Three Generations Of Online Communities — 1985 — 1995 — Today

There’s been a lot of noise lately about the enormous growth and acceptance of social media networks such as Myspace, Facebook and Linkedin, with many scribes presenting these as a new phenomena.

In one sense, they are …but online communities are far from new. In fact, their existence dates right back to the 1970’s!

Here’s a snapshot of three generations of online communities …

Online Communities in 1985…

My personal experience with online services dates back to 1983 when I became involved with Ausinet (Australian Information Network).

This service – along with global services such as Dialog, Orbit, Lexis and Plexis – were the pre-cursors to the Internet.

They were huge information repositories which users could access from anywhere via dial up connections running at 300 or 1200 baud speed.

That’s a real snails pace to what we are used to today, but these services utilized powerful software which allowed you to very quickly identify the information you were after. A skilled operator could often find what they were after much faster than you can nowadays on Google!

The scope of information at people’s fingertips was enormous. For example, the Lexis service contained the full text of UK and USA legal statutes and cases and so was a perfect research tool for lawyers. You could also search the full text of major newspapers for company or individual specific information on most services.

These services attracted a very strong following amongst librarians in particular, plus other information professionals such as market researchers, lawyers, and stock brokers.

And they produced the first online communities.

Yes, we had the usual User Group meetings, and Conferences often had a stream devoted to online services. But they also spawned a range of new services, just as the online portals of today have done.

For example, in Australia, the company I worked for also developed a service called ACI Mail, a pre-cursor to today’s commercial email services (remember, this was 1985). The users on this service were ALL librarians. There was no advertising. It was geared to help information professionals: establish relationships — perform their jobs more efficiently — and keep in touch.

It was there to serve a “community”.

Another service was the Booknet service, an online catalogue service bringing together major book publishers into a central ordering facility – so that book buyers (i.e. the libraries) could purchase with ease. Another “community” focused service.

Online Communities in 1995 …

By 1995, communities had really evolved through thousands of BBS’s (Bulletin Board Services).

Where in 1985, online communities were dominated by Librarians and researchers, these BBS’s were predominantly catering for tech savvy individuals who were looking to gain access to specialist software and technical assistance … and participate in “online forums”.

Many companies at this time were introducing BBS’s into their service mix – encouraging their user community to “go online” to get more information. In other words, they were doing pretty much what we all do today with our websites.

This was also the period when many of today’s major online service providers emerged … from humble BBS backgrounds.

For example, Web Central – Australia’s leading web hosting provider – started out as a BBS operating out of the basement of the founder’s home in Morningside, Brisbane.

Likewise, America Online (AOL) and Compuserve were in effect BBS’s – although they took the technology side to another level with proprietary interfaces, add-on services, and particularly very user friendly email services.

Online advertising took off in this period … but the big attraction for many serious users was either email (particularly on the big BBS’s like AOL) or online forums where they could interact with users with similar interests. Compuserve in particular was full of “forums”.

These online forums / “communities” remain with us today … and will continue as a vehicle for people with like interests to interact and share information well into the future.

Whilst the User Group concept still exists, online forums have in most instances replaced the need for “physical” User Group meetings which dominated throughout the 70’s and 80’s.

During this time, the basis of today’s “netiquette” was established – i.e. no shouting, no spamming, no blatant advertising, etc.

Fast forward to today …

The buzz in the mid 80’s was AOL’s dramatic growth, with 100,000+ new subscrbers each month. Today’s buzz is the enormous take up of these social networks.

Today’s online communities are really no different to the above – they simply have more advanced technical interfaces which makes them infinitely more accessible and appealing to the broader internet community (just like AOL did in the mid 80’s).

Progressively they will no doubt evolve along similar paths to AOL with an extended range of services.

Those which adopt new service offerings will undoubtedly prosper … as long as they maintain the “community” elements which evolved a long time ago.

This is the big challenge ahead for some online communities.

I am already receiving a lot of email inviting me to join someone’s network or become a “friend”. A lot of this is just another form of spam.

I wonder whether this new form of spam will see eventually see today’s “open-for-all” social network powerhouses develop similar niche focused “community groups” like yesteryear with much tighter controls than we see at the moment.

Within “The Real World Marketer” is a special contribution from Australia’s leading investment community / forum which talks about the self-moderation element required and expected in these sort of communities.

Without some form of moderation, some of today’s social network powerhouses face the prospect of losing user confidence with time.