| I’ve been mulling over this topic on and off for the last couple of months. Google HotPot made it’s debut recently, and there are many more issues to discuss in this post.
Isn’t everything social media these days? If it is online and you can have “friends,” it must be social media. Simon Salt and I have debated (friendly, of course because we’re both friendly) about this issue and Yelp. We both run around in similar circles, and we both use similar tools. But we view them in different ways. *My opinions are well, my opinions, and they do not reflect on any of the Yelp community managers or users. **I don’t work for Google, Yelp, or any other like website. Side 1: Yelp is social media. You can add friends. You can meet people who become your friends. You can send messages to your friends. It must be social. Side 2: Yelp is crowd sourced content. People write reviews, and they sort through reviews. Though Yelp has a community in select cities, those are free-standing and created after content starts to come in. I used to be on side 2. Simon was on side 1. Yelp is full of reviews that come from people who want to voice their opinions. Those opinions are combined into a star rating. That is the quick and dirty of it. However,a deeper look into why Yelp was leaps and bounds ahead of similar sites like Chowhounds or Urbanspoon was because they had a community. They built communities after there was enough momentum by hiring an official community manager (to keep the peace and to put on parties) and started the Elite badging system. Having been in two separate Yelp communities (Houston and Austin) and attending a Yelp Elite event in San Francisco, I could easily see that each community has a distinct demographic, personality, and dynamics. You might have remembered my post about the destruction of the Austin Yelp Community by de-eliting Michelle C. Since then, the communities have worsened in my opinion. Long-time users began to fade away, the speed of reviews posted seemed to slow, and the talk threads because much less active. During the 2011 eliting week, threads like this one and this one brought about heated conversations. Anyone who crossed Yelp, created problems for Yelp, or voiced their opinions louder than Yelp did not have their elite status renewed.
I was one of those people who did not have their 2011 elite badge, and I was surprised at first. At SXSW 2010, I spoke at a core convesation with Addie Broyles about how review sites were changing the restaurant review landscape. As Yelp was just slapped with lawsuits, it quickly became Yelp-centric. I stood up for the Yelp community (the users), and I gave my unbiased opinion about Yelp’s role in the restaurant reviews. I still think that they had a genius model. Before community became a buzzword, they were building them. Yelp was one of the first websites that hosted in person meet ups. I wish I had thought of that and executed as well as they did. Anyways, after my post about how they were destroying the community and my voice in the social media world, Yelp was displeased and did not renew my elite status as well. They didn’t give my the axe after the blog post, when I was expecting it. They waited four months later. That portion of Yelp’s Corporate email to me read: “We also understand that you are a social media consultant. Though not technically a business owner, there is an inherent conflict of interest with being Yelp elite and a social media consultant. Per the above, unfortunately we are unable to welcome you back to the Elite Squad at this time.” I’m putting that on all my future resumes.
You might be asking yourself, “Who cares about the community? I don’t care about those people, I just want to see the ratings.” And you’re absolutely right in asking. I don’t think Yelp is going to fold just because the communities are less loyal, less active, but I know that I’m going to shift how I categorize Yelp. Yelp to me is turning into a search tool, a very useful one at that. I frequently listen and read Jason Calicanus and Fred Wilson’s blogs and podcast, and both of them use Yelp (mobile too). But I’ve never heard or read of Jason or Fred commenting about feeling right at home with the Yelp community. Most of the comments are about the search features. I too really like the search feature on Yelp mobile. I can drive into a new location, hit find close to me button, and start weeding it through. However, one time late at night, Yelp recommended that I get dinner at the Yellow Rose, the gentlemen’s club. I declined that recommendation. The numbers geek inside me really likes that you can get more data. While there is more noise in Yelp data (variability in reviews), if I didn’t know the source, I would rather look at the reviews of 100 people instead of 5 people. Statistically, more reviews are more favorable. I’ll update my views of Yelp. It isn’t crowd-sourced content driven by a strong community anymore. Honestly, who is going to join a community just to find out where to eat a taco? Now that a particular threshold of content already exists (at least in Austin and other larger cities), Yelp is a great search tool. I use Yelp to collaborate with my friend’s recommendations, and I often read reviews to see what dishes are extra tasty (or not). The Evolution of Search : GoogleHotPot Search is great, and who is the typical suspect in search? Google. Google recently launched their HotPot product that could throw a wrench into the current review sites. I listened to the This Week in Startups podcast with Lior Ron (the product developer of GoogleHotPot) several times. Lior Ron describes HotPot as the evolution of search, making search personalized and socially relevant – almost like a Netflix or Pandora for places. I would add that there’s an even more social aspect to this type of search.
