The Power of Community
I’m amazed at Twitter. In fact Twitter may be the biggest case study in the strength of a digital community.
Despite its regular outages that would have crushed any other Web business (1.0 or 2.0), I come back and everyone else I know is still is there too. We complain. We get frustrated. But we still post messages. Why? The power of Twitter’s connected network of users keeps people coming back.
Like a hot 50’s burger joint that doubles as the night spot, Twitter is the place to be seen and heard. Even when it’s down (closed), we still attempt a drive-by to see who’s there. As soon as it’s back up, there we are posting away.
Jeremiah Owyang, social media analyst at Forrester and former PodTecher, comments today that he “signed the customer company pact,” basically telling Twitter he’d “be patient, understanding, and to show the company the same respect” that he’d want shown to him.
While the customer company pact is good, getting people to shift to another service will depend entirely upon the community it’s built on. I still prefer Flickr, PodTech, Utah Bloggers, etc. over others because of community. There is sticking-power when the community is there.