Forum One’s Online Community UnConference East 2009 in New York last Wednesday had an interesting mix of traditional and new media attendees and topics. Traditional media include Consumer Reports, McKinsey Quarterly, NBC/Universal and Time Inc. New media organizations include Amplify, EverydayHealth, FotoLog, MomCentral, WikiAnswers and many more.

The conversations covered some perennial online community issues, such as:

  • How to moderate communities
  • How to build member engagement
  • How to monetize a social network

And some new topics:

  • Twitter and how to use it
  • Getting alignment between members and organizations or community sponsors
  • Using social networks for political engagement (Does anyone think Obama would have won without using these tools?)

Largely absent from the session:

  • Metrics. Looks like everyone knows what to measure and how to measure it. Right?
  • Anything about blogs and podcasts. It’s so mid-00’s.

Cool stuff:

  • ConsumerReports and McKinsey are using Twitter for news and business info
  • Municipalities are starting to use social network tools to expand community outreach. This means they are going from offline engagement strategies to online and then back to offline, in-person engagement again.

My takeaway is this: social networks accessed via mobile devices are reaching a critical threshold of acceptance. Think Facebook apps on your Nokia or iPhone or 140-character (SMS) updates to your site, social network or online community.

Consider what happens when Google’s open-source (sort of) Android wins the next-generation OS battle by 2010 or so. Does this mean the interactive aspects of online communities and social networks will evolve from the current information-dense conversational model into more telegraphic, terse and transitory exchanges? Check the updates …Thank you for reading Building Online Communities for Business by Leader Networks. We are a research and strategy consulting company that helps organizations succeed in social business and B2B online community building.

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