Structure 009: Digital Communities

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Throughout early life we spend a lot of time in different groups or communities. Schools, churches, sports teams, extracurriculars, and more. The options are nearly unlimited and by the time you get to high school or college it seems like everyone has a few things going on.

My personal experience has seen these communities greatly diminish in popularity after college. College sports end, school based groups end, and the people we know move around. While the popularity of these groups seems to decline after college the volume of options do not. Maybe even more options than earlier in life, but there are varying levels of effort required to join and sustain participation in these communities.

Recently digital communities have exploded in popularity. People are finding niche groups related to their interests online and real relationships are being forged. Are communities better online? Is this a short lived trend or is there something we can take with us forever to be learned here? Let’s talk through it.

Option Zero

Digital communities have been around for decades but in the past few years we’ve seen some interesting examples come to light that have really pushed the limits of what people can accomplish online. Facebook groups are an easy early example. Relatively limited, but a cool place for offline groups such as sports teams or work groups to connect online, organize events, and share content. Fast forward to the present and we’ve got some interesting evolutions. Entirely digital native groups that have then pushed themselves into the real world along with digital schools, digital companies and more.

Strictly Digital

Stemming from the standard social media groups we can start with Reddit. Reddit has always been more of a niche platform compared to the widespread adoption of Facebook or Instagram. Reddit is certainly a household name, but the smaller niche groups on the platform reach into the deepest corners of the internet. Memorably we can all recall the popular Reddit community r/wallstreetbets that achieved household name status after shaking up the retail trading environment in ways we haven’t really seen before. Members speaking on CNBC, entire stock prices being driven by their presence, and enough attention for Reddit to go all in on a Super Bowl ad the following year all came from this one group filled with people talking stocks.

Discord has been a popular tool in this evolution. It’s a communication based app that allows users to connect over text based chat, voice calls, and more. A group can create a server with a variety of channels oriented to a specific task or common goal. Discord has been the home-base for web3 with digital native communities spawning left, right, and center. It’s an innovative tool that has few true competitors that can accomplish everything it provides. We’d run out of room trying to name all of the communities started on Discord, but the tool has been impactful recently. Also extremely popular with streamers and gamers as a way for creators to interact with their fans.

Hybrids

The digital examples are limitless, but it’s been interesting to see online communities grow and evolve into hybrids as well. A cross between the in-person communities we are used to and the digital ones we have been warming up to.

Friends with Benefits is a Web3 focused social club that uses NFT ownership and token gating to build buzz online while providing in person events for members across the globe. Arkive is a DAO with the goal of being the first decentralized museum (I’m a member so shoutout Arkive). They use an efficient Discord server combined with their own platform to manage communications and voting while also providing members access to exclusive events in cities all around the world.

Stepping out of the web3 bubble you can even think about Peloton from this lens. Peloton has built a rabid digital community around exercise and fitness with an army of top notch instructors. People can login to workout whenever they want, wherever they want or they can keep track of when their favorite instructors are live. Then we continuously see the transition to in-person with sponsored events and visits to the Peloton studios for true fans to come experience.

So What?

Community is not a new concept to humanity, but we’re seeing it surface in new ways now. There are online native communities for just about anything you can imagine which takes away the limits we previously had. Geographic limits are simply gone. There may not be 10 people in your town that share your interests, but best believe there are 100 people in the world who do. Does this result in us just continuing to be online more than ever? Not necessarily. We are seeing the transition that these groups are making where they forge relationships online and then take that impact into the real world. It is now officially cool to talk to strangers online.

Who knows maybe we’ll start setting up kids with curated, verified groups online for their interests instead of shipping them off to summer camp every year. With seriousness there is a lot to be said about the culmination of connection we’re seeing in people around the world. Social apps have always given us the ability to communicate across the planet, but this new explosion in digital communities is tapping into that communication and forging true relationships. It will be awesome to see what digital native communities are able to accomplish in the coming years.

‘Till next time

Braxton

Song of the Week

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