This morning, I had the privilege of presenting to the CEO/ head of the company where I work. The presentation was all about my new team: who we are, what we will be doing, how we will measure our success, all the usual fun. Thanks to a lot of mentoring from my boss and a lot of practice time prior to the presentation, I was fully prepared and the presentation went well.
During the course of the conversation, we got to talking about the goal of our new community. He made an analogy which struck me quite strongly. He asked me:
Are we a convenience store or a mall? Do we expect our community members to come shopping, wandering, and socializing? Or, do we expect them to come looking for answers?
It is an interesting analogy. Because we are going to be opening our community to business people who are short on time, we expect people to treat us like a convenience store. We want them to come looking for answers, find the answers, and go on about their way. At the same time, we want them to find enough other information that they are eager to come back.
This is a very different approach than one would take at a purely social community site. At somewhere like Facebook, people come to shop, but they come for the experience and the social aspect as much as for the final purchase. Like a mall, they come to talk to people, to browse the stores, to find out information about a wide variety of things.
I believe there is a need for both kinds of communities in the world. But still, the conversation left me wondering... If you are a participant in a wide range of community sites, which appeals to you more, the mall or the convenience store? If you run a community site, which kind is it?