Over the past year, and especially in the past month, I’ve read a great deal about the concepts of cloud computing, software as a service (Saas) and platform as a service (Paas). There is definitely a reason to get excited about these concepts as people get more and more comfortable moving their data online and connectivity becoming more ubiquitous. Although I think there is a bright future for connected desktop apps (the ones that work like iTunes or TweetDeck), the static desktop application will no longer dominate the marketplace of the future.
But what these concepts address is the storage and presentation of my data. Whether it’s my music or my banking information, these are data objects that don’t currently think for themselves. And I certainly don’t have a personal relationship with them. And the way I see the way the internet revolutionizes the world, it’s through personal connections.
The other day as I was meeting with Scott Wilder, the author of Millennial Leaders and the whiz behind Intuit’s brilliant customer community, I realised that there is yet another acronym to throw into the pool of where we are trending towards the future: CaaS or community-as-a-service. Intuit’s customer community is pretty killer amazing. The conversations and connections that happen on there could never be satisfied by machines and data. There are hundreds of unique and nuanced conversations going on daily. These are conversations that go far beyond what Quickbooks, TurboTax or any of Intuit‘s other software could ever cover.
This community is incredibly useful and full of great information. It’s been carefully built up over the years and is a gem. But as we know, people don’t gather around these topics in the masses they have here without some pre-conditions being put in place:
Precondition #1 – The hosts of the community need to have good whuffie: the culmination of the hosts reputation, influence, access to resources through your connections, etc. [Intuit has a history of good reputation and trust in the business community]
Precondition #2 – There has to be the initial impression or idea that participating in the community will bring the participant good whuffie. [higher volume or more prestigious communities that bring more opportunities do better]
Community-as-a-service is the most challenging of the ‘as-a-service’ structure of the future as bugs and corrupted data are much easier to fix than flame wars or damaged reputations, but I think it is the most powerful ‘as-a-service’ offered on the web. Twitter, without it’s community would be a webpage. Google’s App Engine, without Google’s reputation, volume or developer community would hardly be looked at. Alongside the technology comes the human beings using that technology – and the humans would still exist without the technology, the technology would not exist without the human beings.
I see a powerful future in SaaS, PaaS and cloud computing, but CaaS is absolutely necessary and core to that future.
Great post. I often think about how the world will be different for my son. It is my hope that the community will grow even stronger in the years to come!
Good post Tara. Communities seem to start with passion for products, as you mentioned Intuit, and I often think of community of people that contribute to WordPress. Which leads me to wonder where else communities of service might spring from if not products? I have little doubt that a CaaS’ ability to influence will be overwhelmingly powerful so it will be fun to watch unfold, particularly in the unanticipated paths such things often take.
I LOVE the notion of CaaS! And I agree 100% that it’s hugely important. Where I disagree (I think) is on your two preconditions, especially #1. I think they’re both helpful… maybe even highly desirable, but by no means preconditions. Plenty of thriving, enormously successful communities have emerged simply because a sole enthusiast (that nobody had ever heard of) decided to crank up a Yahoo group and get it rolling.
I do think your Precondition #2 — whuffie opportunities for the participants–is crucial for long-term development, but I strongly disagree with this sentence: “has to be the initial impression or idea that participating in the community will bring the participant good whuffie.” Most people join a community as question-askers (or question-readers/lurkers), often with no intention of becoming a question-answerer. Participants in a user community are initially looking not for whuffie, but for HELP. Period.
The goal of a successful community, though, is to convince a percentage of those getting help to eventually become helpers themselves, and for THAT, I agree, it’s mostly about the whuffie. So, I like Precondition #2 and in fact one of the best ways to measure community health is to look at those conversion rates for askers-to-answerers… how many of those seeking help eventually stay to help others, and how quickly do they make that transition.
Again, I love your idea of CaaS.
I’m a big fan of community as a service–it works much harder in the current economy than, say, big branded microsites. Keep it coming.
As someone whose livelihood comes from offering Community as a Service, I have to applaud your post, although I do agree with Kathy’s comments regarding your pre-conditions. Our community in fact pre-dates our business and we grew as a company around the needs of that community.
Are there bigger, flashier art websites out there? You betcha! And yeah, we’re competing with folks with a ton more cash who monetized their sites differently. But we’re mostly holding steady in this economy because our core community is really solid and feels that what they’ve helped us build community-wise is well-worth paying for.
I recently attended a keynote address by Patricia Hill Collins on ‘Answering the call to service: Youth, Inequality and the Obama Phenomenon’. She was encouraged by Obama’s focus on community service but wanted to explore the meaning of the terms “community” and “service”; the problematic assumptions that are implicit in the popular conception of “community service”; and what could be a better approach.
