Finding Hidden Communities

December 3, 2009 · Comments

Amazon communities I was looking for a book about education on Amazon for an upcoming project, and as I scrolled through the results, I also found at the bottom these communities (see picture at left). I thought, “I didn’t realize Amazon had communities. I knew they were experimenting with wikis a while back, but I didn’t realize this was here.” Suddenly, it made me think about all the other hidden communities marketers are missing. Can Google see this place? I’m not sure. But now, I’m curious.

There are hidden communities everywhere. We’re not spending a lot of time over at Yahoogroups.com, and yet there are thousands and thousands of active groups there. There are communities of intent and people working in all kinds of places that we don’t anticipate, and if we’re not talking to them, we’re missing the chance to connect with some passionate people.

Where are some of the other hidden communities?

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  • Chris, from the early communities in the '80s like Usenet to the more modern ones of comments on a blog -- as the Internet becomes more social, every conversation becomes a kind of community. "Community by meme" is perhaps the most atomic, while "community by interest group" or "community by association/location" would be more macro.

    Keep up the good work.
  • The best hidden communities are the spontaneous ones. The instant communities that pop up in some blog comments or FriendFeed threads come to mind.

    Also, I love the writing experiments that are becoming more common on sites like Amazon and Yelp. One person flexes their magical reviewing skills, sprinkling in plenty of metaphor and hyperbole and absurdity onto an unassuming cafe or wolf t-shirt. Others see the genius and follow suit. It is a beautiful thing to see it take off.
  • This is fascinating, Chris. I discovered my own hidden community (a.k.a. subculture) when I created a Facebook Group called "Revive the art of personal notewriting!" (The irony does not escape me) and started getting members. As I set up Google alerts and SocialOomph alerts for "handwritten notes" and "handwritten letters," I discovered that there are many people out there who are really passionate about this as well as quality pens, writing papers, etc. So many niches, so little time...:-)
  • I've always been struck by how some blogs cultivate communities within their comment threads.

    What I don't mean: you and I see plenty of familiar, favorite names in the comment threads on (e.g.) Amber Naslund's blog, and the thoughts shared there are great. But in those cases much of the community-building may be happening somewhere else (Twitter, SXSW, etc.).

    What I do mean: the long, detailed, intertwined, subreferential discussions in the comment threads of Making Light ( http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/ ) or John Scalzi's blog ( http://whatever.scalzi.com/ ). These loooooong-time bloggers have built audiences of smart people who keep coming back for more, not least because they become community participants with other commenters.

    You think?
  • ACruiseGuy
    Actually, they aren't "hidden" to those who inhabit them <smile>
  • I love hidden communities. I have two of my own Yahoo groups.

    Looking for more in the comments here. I think this post will strike a nerve. Nice job, Chris. ;)
  • ACruiseGuy
    Well, actually, they are hidden to you, Chris, not the people who virtually inhabit them!
  • Mind you, some communities just don't want to be found, plain and simple. They don't like the open noise of Twitter, the ad-spam of Facebook, the cross-platforming of OpenID, etc.

    Sometimes they're hidden for a reason, because they like the anonymity. It's like the indie band syndrome - great until they're famous, but then people lose interest when the mainstream comes.

    Public gazing is fine, but sometimes navel gazing is all people want. :)
  • After reading the comments here, I'm a little unclear as to what a 'secret' community really is. Something outside Facebook/LinkedIn? Something that may be hidden from search? Everyone's spouting off niche communities, but those aren't 'hidden'. Right?

    I run 20 Something Bloggers, a large personal blogger community. I'd never considered us 'hidden', but in a sense I do know that the brand agencies I talk to have always been 'looking for something like us'. They usually find us via word of mouth. Since I'd imagine few niche communities advertise, I wonder if it's more an issue of the search capabilities available at the moment. In my mind the most efficient way to find a niche community is to a)get really involved on twitter and follow the word of mouth, or b)get comfortable really paging through 'niche hubs' like Ning and their competitors (this would be the least personal way to do it).

