Trip Report: Online Community Summit

Last week, I spent at couple of days at the Online Community Summit -- a small, invitation-only conference in beautiful Sonoma, CA. I gave a talk about data-mining at THERE which was great fun. As always, a picture is worth a thousand words -- between the scatterplots and the screenshots, I think I got folks truly got excited about the possibilities offered by our platform.

All in all, this conference was a great opportunity to "take the pulse" of the online community/social software industry. Here are some quick notes about the "buzz" happening there:

* For the past year, most innovations in the community space have been coming from people *using* tools in creative and surprising ways -- two good examples being the emergence of alpha-bloggers in the blogsphere, and the political uses of blogs, wikis and meetups that are driving the Dean for America campaign. Most folks agreed that the most innovative uses of online community tools are now happening in the political arena.

* "social software" and "social networks" are CLEARLY the buzzphases-du-jour. Companies who previously described themselves as "community-building" companies now describe themselves as "social networking" companies or "makers of social software." The phrase 'social network' is being used so broadly that it's becoming meaningless. Something to note.

* Most people I spoke with feel that "ordinary people" are getting more and more comfortable meeting others online - a widespread social phenomenon that's paved the way for dating sites like Match.com, and is fueling the rapid growth of social-networking sites like Friendster, LinkedIn and Tribe.net.

* Most of the attendees were heavily into blogging -- both as producers and consumers of blog content. More and more influential people seem to be getting their news via blogs these days.

* VCs are definately interested in this space; the ones who attended this conference were asking: 1) what's the business model for social software? and 2) what's gonna be the NEXT big thing after Friendster in the social software space? Much interesting discussion around these points.

* cross-system identity that's owned by the individual was a hot topic of discussion in the hallways & sessions, although nobody I spoke with proposed a realistic and coherent plan for how to achieve that.

* Social data-mining is of great interest to everyone - out of 9 sessions, 3 were devoted to social data-mining and all generated lively discussions. Marc Smith from Microsoft gave a talk about "Data-mining Social Cyberspaces" (which I've seen before) that basically summarizes his statistical approach to identifying 'valued posters' and 'flame-inducing posters' in Usenet technical support groups. This is interesting, speculative work which is highly specific to tech support newsgroups, and definately worth following.

* For many social software creators, it's becoming increasingly important to linkup the virtual and physical worlds. For example, Meetup.com helps like-minded people find each other and organize real-world meetings, and this service is getting some traction. Friendster is another example of an online service whose purpose is to connect people together in the physical world, as well as the virtual world. And MilitaryAdvantage.com, a service for military veterans, has focused during the past year on helping members linkup "in real life" -- a shift in priorities that's come in response to Member requests and interests.