A different type of community. Even though GoogleHotPot is a search, there are still community components to it. Google users have friends. You can share information with your friends and you can read information posted by your friends. The community is already there, and users are sharing the information with each other which is similar to a social media tool. Yelp on the other hand, tried to nurture a community by bringing together users to contribute content. Sure, there is a community, but that community didn’t exist without the Yelp platform. The Yelp community was created after the platform was available. I view GoogleHotPot as giving a community a tool, and Yelp built a community on a platform. You can watch/listen to TWIST episode with Lior Ron here. What can GoogleHotPot do for users? 1. You wouldn’t have to go to multiple review sites (Yelp, Chow, UrbanSpoon) to see reviews. GoogleHotPot collects the ratings and shows it to you in a pretty box. 2. You can start to personalize the searches, and thusly improve recommendations. Every time you rate a place, Google starts to learn what you like and don’t like, and thusly adjusting recommendations to you. I’ve asked Yelp about this several times to no avail. I wanted a tool where Yelp would discard reviews from people who did not share the same taste preferences or styles of food as well. From a data perspective, their ratings and reviews would be ignored by me anyways. 3. You are already in your community. Since GoogleHotPot is on your Google profile, it is easy to add friends that are already in your email box. No need to join a new community or to start one. You already have your community of friends that you can add to your GoogleHotPot. I have just shy of a quajillion contacts on Google. I already know these people, and I already communicate with them.
What can GoogleHotPot do for businesses? 1. Your business shows up on Google. They don’t adjust or change your rankings, but you get to highlight when you are on Google. With Yelp, you have to hope that Yelp’s SEO will get your Yelp page ranked high on the first page. And well, Yelp business pages aren’t getting as high as they used to. There were some Yelp business pages that I couldn’t find on Google. However, Yelp talk threads are still highly ranked. Like really highly ranked. 2. Information that Google gives business owners for free:
3. The ability to add tags to highlight your business when it shows up in Google. The fee to for the tags is only $25 per month. That is very affordable, even to small businesses. You add tags to enhance:
Other benefits are:
3. Boost, which is like Google adwords. I can tell you from experience that the Boost is effective on mobile devices. I once searched for a business by name, and all the similar businesses who had Boost showed up on my Google Map. The actual business I was searching did not. That can be a very practical way for businesses to edge out the competition in the mobile space. What’s in the future? I can’t tell you how GoogleHotPot will pan out. To be honest, Google has had their fair share of failed products like Wave and Buzz. However, unlike HotPot, Wave and Buzz relied entirely on people to talk to each other using Google tools. GoogleHotPot is capitalizing on content that already exists. That might make or break this new product. After attending the Launch Conference, I also saw that new tools that were quoted to be like the “Netflix of _________.” Whether or not GoogleHotPot takes off, it is pretty obvious that search is evolving. You might wonder why I’ve made such a big deal about GoogleHotPot, I kind of love Chinese hot pot. That’s my comfort food, one of them anyways. |
@GoogleHotPot:The Evolution of Search, Social Media, and Community
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I’m the richest person @TedXAustin
| Once the TedXAustin videos and photos are up, I will start adding photos and switching out the videos.
