Amanda in Sec­ond Life, by Cos­mic Kitty

“As long as the roots of rela­tion­ship are not sev­ered, all is well. And all will be well in the community’s gar­den. There will be growth in the spring!“
— Chauncey Gar­diner, from Being There

Online com­mu­ni­ties are not vir­tual. They don’t exist only in the bits and bytes on the series of pipes known as the inter­webs. To the con­trary, I have found, in the 26 years that I have been online, that the rela­tion­ships and bonds that peo­ple form online are not only real but in many cases are more authen­tic because they’re cho­sen by each mem­ber rather than being thrust upon them by his­tory, fam­ily, or cul­tural expec­ta­tions. (Via the Com­mu­ni­space blog)

Con­nec­tiv­ity
Before the advent of the Inter­net, folks needed to phys­i­cally move places to find birds of a feather—people like them. Affin­ity groups were hard to come by, so if you were smart, you’d go away to col­lege; actors went to LA, writ­ers went to New York; if you hap­pened to be alt-boy or alt-girl, then the cities called, or Europe. Birds of a feather flock together, after all—everybody hungers to find oth­ers like them. Post-internet, noth­ing has changed for some people—plenty of smart kids still flock to Boston every year—but everything’s changed for lots others.

I bought my first com­puter in 1983 and even back then, folks were in search of each other at the end of the beep beep beep tone of a 300 baud modem. That beep beep beep screech was the sound of folks search­ing for and find­ing each other.

Online com­mu­ni­ties are an extension-of-reach of this same desire to find peo­ple and con­nect with them. Even if the per­son you see when you wake up doesn’t get you, even if your par­ents and those losers at school don’t get you, even if you have a deep secret, you are never stuck—you can sup­ple­ment the demands of your daily com­mit­ments with peo­ple who don’t merely come close to meet­ing you on the same gen­eral ground of inter­est but your exact twin.

When you meet your twin—when you meet lots and lots of peo­ple just like you—you are then free to be open and hon­est. Every­one under­stands you … bet­ter than your own mum. You have time to bond, con­nect, and sim­ply spend time together.

Evolv­ing beyond Sec­ond Life
I’m talk­ing about self-organized, self-sustaining com­mu­ni­ties of pur­pose, com­mu­ni­ties of action, com­mu­ni­ties of cir­cum­stance, com­mu­ni­ties of inter­est, com­mu­ni­ties of inquiry, com­mu­ni­ties of posi­tion, com­mu­ni­ties of place, and com­mu­ni­ties of practice—real peo­ple, bonded into a tribe, pro­tec­tive of the mem­bers of their fam­ily. I will say that the Sec­ond Life com­mu­nity takes care of its own. They love each other, they pro­tect each other, they take care of each other, and they stick up for each other.

Sec­ond Life is the mod­ern exem­plar of how and why online com­mu­ni­ties are authentic—even though one can (and often does) hide behind a posh and dead-sexy avatar and a posh and dead-sexy nom de plume. Sec­ond Life might even be more authen­tic because it allows mem­bers to cast-off the shack­les of fam­ily names and the genetic inher­i­tance of body and shape, and rede­fine one­self as one desires to be—arguably, as one is more authen­tic on Sec­ond Life, where one may become the man or woman (or pur­ple pony) that one is on the inside.

Mar­keters need to rec­og­nize that every Sec­ond Life (SL) and World of War­craft (WoW) avatar is a per­son pour­ing time and resources into com­mu­nity, that every tweet by every tweeter through every Twit­ter han­dle is a per­son who has taken finite time and resources and poured it into com­mu­nity, and every blog post by every blog­ger are time, energy, and resources that could be spent else­where and else­wise, are spent on the blog and this time and energy is shared with the blogger’s com­mu­nity in com­ments and conversation.

These are really won­der­ful peo­ple who actu­ally are will­ing to meet you halfway towards friend­ship. They’re not an exclu­sion­ary board­ing school, they’re an “inclu­sion­ary” pub­lic school—open to every­one! I’m not play­ing “tra-la-la” here, how­ever, because even in a school with open admis­sions, there are groups of smart kids, cool kids, quiet kids, trolls, lurk­ers, and losers. As a mar­keter or as a cor­po­rate entity, you enter the online world as the new kid. Folks are, by their very nature, skep­ti­cal and you will prob­a­bly be approached and chal­lenged to see where you are in your intent, where you are in the peck­ing order, and which table you’re going to have lunch at.

That’s the good news…
If you want to become part of the con­ver­sa­tion, if you want to mar­ket or engage with online com­mu­ni­ties and online cit­i­zens, if you want to lever­age their rep­u­ta­tion and tap their com­mu­nity and influ­ence, you need to make the same sort of real effort that you would if it were neigh­bors in your new neigh­bor­hood, if it were par­ents in the PTA, or even all of the edi­tors, writ­ers, and jour­nal­ists you cur­rently covet in the big rolodex cheese wheel you still main­tain on your desk as the only rep­re­sen­ta­tion of how pow­er­ful your years of work have made you.

What does it all mean?

• Vir­tual com­mu­nity is not fun and games, really—it’s seri­ous busi­ness just the same way that the Red Sox might seem like a game but it’s seri­ous busi­ness. Mess with the Sox and you’re mess­ing with Boston.
• When some­one enters a com­mu­nity online, you’re not just deal­ing with peo­ple who hap­pen to live in the same city or neigh­bor­hood, you’re deal­ing with peo­ple who have fil­tered to that online space from around the entire globe.
• Finally, if you engage, you’re not on holiday—even when you’re on hol­i­day you’re not on hol­i­day because all of the peo­ple you meet wher­ever you are—even on holiday—are real peo­ple. Just because the peo­ple around you in Hawaii make you feel loved and adored, you’re still a pay­check to them.

I promise you that if you’re will­ing and able to do the above, you will have a rich and reward­ing experience—you, your brand, and your com­pany.Chris Abra­ham is co-founder and prin­ci­pal of Abra­ham Har­ri­son LLC, an inter­na­tional con­sult­ing group with spe­cial­ties in online word-of-mouth/conversation mar­ket­ing and online busi­ness & tech­nol­ogy strat­egy advis­ing. See his pro­file, con­tact Chris via email, Twit­ter, or leave a com­ment below.