    But we're definitely out there, in huge numbers. We're not hiding:)
  • dikshadua
    Another untapped community/network are the university networks - around students and professors...there are a lot of good ideas being generated through the educational incubators!
  • johnrossharvey
    I belong to a racing simulator community, ever user has a profile, a record of what games they've played and how well they did. They have clans where like-minded or nationally patriotic people join. So a large community with smaller 50 person max. clans. North Ireland & Ireland are even in ONE clan. How's that for world peace?

    www.batracer.com most recently in legal dispute with Ferrari over names and imagery, so all names have been altered as a result.
  • AmberNaslund
    "There are communities of intent and people working in all kinds of places that we don’t anticipate, and if we’re not talking to them, we’re missing the chance to connect with some passionate people."

    What's interesting to me is whether or not we're looking harder for communities than we have before. It's still an emerging idea. Communities used to be the exception or the rarity; we had to seek them out if we wanted them, or deliberately form them if nothing existed.

    Communities are so much more ambient than they used to be; more wired into the world around us. They ebb and flow with the very speed of the web. We're expecting them to be present now I think more than we ever have before, but by default sometimes I think that might make them easier to overlook until we're ready to identify ourselves with one of them.

    Great food for thoughts...
  • Great point Chris. One great place that has some great little and some big communities of all types is Ning. Neal Wiser has one on there for SaveNasa and there is one InSocialMedia.
  • I have often thought of the worlds all around us, groups we don't even know exist. Most of us live a very narrow existence. We just don't know it. A good example, how popular is Ballroom dancing ( I once worked as an instructor)? It may seem esoteric and not for the ordinary person, yet it is quite popular with very ordinary, and some extraordinary people involved.

    I would like to see more posts like this. It is refreshing to see something out of the mainstream, a reminder that the world has many facets.
  • Personally, my skin crawls at the phrase "all the other hidden communities MARKETERS are missing." As though these "hidden" groups are yearning to be marketed to, IF ONLY someone could find them.

    Perhaps they're hidden because they'd like to have a community that ISN'T infiltrated by marketers. (Remember Twitter circa 2007?)
  • Chris,

    I'm finding that communities are the only way to go when trying to connect with people that might be interested in a specific niche. Thousands of passers-by to a site that is very targeted to something they are not interested in is a waste of resources.

    What's worth more: 20,000 twitter followers marginally interested in your services, or 200 very interested followers? Less is indeed more, I believe. Focusing social media updates or contributions to those communities is a much more efficient use of your available "social media" hours.
  • kellylux
    There are hidden communities of teenagers out there...I know because my 15 yo daughter spends a lot of time in these communities, particularly the MCArmy. Many of them are populated by kids who share a passion for the same band or kind of music. Would be a great place to see what's being said about products maketed at teens.
  • Hey Chris, would love for you to check out Monster Communities, professional niche social nets for like-minded career folks. PoliceLink, Nursing Link, MediaBuzz, ChefsBlade, ArtBistro, and 15 more all in the most popular vertical career fields http://my.monster.com/communities/default.aspx. Thanks! Great post.
    -- Kathy O'Reilly
    Director of Social Media Relations, Monster.com
  • Random thought: We now have the term "hyperlocal" for services and website that focus attention on small geographic areas. Do you think we could see a term like "hypercommunity" (or something else) arise for the need to easily identify and participate in small, niche communities online?

    It seems like these days there's an online community for just about any topic, be that in the form of a blog, forum, social network, IRC channel, or some other platform, but like the commenter who was looking for a recreational hockey group stated, it's not always easy to find them.
  • I like the idea, Colin. Buy the URL, baby. : )
  • alejandrorecio
    There are communities everywhere just waiting to share their knowledge and receive input on their work. Just like in real life we tend to just stay where we feel more comfortable, but there is a big world out there just waiting to be explored. There are people for everything in this life you just have to do a little searching and you will find a humane being that has much more knowledge and experience than any PDF or white paper.
  • Bingo. Everyone gets all caught up in Facebook, Twitter, etc. We forget that those are just the tip of a very big iceberg. But finding and then participating in those micro-communities becomes really time consuming. So from the corporate view, seems clients start to question the ROI of that effort. Which is a shame because sometimes talking to the masses is best but other times, activating a smaller, though more passionate group of folks will give you better ROI in the long term.
  • I'm constantly on the lookout for new communities that relate to my personal or business interests, and yet I've learned not to get down on myself when a co-worker points me to a place I had not previously discovered. It's an ongoing process!