The building of a “community” as a resource could be a greater service than the current notion of charity based community service (ex. donating old prom dresses, used eyeglasses). Which then, instead of creating a peer-to-peer relationship, creates a hierarchical structure that is hard to over come. “I have this thing that you do not and I will give it to you but not show you how to attain it for yourself.”
If you can create/unite and empower a community to address & overcome the problems/issues that cause these deficiencies, it would be of greater value and more lasting.
I know this is a tangent, but your post brought it back to the front of my mind.
I dig that the strength and value of community is being discussed and looked at more closely.
I also agree with Kathy and Amie in that the initial motivation might just be that participants need help. Getting the question-askers to become answer-givers is key to the growth and continuation of the community.
Good thoughts, however you might not want to hang too much on your Google App Engine example – it’s destined to be a giant Fail Whale… (for all the reasons you talk about).
Developers don’t love it, they deal with it because Google holds the pursestrings for ad-based revenue streams. As some of the newer revenue models proliferate (ex: Apple’s iPhone AppStore) Google is going to get squeezed…
in short: Google = No whuffie…
If you want to see true developer passion, take a look at the Sun Tech Days in Hyderabad last week. 7,000+ developers, 12 hr days for 3 days (and still asking questions at the end). Rags could show you what real developer passion is about (ask him!)
Looking at the SaaS, PaaS, CaaS progression you pointed out, Platform as a Service (PaaS) is the idea that you can have someone actually provide your platform for you, and you don’t need to manage it yourself. Then you just build your application and put it in the hands of your PaaS provider to run and manage for you.
CaaS seems to suggest from a literal interpretation that the concept of the community itself is provided by your CaaS provider, and you house your Community on it. So, is that a technology problem to solve? Or a business/people problem? Or would we say that twitter is already doing this now because of the nature of its organic and dynamic community building based on networks (LinkedIn?, MySpace?)?
Is a bar a CaaS? Or is a virtualized Open Social container a CaaS? Or all of the above?
Interesting thoughts.
Great post. Erica O’Grady pointed me to it. I like the acronym “CaaS” – and the Preconditions.
We created a detailed visual case study on Intuit -
http://vizedu.com/2009/02/propel-customer-business-intuit-case-study/
Wanted to share it with you.
Thinking of it from a higher level – do you agree with me that success in Social Media platform depends on “Community As A Service” ?
Really interesting thoughts. I see the challenge of tightening the community with good whuffie while also fostering its growth as the balance necessary for success.
Responding to Matt’s comment– having been deep into Java’s developer community for a decade, I can say Sun has done amazing, powerful things to seed and grow it. And as Matt knows, there have been many missteps as well, most happening when the Venn diagram of “things that excite the company” and “things that excite the developers” don’t have enough overlap.
To me community and service (or disservice) are synonymous. However, there is certainly workplace.intuit.com and force.com which offer more to its customers than is covered by the implications of PaaS.
Matt, good to know that Sun Tech Days is still going strong after 10 years.
Great thoughts! Keep it coming!
Sorry about the delay in commenting but I have just seen this and thought I’d comment.
I’m getting more and more exasperated about how people see cloud computing, paas and saas as the future. Google went down a couple of weeks ago and it made the news – people who were relying on it stopped work, this is god’s way of telling us remote computing is fallible. Local computing is becoming cheaper and cheaper, and if you use Linux and open source software then being able to create is just about free after the hardware cost. And you aren’t tied to a wifi /telephone/satellite/wimax/3g connection – sure cloud is nice but it is a luxury, but amble into a dead zone and it’s a luxury one has to do without.
Good communications is imperative and we need the internet for that – but when we start relying on the internet for stuff other than communications I suggest we are cruising for a bruising.
Aloha,
As if we need “another” acronym.
Although “as-a-service” (as-a-concept) is in the wind now, it is hardly a new concept. CEO of Sun talked about this development 7-8+ years ago (and was partially laughed at by MS people). The Sun architecture has been thin clients for as long as I can remember. The same goes for community as a service.
Now for your preconditions, like mentioned above, there are many ways a group can become a group. #1 might be one of them, but certainly not the only one. Re:#2 Yes Social capital (call a spade a spade) is another, but again, a bunch of theories in Social Psychology that easily helps explaining how groups can be made, and sustained.
Saying that building a community is harder than any other “as-a-service” is simply wrong and show a severe lack of understanding how all these are interrelated.