“Collaboration” is one of those vague, multivalent terms – like “Web 2.0” – that can mean many things, and also nothing at all.  Because of this, it’s hard to get people to do it:  “Why can’t you all just collaborate?!”  It’s also hard to sell just on its own merits. 

There are examples of highly visible failures.  Friendster was the first huge social networking site, but it died a quick death because once people joined, they were faced with “what do I do now?” There really wasn’t much of a purpose or directive other than to connect online with your friends.

Here is one possible trajectory for a collaborative space:

Poorly organized collaborative spaces will behave like the diagram above.  They will appear to be healthy, thriving fora, but interest dissipates after a while, and the activity and level of engagement dies.

But there are more recent success stories, like Flickr and Wikipedia.  How are these examples different from failed community/collaboration efforts?

·         Vision.  The collaborative effort is led by someone with a vision, and that vision is described at the onset of the collaborative effort.  With Flickr, it was “to help people make their photos available to the people who matter to them.”  With Wikipedia it was “to develop and maintain open content, wiki-based projects and to provide the full contents of those projects to the public free of charge.” 

People rally to the aspirations of others – they want to join in the creation of something that matches their world view.

·         Purpose or outcome.  Friendster’s problem was that it didn’t really have either. There was the initial curiosity, but that quickly died out after networks became fully formed.  On the other hand, LinkedIn provides functionality beyond the connectedness – there is a purpose to being a part of that collaborative community.

·         Topicality.  The focus of a collaborative space must be relevant – its target audience must care about the topic.  The vision of the collaborative should be descriptive of the topic and the purpose or outcome. BSG’s research efforts go one step further than this – in addition to topicality, they offer a “compelling point of view” – this is another way to get people to engage, whether they agree with the POV or not.

·         Running start.  Few of us like to be first to the party – the room is empty, and there’s a social awkwardness about it. This applies to collaborative spaces as well. It’s important to “set up” a space with relevant content and a pre-existing group of like-minded and interested users. This primes the pump for the collaborative effort, and makes it easier for people to join in.

·         Continuous flow.  If you're monitoring blogs today, you find that the best ones have something new, interesting and relevant nearly every day.  A space that has gone dormant for days will feel to its users like it has cooled down and may lose its audience.  Also, encourage the participants to get an RSS feed from it - they will see activity and will receive new content without having to proactively visit. 

·         Refresh.  If the activity in the collaborative space begins to decline, there will need to be a refresh.  There are new technologies we should investigate that can do semantic processing of content, and can “translate” dated tags and topics into new, more current and relevant ones. Lacking that, it’s up to the leader of the space to continue to provide new discussion/collaboration areas.

·         Logical end.  The alternative to having a collaborative effort go stale is to simply end it.  That is, to declare the exercise complete and to publish the conclusions and outcomes from the effort.  This is an important reward mechanism and brings closure to the experience – a much better way to wrap things up than a “slow death.”

So the desired trajectory should look more like this:

What do you think are other ways to keep a community or collaborative space fresh? 

Have you experienced the "tired" effect with any of your own online experiences? What could have been different?