Web 2.0: A Community in Denial

I'm not seeing real objective evidence that Web 2.0 and more specifically, social networking, are creating real communities. I think community is the code word of denial of the 00s, allowing people to slide past any discussion or proof of real value, just as collaboration was the code word of denial of the 90s for the disastrous wave of online b-to-b exchanges that wasted millions of investors' dollars. Remember Covisint (autos) or Transora (consumer goods)?

The online exchanges were going to generate billions in revenue and create vast collaborative networks of happy manufacturers and suppliers by allowing them to share information and pool their resources in auctions to buy billions of pens and pencils.

About the only thing that eclipsed the colossal flop of online exchanges was the larger collapse of the financial markets. Online exchanges have either died altogether, have morphed into software companies or in rare cases have actually survived, but only in instances where the "collaboration" is the buying and selling of commodities like chemicals. That's not collaboration; it's an online catalog.

The warning signs that were there all along with the online exchanges are there today with Web 2.0 and social networking. There are three things that are required to lure outsiders to a website and keep them there (and keeping them there is what theoretically creates community):

1. Perceived value--In your face, obvious value the instant you click on the link. That great big search box on Google, the "Buy" and "Sell" boxes on eBay.

2. Safety--Your reputation, whether personal or professional, can't be in apparent peril, nor can your wallet.

3. Clear exchange of value--You need to feel like you received something of reasonable value to be drawn back to the site.

The online exchanges--especially those built by consortiums of powerful companies in a particular industry--promised none of these things. There was no perceived value on the home page, only a "Join Now!" button. Why would I want to join something I don't even understand?

Feel unsafe yet? Most suppliers did, the moment they were invited to join the exchanges that their powerful customers built for them. Great, now our customers can beat us all down on price together, in real-time. What fun. (A few suppliers in some industries tried their hands at exchanges and could never get manufacturers to join, either.) The only exchanges that survived were those hosted by third parties, who spent years convincing everyone that they were not going to favor one side over the other. They never really did, as evidenced by the commodity focus of the surviving exchanges. Raw chemicals and plastics don't risk anyone's profit margins or reputations by being online.

Catalogs of commodities are not exactly a compelling exchange of value. But they beat the original empty promises of collaboration--of the exchanges becoming hubs for manufacturers and suppliers to work together on product designs, buy lots of office supplies and exchange invoices--a collaborative community.

But exchanges couldn't magically erase years of mistrust and enmity between suppliers and manufacturers simply by building a sandbox for them. For suppliers especially, jumping into the sandbox meant potentially revealing your R&D processes and cost structures to your competitors, your customers and the internet. Exchanges tried to convince members that their participation was secure and private, and it may indeed have been, but the exchange of value (you don't get much--if any--of a price break by buying 2 million pens instead of 1 million) wasn't compelling enough to take the risk.

Now let's look ahead to today. What's the perceived value of sites like Second Life, MySpace and YouTube? MySpace calls itself "a place for friends." Whose friends? My friends? Your friends? Why would I go on here to look for my friends when I can call them or e-mail them anytime I want in relative privacy and safety? I'm going to search the internet for new friends? Not unless I'm 11 and I don't know (yet) how truly valueless--or downright dangerous--such a search could be. There's a box on the MySpace home page entitled "Cool New People." On the day I looked, there were three grainy pictures of people who didn't look particularly cool--one was a group of three teenage guys sitting on a couch watching TV. Another picture was of a guy who looked really depressed. All in all, the perceived value on the home page of MySpace comes across as the opportunity to enter a hopelessly large, undifferentiated lonely hearts club that's potentially unsafe and embarrassing and provides little hope of real value exchange.

YouTube's perceived value is of the "Hey, let's put on a show!" variety. But who wants to watch videos that are much worse than TV shows and must be viewed in resolutions that are barely watchable? And what makes this a community? You want your 15 minutes of fame or you want to watch those who do? Not the basis for a long-term friendship. And you'd better have thick skin if you want to feel safe. Some of the comments on the videos are vicious, with identities of the assailants hidden behind meaningless screen names. The perceived value and value exchange for those who aren't pre-teens or budding film makers is a mostly illegal one: YouTube has quietly become the Napster of bootleg music and concert videos. Only a matter of time before the interesting stuff gets pulled off.

Second Life, meanwhile, is a glorified video game. Long term, it's for gamers who want to inhabit other bodies and flirt with one another. The home page is a doorway into the 3-D world. Perceived value if you're a gamer. But the box on the home page that really screams is the one tallying how much commerce was transacted on Second Life today--it looks like easy money. It's a big promise of value exchange. But it's not real--at least until Second Life gets a lot more interesting. Right now it's like the Sims with a discussion board (which already exists). And where is the community that holds all this together long-term?