I love TED.com. I really do, and TedXAustin 2011 was my third TED experience. Each of my TED experiences have been uniquely different, and left me even more certain that I was deeply in love with TED. My first TED was TedXAustin 2010. I thought the energy in the room was tremendous, the speakers and attendees were equally amazing, and I was infatuated with connecting to the awesome people I had met. My second TED was TedXUT 2010, in which I was the live tweeter. Live-tweeting for a conference is extremely mentally draining. Not only must one pay full attention all the time at the conference, one much also quickly synthesize the content and post it into short 140 character messages. I also respond and join conversations when I’m live-tweeting, which makes it only about a million times for difficult. My TedXAustin 2011 experience can be described with several words: reflection, sharing, compassion, and understanding. This experience had energy that was different from the others. Many of the speakers spoke about pain, confusion, heart ache, and triumph. I didn’t leave thinking that I was going to change the world, but I certainly did leave feeling a wider range of emotion than on a normal day. The day started with an engaging performance by Mother Falcon. Mother Falcon was like the liberal Austin version of classical music. Performance and style like that kind of make me wish I didn’t give up on the piano 10 years ago. I was in awe. Another emotion expressed on stage was gratitude. Gilbert Tuhabonye was that man. Even though he came from Burundi with the scars of warfare, this man glowed of sunshine. As an adolescent, he watches as his friends turn into his enemies and his other friends turn into the victims of beheadings. Though his body was burned, he managed to escape by literally running away. Running thusly became many things to him. Gilbert also sang to the audience, a song he sang while running as a child. And we mostly tried to sing back in tune. I can’t wait for his video to be online so that you see this someone who runs with joy. Joaquín Zihuatanejo expressed many other emotions. Emotions that my overactive mirror neurons picked up. Joaquin isn’t just a poet. He made poets. He was an English teacher who took def poetry by the scruff of its neck and shook some crazy passion in it. This embedded video isn’t of his performance at TedXAustin, and but I do hope that it will be soon. One of his poems hit close to home. It was about a deaf student named John. This deaf student name John reminded me of my own experiences teaching last semester. It was a striking reminder, and a reminder that though we live in the same physical space, our worlds are completely different. Another interesting theme at TedXAustin was on being rich. No, I’m not talking about money. I’m talking about having a rich life. I think my life is richer than foie gras mousse served on pao de queso and covered with butter. My life is rich with experience – the experience of driving all over the 48 contiguous states, the experience of working in prisons, the experience of driving on an autocross track, the experience of training and handling the top most titled dog of my breed in the world, and the experience of launching a cupcake at a zombie. My life is rich with friends, family, and community. My life is also rich with opportunity, and lastly, my life is rich with food. And after another great TedXAustin experience, I’m the richest person in Austin (self-proclaimed of course). |
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How to Spot Fake Reviews
| You’re a business owner, and you’re wondering how other businesses get so many reviews. How did Uchi get 527 reviews with an average of 4.5 stars on Yelp (as of 1/1/11)? How did Sugar Mama’s get 314 reviews with an average of 4.5 stars on Yelp (as of 1/1/11)? How come no one is talking about your business? *I know that Uchi and Sugar Mama’s do NOT engage in the behavior described below. Thusly, I feel comfortable using their data.
The temptation sets in. You want more people to know about you. You think no one will find out. You’re antsy for people to click on your website link. You make a fake account on Yelp. You give yourself five stars. You wait a few minutes. That wasn’t too bad. So you make another fake account. You give yourself another five stars. That was easy. On the Internet, no one knows you’re a dog right? So you do it again. And again. And again. Now you have seven positive reviews. Job well done! You ask your employees to log onto Yelp and to write reviews. You ask all your friends, suppliers, regulars, and family members to do it. It isn’t technically wrong, if you don’t get caught. What an easy way to increase your ratings and pump up those reviews. WRONG. It isn’t long before you get sniffed out. You’re slammed on the Master Debater’s Threads, and Google Alerts show that you have been caught red-handed. Moral of the story. Don’t write fake reviews. Social media and crowd sourced content sites already spark controversy and debate. Throw in examples of fake reviews written by business owners or their rivals, and everyone goes bananas. Transparency in social media has been the norm with demand for honesty ever growing. Users want to be able to put a face with a social media voice, and rest assured that conflicts of interests are revealed. No one wants to be tricked. As a consumer, you do want to know which reviews are honest. Here’s some quick tips on sniffing them out.