    @Allisoncds, thanks for the link to The Experience Project (yet another undiscovered treasure). A neat little place.
  • hackmanj
    Chris - I had a similar experience with this issue last week. I noticed one of my Youtube videos had taken off over night, withing 24 hours I had well over 1,000 hits. It took a day or so for the stats to catch up and I found that it had been posted on a thriving website in .si something that was completely off my radar but completely exciting and cool. These things are everywhere, have you seen bigtent.com ? I was completely un-aware of that one as well until a couple of months ago.
  • Seth Godin's Squidoo and Triiibes are great smaller communities. I don't spend as much time in either of them as I would like but I intend to change that. John Jantsch's Duct Tape Marketing has Workbench and BizNik is starting to take off.
  • People need to look outside their tunnel vision past facebook and twitter and myspace.

    There are over 200 social sites out there.

    Doesn't matter what your into, there will be groups/forums out there that fit it.
  • richardbyrne
    "A book about education" is a wide category, but if you're interested, The World Is Open written by Curtis Bonk is an excellent book about how the web is changing education.
  • Wrote it down, Richard. Thank you. : )
  • This is so true, I work within the UK creative industry and have stumbled upon some niche sites set up by the community themselves.
  • There are so many places this little communities can form. For instance, one that I am a part of surrounds a blog that is part of the MYOB accounting software site: http://mybrc.myobnet.com/

    Issues affecting small business get discussed here, but contrary to what you might expect, it rarely talks about accounting or myob related issues. The value lies in the comments, and the relationships that are developing as a result of that.
  • timjones17
    meetup.com groups for off-line and online activities, and discussions
  • I agree.

    I am having a hard time finding some forums for recreational hockey players. I thought for sure it would be easier being as passionate as I am about hockey but I am finding it harder then I thought. So if anyone knows where they might hang out please help me.
  • Definitely a staring place, Jamie! :) http://bit.ly/8oRzhX
  • Thank you so much. I haven't started to look in Ning Communities but this is a great start for me. I appreciate it.
  • cathmary
    Hobbyist and club websites of all sorts complete w/ blogs and forums -- completely separate from Yahoo Groups and that ilk. One of my brothers tries to spend a few hours a week on some muscle car site's forum answering questions just because the subject fascinates him.

    What about LinkedIn groups? Or even just the subcommunity of LinkedIn users that regularly contribute to the Q&A forum.

    What about those community sites which require membership (paid or unpaid) to access, such as professional groups? Some of these can be pretty active but it's doubtful Google knows it.
  • Chris -

    Among the communities you should consider are those that exist across various groups. For example, "friends of Chris Brogan" likely live in various places, identifying themselves in one place as Facebook fans or in another place as Twitter followers.

    Marketers need to balance the ability to identify affinity groups whereever they are while respecting the desire of some in those affinity groups not to be identified cross-site. Ian's comment suggests that Wave could provide an aggregating option across sites -- I think there are many tools that could serve this purpose -- and I'm looking forward to seeing what the next set of client tools will bring.

    --Greg Meyer
    Customer Experience Manager, Gist
  • Great point Chris, I think this definitely falls into the idea of niche communities and how powerful they can be. The idea of leveraging the microcommunity as a way to reach an extremely targeted audience is becoming more important as we see people fragment into communities specific to a certain interest.
  • A hidden community I recently found (and love) is The Experience Project: http://bit.ly/76J62u Where you share and connect anonymously, searching through various categories of experiences. Over 3.5 million experiences shared so far. Don't know what value it has for the social media marketing world, but for connecting with people who relate to parts of your life in ways you may never know were it not for this anonymous forum, it's quite a bonding way to build community.
  • Yahoo Groups is an interesting animal, especially considering the changes in the use of the web lately. I'm a member of a few Yahoo groups still, and though they don't get used as much more than mailing lists and discussion groups, there are so many other functions there that seem un-searchable from the outside.

    I wonder if the functions we normally think of in community sites will soon start showing up in other services like, say, Google Wave? The flow seems much the same: start a thread, point at a calendar, upload a file, add some more context, follow the flow.

    Wonder if that would be a benefit. We'd finally have something structured to do with Wave. But what would that do to the community sites?
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