Companies aren't asking those questions right now. They are jumping in with both feet. The current hype says that companies can give "buzz" to their products by creating communities around them online and involving consumers. Sears is setting up a store in Second Life. It's hard to read the press release without wincing. How many avatars will want to hold off flirting with each other long enough to schlep their avatars over to Sears to look at kitchens in blocky 3-D? It's apocryphal.

The business benefits of creating these communities seem obvious on the surface: Cheap, direct marketing and easy brand image promotion. Cheap customer feedback on products and clues for future development.

But can you really build a community around kitchens or power tools?

P&G takes a more subtle approach to community building with Capessa, which tries to provide perceived value and value exchange not by shilling P&G products but by positioning the site as a sort of online women's magazine that offers health, parenting and diet information through Yahoo's Health portal. The community becomes a petri dish for P&G to learn more about its customers by monitoring their interactions and comments. "It's going to be one giant living dynamic learning experience about consumers," Jim Stengel, P&G's global marketing officer, told the Wall Street Journal recently.

But the motivation behind the site sounds the safety alarms for some people, as evidenced by this comment in Capessa's blog forum: "I just found out that this site is just so the owners, P&G can get marketing data on us! I love, or should say, loved Capessa, but now, I'm really disgusted. It was in the Wall Street Journal about how they use the site to gather info to sell us all more stuff! Can you believe?...I feel really betrayed and thought I should share. I'm never reading this site again!"

It's going to be difficult for these companies to avoid being seen as Big Brothers shaking down the community for information. I don't see how you get a warm and fuzzy sense of community when you feel like a lab rat.

But these warning signals haven't stopped the marketers and gurus from selling community the same way they sold collaboration and electronic commerce in the 90s: That you're a fool who will fall behind your competitors if you don't accept the inevitability of it all. In this Wired story, a Yahoo executive credits his experience playing Worlds of Warcraft (an online video game that is lumped into the community theory along with Second Life) with teaching him to be a successful businessman. This after reportedly starting and selling a number of successful startups. He is quoted as saying: "I used to worry about not having what I needed to get a job done," he says. "Now I think of it like a quest; by being willing to improvise, I can usually find the people and resources I need to accomplish the task." Okay, if playing a video game is what it takes to succeed, then being a serial entrepreneur must be easier than I thought.

The author of the piece, Internet pundit John Seely Brown, goes on:

"His story--translating experience in the virtual world into success in the real one is bound to become more common as the gaming audience explodes and gameplay becomes more sophisticated. The day may not be far off when companies receive resumes that include a line reading "level 60 tauren shaman in World of Warcraft."

The savviest employers will get the message."

Here's the theory, according to Brown:

"Unlike education acquired through textbooks, lectures, and classroom instruction, what takes place in massively multiplayer online games is what we call accidental learning. It's learning to be--a natural byproduct of adjusting to a new culture--as opposed to learning about. Where traditional learning is based on the execution of carefully graded challenges, accidental learning relies on failure. Virtual environments are safe platforms for trial and error. The chance of failure is high, but the cost is low and the lessons learned are immediate."

Learn to be? I can see the expensive offsites now, where grim-faced MBAs don their virtual armor and go kick some ass in 3-D so they can learn to be.

Look, there is no community in Web 2.0, unless it eventually becomes so realistic that we can experience the satisfactions and fears of looking others in their (real) eyes and interacting with them as we would in our homes, offices and communities. Want to be? Join a club, get a hobby, start a business, get married, have a child. In other words, live your First Life.

Right now, Web 2.0 is only capable of creating communities in the context of direct value exchange. On eBay, the community exists only because lots of people want to buy and sell stuff. The community adds value by enforcing safety and reputation. When you rip someone off, you get a bad rating and the next time you want to sell something, no one will trust you. Are eBay members developing deep personal connections when the auction is over? Maybe collectors of pet rocks do, but the community isn't set up for that--it's set up to exchange value and that's why eBay is successful.

On LinkedIn, the community exists because lots of people want new jobs and are willing to exchange valuable information about themselves in order to get those jobs. Even for those not actively looking, the site holds the vague promise of stored value to be gotten later--let people see your information now and maybe you'll get a job out of it someday when you need one. But as far as a sense of community goes, it's a little creepy. I don't know about you, but I get inundated with LinkedIn requests from people I've never heard of--sets my safety alarm off. I don't want to hang around in this community unless it's really necessary.

The one success of social networking so far is a mixed blessing for all of us. It is blurring the lines between home and work. If you're an IT leader, that means you probably shouldn't try to ban Second Life or YouTube. You do have a real community--it's called a business--and it is based on trust that people will invest the necessary time and energy into doing their jobs. If they aren't, Second Life is going to be the least of your problems.

And if your boss asks you to build avatars for the executive staff, you probably need to look for a new job. But call your friends and contacts on the phone and ask them if they know of any good openings before you send me "Let's Connect!" requests on LinkedIn, okay?

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