Those are just some ways that fake reviewers are sniffed out. The best defense against them is the time it takes to create believable fake profiles/online presence. *I’ve been going back and forth on whether or not I should write this. I thought that in writing this, shady businesses owners might find tricks to appear less fake. Honestly though, to create an online presence to does not escape the vigilant detection of savvy internet users and the likes of the Google machine would take hours upon hours. I would guess that it would take no less than 50-100 hours per fraudulent online presence. The likelihood of a business investing that many hours into a single fake review is extremely low. Those types of businesses wouldn’t even invest the time in reading this post. I don’t think this blog post will affect these behaviors at all. |
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Patience, Young Jedi. Force Leads to Resistance.
Also crossposted at MisoHungryNow.com.
As we jump into the the fury of the Holidays, I’ve been asked about New Year’s Resolutions. I don’t have any. If I want to make changes, I’ll make them now. There’s no reason for me to wait symbolism of something new. Over the course of 2010, I’ve become much more independent in my career leaving a very unhappy situation and starting my own firm. Since I started taking on clients, I’ve learned to say “No.” And for anyone who knows me, saying “No” is probably more painful than smashing a batch of perfect macarons (the horror!). I’ll be trying to say, “No” more often in 2011.
This blog post isn’t really a resolution for me, but rather a two part lesson that I’d like to share. Patience, Young Jedi: force may lead to resistance.
I can be very impatient, especially when I am hungry. That, I openly disclose. However, outside of hunger, I try to practice patience. My 2011 challenge to businesses is to practice more patience with social media. My approach to social media is that it is simply relationships that communicate online. Many businesses that I’ve encountered are impatient with social media. They want results, and they want them now. On the first day of launching a Twitter campaign, someone asked me “Why isn’t anyone retweeting me?” “How come I didn’t make more sales?” Patience.
Businesses aren’t the only ones who are perpetrators of this attitude. On occasion, I’ll have new bloggers or tweeters contact me with questions. “How do I get to 1000 followers?” “How do I get people to read my blog posts?” “How do you get people to talk to you on Twitter?”
The problem I have with that attitude is that it is impatient with the relationships. Relationships take time and effort. People aren’t machines where if put in X number of tweets, you’ll make a friend. People experience emotions, people can be cautious with others, people don’t always (or shouldn’t always) disclose everything online, and people need time to develop trust. When you meet someone in a romantic context, you will rarely fully mutually disclose your deepest and darkest secrets on the first date. You also wouldn’t likely get married to that person in the first few weeks of dating. My quick poll of my Twitter followers showed that most married couples dated for 3.36 years before tying the knot (n=14, max = 8 years).
So why is it that our culture finds it commonplace to date and to be engaged for long periods of time before marriage, but our businesses get so pushy and antsy in other types of relationships? Why do businesses get worried if I don’t I retweet their promotions after only a few tweet exchanges? Why do businesses think I should be loyal to them just because I mentioned them in a Facebook post?
I don’t have be pushed into a relationship. As a consumer, I should be able to decide which brands I want to have a relationships with and which ones I don’t. So if you’re using Twitter for a business, have a little patience. Nurture the relationship. Quit worrying about your numbers on the first day you roll out with your social media campaign. Instead, evaluate them every 60 to 90 days.
For the second part of this lesson, we’ll discuss force and resistance. It seems like some of the best lessons in life come from dog training. If you didn’t catch it before, I train, handle, and judge dogs in various activities. I call my type of training “motivational training.” My trainers are Debby Quigley and Judy Ramsey at Dogwood Training in Houston, TX. With this type of training, we teach motivation first. Everything that I ask my dog to do, I first train my dog to be motivated to do it. If my dog is NOT motivated to do it, then as a handler, I’m doing something wrong. While there are methods to force a dog to engage in a certain behaviors, motivational training gets more enthusiastic and reliable performances. And the dogs also enjoy it.
You can watch dogs in the obedience ring and see which ones were trained with force and which ones were trained with enthusiasm. Force leads to resistance. Sometimes trainers use it to their advantage. The next time you see a televised dog show, watch the handler closely as the cameras zoom in. You might notice that the handler will pull back on the dog’s leash ever so slightly when the judge approaches. The goal of this is not to get the dog to step back by pulling back, rather this slight pull (force) leads to the dog leaning forward (resistance). When the dog leans forward in a stacked stance, the dog’s muscles flex and look better toned. Try it next time you take your dog for a walk. For a large majority of dogs, the more you pull back, the more your dog will pull forward. I won’t get much into it, but I don’t recommend that as a way of controlling your dog. I’d recommend that you motivate your dog to stay with you, as opposed to investigating something else much more interesting than you.
