiment analysis they’re not impossible to measure either.
p.s. The online world is the real world.