Pages 167-196 in Design to Thrive,
by Tharon Howard, discuss the role of significance in the building of a social
network or online community. Howard describes the idea that people are more
motivated to join, participate in, and remain members of communities that they
believe are significant. Significance can be established by making an online
community exclusive. In other words, individuals inherently believe that a
community carries a high level of importance if only certain people can join
the community and gain access to particular information. In 2008, the Obama presidential
campaign played off this concept by only releasing certain information to those
registered on my.barackobama.com. For example, the my.barackobama.com community
refused to release information about Obama’s choice for vice president to
anyone not registered on the site. This undoubtedly led to millions of people
joining the site in order to receive the “exclusive” information. This was
beneficial to Obama campaign, which collected the contact information for
millions of people. The campaign could then use that information to keep in
contact with potential voters.
As I continued to read the chapter, I began to feel that it is not only
important for the online community to be significant, but that individual
members can build significance for themselves within the community. For
example, Twitter can be considered significant because of its large number of
users and the vast amount of information that originates on the site. While the
site is significant in itself, some members are “more significant” than others.
Celebrities like Ellen DeGeneres flaunt millions of followers and can get those
followers to take a particular action through a single tweet. This helps
celebrities to further build their brands through Twitter. “Normal” people
attempt to achieve their own significance on the site by networking and
promoting their page to get more followers. After reading this chapter, I believe that Howard
did a great job discussing the essential role of significance in the building
of an online community.
“Who Are the Real Online Influencers?” is an online article written by
Josh Catone. The article discusses how people are most likely to be influenced
in the new world of interactive media. Using various statistics and study results,
Catone demonstrates that consumers trust recommendations from peers over all
forms of advertising. This means that companies need to ensure the satisfaction
of individual consumers, who are likely to tell their friends and family about
new products, often through social media.
I agree that the significance of the actual users is slightly more important than the overall significance of the social media site. In order to even maintain a sustainable site, you must first bring in users, and one of the main ways of doing so is making the users feel like they are gaining something out of being a member of the site. The use of exclusivity is a great way to draw in users because they feel as if they are important since they have access to information that others who aren't a part of the site do not have. In a way, social media is not significant unless the users are, so that concept is crucial when launching and maintaining successful social media sites.
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