This is somewhat reflective of the prevalent feeling that “content” is passé and that “community” represents the future of the Web. This thinking may be driven by the astronomical valuations of community sites like Facebook, which have dwarfed the previous valuations (by no means insignificant) of content-centric social media sites.
Pure Community Site
To really examine this issue of “content vs. community”, let us first imagine a website catering to a community brought together by a common interest:
- Without ANY content. Assume this hypothetical site is a doorway to a hidden, presumably vibrant private community. In other words, it does not have any content – effectively Web pages - exposed to the external world.
- With registered members who can post information regarding their common interest (by, shall we say, filling out a form). Other registered users get periodic emails related to their common interest – in a way similar to a private e-group (such as Yahoo groups!). In other words, the subscribers to this site do not get to see any content either.
Such a site is unlikely to get indexed very effectively by some search engines because of the lack of publicly visible content. Other search engines might index it highly if the marketing efforts were to focus on the creation of inward links.
Due to aggressive promotion, the Website can derive its traffic organically through searches or through referrals driven by inward links. Traffic can also arrive directly with the Web address of the site. Regardless of the origin, the incoming traffic to the Website is likely to be volatile – pretty much “Get In / Get Out” (GIGO) traffic. The primarily reason for this volatility is the lack of content – consequently, retention of traffic is low as there is neither stickiness nor a compelling reason for the visitor to continue browsing. Thus heavy promotion of the site will be ineffective – visits might go up significantly, but not page views.
The lack of clarity about what the site is about (since there is no content exposed to users) will also result in low new user registrations. Even the few who do get converted will in all probability soon think the site generates excessive spam and terminate their subscription.
Fundamental Building Block
Thus content is the fundamental building block for any site. It drives stickiness and leads to successful community formation (by compelling users to return). In other words, content is a prerequisite for community besides being a component of community. After all, as others have pointed out communities are combinations of content, commerce, communications and search. Others have even declared that “When It Comes to Time Spent Online, Content Trumps Community.”