The next time you think about your social media campaign, ask yourself why anyone would be motivated to follow you, tweet you, or show up to your events. If you can’t think of a good reason why, it is probably time to revamp your game plan. If people follow you only because you give away free prizes, you might want to also revamp your game plan. Giving stuff away free isn’t building a relationship. That’s just bribing them into following you. With tactics like that, you’ll gather more variable and less loyal followers. Getting followers through bribes isn’t much of a community. Please note: That tactic is very different from playing online or social games within your community that involves a free prize. These are two very different concepts. Motivate them to want to build a relationship with you.
Happy New Year, and Patience, Young Jedi. Force leads to resistance.
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Where’s your face? Walnut Cafe cultivates a community.
Crossposted at Misohungrynow.com.
Saturday morning, @hopsafari/@windaddict and I took a little stroll down to Walnut Cafe. He read on Yelp that they had a blueberry cornbead, and that was enough to get us moving. Needless to say, there were many other interesting aspects of Walnut Cafe. One of the first things that I noticed were all the photos of faces. There were faces everywhere.
On the walls, on the menus, on their car out back were photos of customers. All of their materials were printed with photos of their customers. I absolutely love, love, love this community building strategy. There’s no website for people to sign up and to post there comments. This was a community of loyal customers.
Check out all those smiling faces. I happened to meet the owners of Walnut Cafe. They have a photo day in which customers can come in to get their photo taken. You joined the community “board” by showing up and getting your photo taken. The photos are later used on the menu and other advertising. Apparently, customers really want to be on the menu, and they are annoyed when their photo doesn’t make it. That is a pretty awesome situation for a restaurant. When you have people who want to be the face of your brand, you’re doing a pretty damn good job.
Oh, and @hopsafari had a Walnut Latte. Yum.
The quiche was pretty fantastic. Tomatoes, mushrooms, onions, green peppers, and cheese melted together into a hearty and tasty breakfast. The breakfast potatoes were wonderfully seasoned and spicy.
@Hopsafari had the eggs marcos (eggs, bacon, cheddar cheese, and cream cheese) with breakfast potatoes and blueberry cornbread. I loved the eggs marcos. It reminded me of putting cream cheese on eggs when I was in undergrad. The cornbread was also wonderfully tasty. It was solid in structure, simple in flavor, and comforting.
Really appreciating your customer. This one comes to Walnut Cafe every single day. He gets to be the face of their restaurant.
Another shot of the customer heavy menu. I want to be on the menu.
Not only are the customers on the menus, they are the vehicles. I’m starting to feel that this restaurant isn’t for the food (however, tasty), but really for the community.
And the pies are award winning. I love this concept.
More happy customers on the car.
In addition to the two Walnut Cafe locations, they also have a brand new food truck.
Here I am, in the Walnut Cafe truck.
In addition to having an awesome customer community, the food truck community in Boulder is unique. All the food trucks have a name and identity separate from the food. Walnut Creek truck’s name is Dinah. The StrEat’s truck name is Tina. Hear that, Austin? Name your food trucks. They need to have an identity, and their own community. I love to anthorphomize objects, and giving a food truck a name and identity is perfect.
Another shot of the brand spanking new truck.
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Word of Mouth Sans Technology: Village Virgins
Also crossposted at Misohungrynow.com
If the brunch spots @HopSafari (also @windaddict) and I visited are any indication of the food community in Boulder, this place is hopping. Village Coffee was an awesome experience for us, but more than that, the word of mouth strategy was new, fun, and refreshing. I checked into Village Coffee on Gowalla, and I saw a little tag that said to make sure to tell the staff that it is our first visit. So I did. First time Village Coffee visitors are called Village Virgins. The restaurant calls out the Virgins, literally. The staff yells “EXCUSE ME, EVERYONE! WE HAVE A VILLAGE VIRGIN!” Everyone in the restaurant cheers, and then resumes their meal. The virgins aren’t scoffed at or picked on. They are applauded with a warm welcome. What a better way to welcome newbies?
