On her blog, The Harte of Markeing, Beth Harte recently started a thought-provoking conversation about "organic" vs. "inorganic" communities.  Definitely worth a read... comments too.

I resonate with the term "organic" when used to describe community, but not as much with the term "inorganic" (which doesn't sound like community to me).  Julie from Communispace commented on the post proposing the term "intentional", which holds promise.  What's the complement to intentional? Unintentional?  Accidental?  Another term pair that comes rapidly to mind (for better or worse) is "wild" vs. "farmed" (think fish, or corn).  But these don't seem to get at the heart of community either, despite promising such colorful and rich analogies!

Here's another angle: I propose that all communities, to be successful, have to be organic in nature -- they need to have a life of their own (be self-sustaining), where the motivations of participating parties are aligned and fulfilled -- eg., common ground and common purpose.

Certainly, when a company launches a community centered on their own business goals and forgets/neglects to design and align to their audience's goals as well (be they customers, partners, prospects, and/or guests), then more energy and effort, akin to life support, is required.  Unfortunately this is not an uncommon situation as most of us have been trained to think first from our company's perspective... inside-out.

At HiveLive, our experience suggests that it is certainly possible to grow a thriving company-sponsored community.  Any company with a valued offering has a base of customers who, when engaged appropriately, simply want to help -- give feedback, influence where the product/service is going, give/receive support, share the value they experience with peers, and connect with others who are like-minded.  This is most obvious around companies with high brand affinity, or companies whose products/services serve a practice, a lifestyle, or a cause.  Engaging this base of customers as part of the team and collaborating as colleagues provides a clear path to competitive advantage.

I would submit that how and where a company connects with customers or prospects or the broader ecosystem should be driven by their goals and the types of conversations and interactions desired.  Some conversations (I prefer the terms interactions and activities) are more appropriate "out there", while others are more appropriate on a company's turf.  As I've mentioned before: a company is not likely to share next year's product roadmap on a public social network or open forum, but as mentioned above, doing so in the right place, with the right people would be valuable.

Can we then list the attributes of a successful (living/thriving) community regardless of how/where the community forms (on its own, or sponsored by a company)?  I would propose pulling from and merging many of the characteristics on both of Beth's organic and inorganic lists. How about...

Successful communities:

• are formed and exist for a specific purpose/reason
• tap into and are aligned with the passions/motivations of participating members
• have different types of members (leaders, creators, contributors, browsers, guests)
• are organic in nature: 1) self-sustaining (have a life of their own, are resilient); and 2) self-organizing (don't like to be directly controlled
• have a specific culture (implied or stated)
• have rules of engagement (implied or stated)
• benefit from sub-communities (intimacy, relevance, and shared ownership drive participation)
• foster connections between people and information (cross-pollination)
• exist as part of a larger ecosystem of overlapping communities

As for the amount of energy required to energize and maintain a community, perhaps the missing dimension is community maturity.  Regardless of origin and purpose, all communities are first created/founded and then grow.  Communities that are young and forming take more energy to start up and maintain than communities at scale (founding > forming > critical mass > self-sustaining).  Consider the effort/energy it takes to get a snowball rolling vs. the energy required to keep it rolling (with momentum on your side).

A related question: as companies look to participate in these different types of community, what are the appropriate modes of interaction when engaging?  Marketer-as-ethnographer seems an appropriate model for how a company needs to engage with folks in their "natural habitat".  And, on a company's turf, customer-as-collaborator seems more appropriate.

Thoughts?