The Evolution Of Group Communication
I’ve always been fascinated on how people communicate, and how communication evolves with technology. Communicating with other people is one of our strongest basic needs and, with the help of technology, we can now do it with anyone in the world, faster and better.
The design of every communication tool shapes who participates in the conversation and what kind of conversations take place. So, when designing or studying these tools, it’s important to understand the different types of groups that exist and how people behave within them.
Let’s analyze different types of groups using 2 main variables: on the x-axis, the size of the group, measured by the number of members involved, and on the y-axis, the kind of relationship between them. From this 2x2 matrix, we can identify 2 main quadrants:
Quadrant A represents relationship-centric small groups. This type of groups is characterized by having a small number of members (~10) that are tied by strong interpersonal relationships. These groups include family and friends, where communication evolves around the prior relationship between the members. Because of this, these groups tend to have high frequency of interactions and strong engagement among members, where identities are central to the conversation. Conversations tend to evolve around sharing experiences, feelings, jokes and organizing plans, usually being one main conversation that evolves from one topic to another over time.
On the other hand, quadrant B represents topic-centric large groups. This type of groups is characterized by having a large number of members (>50), where members get together around a particular area of knowledge, background or experience. These groups are largely represented by communities and forums, where topics can range from Entrepreneurship in the Bay Area to FC Barcelona Fans to Fishing Lovers in Patagonia. Usually, there’s high engagement from very few members of the community, while others come and go based on necessity or amusement. Real identity is not as important as expertise on the subject. These tend to be purpose-driven groups, where common interactions include broadcasting messages, asking questions, sharing content and showing something, always related to the topic shared. Given the large number of members communicating with each other, conversation threads have become the most efficient way for conversations to happen.
So, what kind of communication tools do these groups use, and how are they evolving in the mobile landscape?
For relationship-centric small groups (Quadrant A), mobile-ubiquitous communication has become the norm, led by the surge of group messaging apps. These include iMessage, WhatsApp, Line, WeChat, Facebook Messenger and Talko Groups, or group-only messaging apps like GroupMe. Although email still tends to be strong among “adults”, and social networks such as Path tried to position itself within this category, mobile group-messaging services are leading the way by far.
For topic-centric large groups (Quadrant B), communication happens around online communities (such as Reddit and HackerNews), forums and Facebook Groups. Email lists are still sent around, but they lost participation to the other mediums, the same way IRC was popular in the beginnings of the web. Given the challenges around creating an efficient communication tool for allowing multiple conversations between large number of users, these groups and communities haven’t yet evolved to the mobile landscape. This represents a huge opportunity, one that is being pursued by different players.
One is Amino, a company that releases mobile-only apps for niche communities. Using the same technology platform for each app, they currently have communities for Minecraft, K-Pop, Anime, Books and Food among others. This is a centralized approach, where Amino is the one who chooses what the next community should be, launches the app and tailors it for the specific needs.
Another interesting product is Rooms, launched by Facebook under the lead of Josh Miller who, together with Ev Williams, is one of the people that understands communication and technology the most. Contrary to Amino, Rooms follows an open approach, allowing anyone to create and customize a Room for their own community. A Room consists of a customized Instagram-like app within the Rooms app, with a clever twist of sharing invitations through QR codes (once again, Josh understood that teens are used to sharing stuff in mobile through screenshots, something I’ve been seeing my little sister do with her teen friends).
Also, mobile-only products like Whisper and Secret are tapping into communities offering anonymity as a value proposition for sharing things that you wouldn’t normally share on other channels. However, apart from anonymity and the topics it may provoke, these apps are not designed for communities to be built around specific subjects or domains.
Be it communication by words, photos, videos or voice, group communication around a particular topic on mobile is still an open, and very interesting, field.