Whoever brought the Village Virgins gets a stamp on their Village V-card. Bring in three virgins and you get a free half order of French toast. After six virgins, you get a free pancake. After eight virgins, you get any free breakfast. After ten virgins, you get a free shirt. This is a genius plan. This isn’t just rewarding customers who visit frequently, but it rewards customers who bring in new customers. This is word of mouth, offline, and I absolutely love it. I’ll also note that there is a sign up at Village Coffee with a sign saying that they had a Facebook. The sign also says that they are crawling into the 21st century. That just goes to show that you don’t need a fancy social media strategy to use word of mouth.
I love the unpretentiousness and simple, down to Earth atmosphere.
One of the staff at Village Coffee snaps a photo for us.
The chicken fried steak, eggs, and hash browns.
The egg burrito with green chile pork stew. Delicious!
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Shared interests + behavior = Community: The 99% rule in the Craft Beer Community.
What makes up a community? According to dictionary definitions, it is a social group. Many of the factors that tie this social group together are location or common heritage. It can also be a group of people or nations sharing a common interest. And online interest community is typically comprised of people with a shared interest (knitting, reading, eating, cooking, gardening, etc…). These communities not only have a shared interest, but they usually have shared behaviors (engaging in behaviors as well as how they interact). Being an active member of over 20 different clubs and communities over the last few years, each community has it’s own culture and social rules.
I’ve been in the craft beer community for almost two years now, and I have to say that it is a pretty awesome group. While there are different types of beer drinkers, I’m referring to the passionate group of beer evangelists who know and love craft beer (denoted in the blue and purple circles). These people might write blogs, organize local beer events, work in a craft brewery or craft beer organization, or participate heavily in homebrew activities. The shared interest is the promotion of craft beer, and how they interact is extremely friendly.
This core group of craft beer enthusiasts are extremely dedicated to producing quality beer (commercially or at home), share the same philosophy, and are really nice. No, really. They are really cool, chill, friendly, and awesome. You might think that it is just a front, but it is not. Even in a heavily drunken state, craft beer enthusiasts are really, really nice. At the Great American Beer Festival Media lunch in 2010, Paul Philippon of Duck Rabbit (and I quote) said “the national brewing community is a$$hole-free.” The general rule for this group (denoted by the purple and blue circles) is the 99% rule. 99% of craft beer enthusiasts are really awesome, and only 1% is a total !#%%#$!er. It wasn’t until recently that I met someone in that 1% that I got to thinking more about defining community.
It started about two weeks ago when I was looking for a graphic designer to do some work for my new project (more on that later). Graphic designer, we’ll call him Mr. 1% for now, contacted me with the slant that he was heavily involved in the beer community. He claimed to be friends with brewers at a Texas brewery, a home brewer, had beer brands as past clients, and 18 years of experience. He also offered me a very low rate of $125 per logo as he was hungry for some referrals and work. I took Mr. 1% up on that offer because of his past work experience and to support another fellow craft beer lover. Turned out Mr. 1% probably deserves an ejection from the craft beer community. Among many of the offenses he committed, these are just a few.
- He said “women were too stupid to know what tulip glasses [are], and the only people who would know are 50 year old male beer drinkers.“ He didn’t know what a tulip glass was either. This comment was beyond offensive. Women are gaining ground in this male dominated industry. Here’s @lyonsgal’s article citing women in the industry, and @snax, Beer Queen of Austin, has won medals for her homebrews. Here’s a very short list of some other women in beer: @beerfox, @thebeerwench, @girlslovebeer, @theartofbeer, @girlspintout, @miriyum, @hereforthebeer, and @carolfarrar.
- Mr. 1% was stealing clip art off the internet and trying to pass them off to me as his own work. He didn’t even bother to change the stolen art besides changing the colors. It isn’t too difficult to catch someone stealing when he steals the first item in the Google Image Search. He also mentioned that he applied for a job at Gowalla. They might want kick that one to the curb.
- I indicated to him many times that I wanted something very distinctive yet simple, like Johnny Cupcake’s logo. He proceeded to use derogatory language regarding that brand. Making rude remarks about a successful brand is truly telling of one’s character.
