Are you in “The Club” or not?
Are you in multiple clubs? If so, how many?
For the purpose of this conversation, let’s define the term “club” as any community, group list, alumni list (schools and employers), list serve, IM group, etc. Using this definition, if I count all of the clubs to which I belong, the number is quite large and increasingly difficult to keep track of.
Next, let’s expand on this definition by considering the purpose, scope, usefulness and lifespan of a club. For instance, is Craigslist a club? On Craigslist you can buy a car, trade various items and services, ask questions, get answers and generally investigate a variety of topics and areas. Based on these criteria, one might consider MySpace and Ning clubs. But what of the late GeoCities? Was that a club? And what about clubs whose purpose or focus is less pragmatic but still fun?
We’ve seen a wide variety of ways to communicate and interact with people throughout the Web 1.0 days. We’ve watched and participated as they have appeared, evolved and/or died. In this respect, you can view clubs through a Darwinian natural selection sort of lens. Now there are new breeds that have adapted and endured to become better, or at least more accepted versions of clubs.
In a sense, all of these clubs – a.k.a. social networks – have come and gone with the single purpose of connecting people in various ways. An interesting exercise is to take the components of “Old Clubs,” e.g. email, IM, chat rooms, list serves, postings and classifieds, put them in a Darwinian blender, apply Web 2.0 rules and see what you get. Is it Facebook, Twitter and clubs yet to be invented or re-invented? And what are the qualities that support survival and further adaptations?
Posted by Atif Hussein, May 17, 2010