I’ve recently been reviewing recording artist websites for a couple of reasons (beyond just personal interest), and I’m struck by the struggles of different artists and websites to address community. Commentators looking at the most successful online communities have proclaimed the victory of social media over ‘traditional’ websites, but from what I see there’s a handful of success stories and many more sites that are working really hard to build vibrant communities. High activity and community shouldn’t be mistaken for the same thing either: Communities are self-supporting, self-managing, constructive groups, whereas there’s a lot of high traffic sites that have been named communities that don’t have those key attributes at all. Rather they are borne out of large numbers of people arriving for some other reason and giving voice (take all those comments on YouTube for example). I’m not saying Social Media is a fad or about to be replaced by the next big thing – I do think it’s here to stay – but don’t expect it to replace media/sites that have served well in the past and will continue to.
Filed under: general, trends , community, fad, social media, youtube
