Stetoscope

Web 2.0 has been in the hip for several month on the web and even in the old world. Everybody talked about blogs, wikipedia, youtube, digg, flick’r, delicious… twitter. And with this 2.0 wave, some new words were on every lips : share, collaborative, yourself, social, free… and “community”. You may have noticed that some of those words had been in the hip just ten years earlier, that is funny but not my point here. I would like to last a little bit on the word “community”.

What is a community? Wikipedia ditinguish two definition main definitions :

1. Biological : interacting organism sharing an environment
2. Human : intent, belief, resources, needs, risks and a number of other conditions may be present and common that affect identity of the participant and their degree of cohesivness

So, as to web 2.0 what is the best definition? I think the biological one is always true, since people are sharing the same site and interact in someway. Does the human one that true? That is true for blogs, wikipedia, open source, flick’r… It seems to work also. Those definition are good, but not really interesting.

The intersting thing about 2.0 community is that users helps a company to build a good product. Just imagine that you could elaborate your own shampoo with a L’Oreal or P&G manager! You could no more be surprised about the environment aftermath if you had collaborate to a product. The idea of community induces a deep relationship between the company, the community and eventually the visitors.

This changes everything as to marketing! A product is no more the result of the company alone. It is the result of a platform (achieved by a company) and a content achieved by a community.  So a brand manager has to create a platform and to gather a community that will lead to a special user experience.

Indeed, the whole marketing function must be reinvented. That is a real challenge