- When I decided that Mr. 1% just isn’t capable of producing anything original and his attitude just wasn’t going to cut it, he practically threatened me. He wrote to me in an email that he frequented craft beer watering holes like the Elephant Room and the Gingerman, and that I might run into him. I wrote back that even if I did, I’d still be friendly.
) That made him go off the deep end. Also, craft beer drinkers don’t go to the Elephant Room for beer.
Well, he surely stuck out as a 1%. He wasn’t just un-cool, he was a total #$#@%er. This leaves several questions concerning community.
Women on the Great American Beer Festival Media Bus Tour. Ginger Johnson of Women Enjoying Beer on the left and Chelly Vitry on the right. Photo by John M. P. Knox.
Can you be a member of a community while only engaging in some activities?
I do consider myself a member of the craft beer community, but I don’t engage in all of the activities surrounding the craft beer community. One of the more common activities is homebrewing. @Windaddict does that already, so there’s really no need for multiple batches of homebrew at the same time. Mr.1% claims that he engages the activity of homebrewing, but whether or not he shares the same craft beer attitudes and philosophy is questionable. I would tend to say that just engaging in activities isn’t enough. One must also have the shared attitude or philosophy.
Another example of my point of view would be in the dog fancier community. If you don’t already know, I show, train, and handle dogs. The people who put forth hours and hours of work and thousands and thousands of dollars showing and sometimes breeding dogs are called fanciers in my book. Other terms for them are breed enthusiasts or, generically, dog show people. These are a very special breed, pun intended, of dog lovers as they are highly invested into improving their beloved breed in structure, health, type, and temperament. These people make up about .01% of all dog owners. One of the activities that they engage in is breeding to improve the breed. Nope, there’s no money in breeding a litter to improve a specific breed. Dog fanciers are losing thousands of dollars.
On the other hand, many people engage in the activity of purposely breeding dogs for other reasons. Those other reasons might be due the desire to make money, to show kids what birth looks like, or because they don’t see a reason for pet population control. These people are NOT in the dog fancier community because they don’t have the same philosophy of improving a breed’s type, temperament, structure, and health.
I could write a novel about the dog community, so I’ll sum it up in a phrase commonly said in the dog fancier community. If you make money breeding dogs, you’re not doing it right. If you’re not interested in spending a large fortune improving a breed, you’re better off getting a dog from rescue or the shelter.
If someone’s interactive behavior is completely out of line with the norm for the community, is that person even considered in the community?
Can someone be such a !#%$^@$#@ that regardless of all his other behavior, he’s a pariah? I suppose the answer is sometimes yes, and sometimes no. Kayne West was a real jerk to Taylor Swift. But I think he’s still out there doing whatever, wait…. I’m going to let you finish writing, but… Kayne West committed a fatal mistake in my opinion. It isn’t clear whether or not he is still in the inner circles of the music community, but he appears to be doing okay with his fans despite his stunt. I’m not in the community so I can’t say for sure.
The sometimes yes part comes in when someone is so rude, abrasive, and hateful that no one wants to interact with that particular person. While the person might still engaging in activities and share the common philosophy, being a jerk can get you ejected from a community. If you show up to a party, and no one wants you there, you’re probably not a member of the community.
These were mostly theoretical questions, and as a commercial brand, Mr.1% might be considered part of the target audience. But I’m not sure that Mr.1% should really be considered part of the community, at least from a community perspective. His behavior wasn’t just a little unusual for the community. His behavior was so out of line of the community norm that I can’t see him lasting long where the community is extremely friendly and cohesive.
This article doesn’t get into the the ins and outs of organization governed communities, industry managed communities, or self-selected participatory communities. However, if I managed the community, my ninjas would have taken him out a long time ago.
Some sexy Ladies of Craft Beer. By John M. P. Knox.
And because women in beer are totally awesome, I teamed up with @Snax to bring you the “MisoHungry and Austin Women’s Beer League Host Beer & Dessert Pairings.” On Sunday, Oct. 24th, 2-4 pm, at the Gingerman Downtown Austin, join us for beer flights and tasty treats. Sponsored by Austin Cake Ball and Sugar Mama’s Bakeshop.
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