Our modern community
For the last year, we’ve been closer than ever digitally and further than ever physically. 2020 gave us a glimpse into a world where living online was our default and IRL interactions were few and far between as our access to physical spaces disintegrated.
The lack of gravitational pull from employers and schools, previously anchoring employees and students to cities and neighborhoods, resulted in 24% of Americans relocating during COVID. As our worlds went virtual, location became fluid, slowly eroding the barriers to access and communities that were previously locked up in the physical world.
The OG community
Communities historically centered around our ancestors’ nuclear family and physical location, namely the neighborhoods they lived in. Where you lived shaped who you knew, what you did, and how you lived. Communities were defined by your place of worship, the school you went to, and the trade you committed your career to. Family lineage was a core aspect of a human’s identity as social status and class were largely dictated by the family an individual was born into. It was common to see multi-generational households co-exist, a traditional community within itself.
In the 19th century, millions of immigrants across the globe uprooted their lives and made their way to the US in pursuit of the American Dream. As immigrants from all walks of life came together, new communities emerged with individuals taking on more prominent national identities, self-organizing to establish enclaves like Chinatown and Little Italy.
Physical location has remained at the core of community with access to opportunity locked up by where an individual lived. Over time, new trends have taken hold (e.g., the concept of leaving home for college in the US became mainstream in the 1960s), steadily expanding opportunities for individuals to establish new communities outside of their early stomping grounds.
Fast forward to the new millennium, a time when many of us remember the days before being hyperconnected: the dial-up tone, texts that cost 10¢ per message, AIM screen names that were all the rage. Millennials grew up playing outside with their neighbors, largely unaware of the technological wave that would fundamentally transform future kids’ “neighborhoods.” As Facebook came online, followed by Instagram and Snap, we were armed with new ways to keep in touch with IRL friends. Then Uber and Airbnb rose up, powering transportation and lodging for us to come together with offline communities in new ways.
No new friends -> modern friends
Earlier forms of social networks centered around connecting with IRL friends online or finding people within your second-degree web. For the online platforms that encouraged making internet friends, users typically took on pseudonyms and interacted anonymously. For early communities focused on democratization like Reddit and Quora, users operated with anonymity as the default, diminishing opportunities to establish personal relationships and preventing the growth of hybrid online and IRL communities. In a time when we were still primarily an offline society, the general advice was “don’t talk to strangers.”
In the last decade, this mentality has been flipped on its head. We went from avoiding strangers to getting into strangers’ cars and vacationing in their homes. As we got comfortable with interacting with strangers more intimately, a new wave of social communities took hold, encouraging us to expand out of our IRL bubbles and build new online relationships with modern friends. As our digital spaces have evolved, we’ve shed anonymity in favor of deeper connections through common interests.
Community-based democratization
Today, the purpose of membership to many online communities extends beyond keeping in touch and checking statuses, rather it’s about acquiring knowledge together. Relationships built on the basis of personal or professional interests rather than out of geographical convenience and proximity. These nascent online communities are focused on democratizing access and knowledge.
William Gibson once said, “The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.” Democratization is defined as, “the action of making something accessible to everyone.” The internet in itself was the earliest form of the democratization of information, simplifying the act of searching for information from a trip to the library to simply typing your question into Ask Jeeves or Netscape. Yet, as the world came online, information became commoditized, trending towards lower quality pockets of misinformation.
Online communities have a responsibility to manage the delicate balance between providing high quality content and maintaining an open and inclusive forum. Creating an inclusive community can vary from companies’ business models (are they pricing certain users out of the community?) to elevating certain members’ perspectives (are the majority of their users from similar educational or socioeconomic backgrounds?). Community-based democratization has the opportunity to bring us together in new ways and transform the way we access information and learn.
The rise of the digital neighborhood
With the rise of the digital neighborhood, we’re no longer beholden to the offline communities we were once born into. We’re free to move about new online communities, logging into and abandoning apps as we please based on our current interests. The traditional 20th century version of a neighborhood is no longer a barrier to who we know, what we do, and how we live. Our modern neighborhood is now in the Cloud and accessible to (almost) anyone with internet access.
- Want to talk all things investing? Dive into the depths of high quality investment memos on Commonstock or see what the latest buzz on trending stocks are on Public.
- Working on your fitness? See what workouts others are doing on Peloton or share your workouts on Strava.
- Looking to reflect or get your zen on? Drop into Mindstreaks to meditate and see how others are feeling or Coa for an emotional fitness class.
- Ready to go back to school and want to uplevel your career? Head to one of On Deck’s fellowships or Maven’s cohort-based courses.
- Want to have deep and meaningful conversations? Join The Grand to find new friends to navigate life’s biggest questions with or Lunchclub for career conversations.
- Looking for ways to get involved locally or to catch up on the talk of the town? Swing by Nextdoor to check out what the neighborhood chatter is or drop into Clubhouse for a front row seat to the internet’s town square.
- On the hunt for a new essay club? Beta test Matter and see what articles your fellow readers are nerding out on.
- Want to hang around the watercooler with your colleagues? Head to Gather and see what everyone’s up to.
- Curious what the stars hold for you? Get the download at Co-Star and connect with friends on how they’re doing astrologically.
With remote work cultures becoming mainstream, the slow shift away from the age-old model of employees’ lives revolving around their employer’s office will enable a subset of Americans to make more personal decisions around where they want to build their IRL communities. The loosening of geo constraints enables us to live more enriching lives both on and offline rather than sacrificing our desired physical locations for access to meaningful relationships and work.
As we find our footing on the precipice of a post-COVID world and build new normals, community-led companies have an immense opportunity to redefine a new hybrid model, integrating IRL and virtual experiences.
Two key questions remain as the wave of online communities take shape:
- Will companies at the forefront of building community-led products be able to manage high quality content while maintaining an open and inclusive forum for a diverse user base?
- How will these companies evolve beyond delightful digital experiences and embed IRL elements as we re-emerge back into society after a long year of hibernation?
Communities that pioneer truly remarkable experiences by preserving the magic of our digital neighborhood while finding ways to integrate community at the local level will rise to the top as the next generation of the Facebooks and Instagrams of our new world, transforming our relationships and access to knowledge as we know it.
Special thanks to M.G. Siegler, Zack Hargett, Katy Culver, Megan Tucker, and Ryan Trafton for providing input and feedback to help shape my thinking on digital communities.
