Why Closed Online Communities Die Over Time
The pros and cons of running a community that doesn’t let everyone in
This blog post is part of a series of blog posts on the design of active online communities, drawn from my experience in running, participating in, and research different communities, from small peer accountability groups to Slack groups with several thousand people to private invite-only gatherings.
Community engagement is constantly constrained by the force of gravity.
Gravity being disinterest, impartiality, decreasing involvement. All communities, online and offline, face churn. Your local church group, a subreddit about hamsters — doesn’t matter what kind of community. People get occupied with other things going on in their lives, they cease to care about the community they’re a part of, or the community no longer provides enough value for them to show up or contribute. Like a business, if you’re not growing, you’re dying. Healthy communities have a growth rate equal to or greater than their rate of churn (the people who leave). Pretty simple math.
Of course, communities face a lot of quality issues, particularly online communities, given the pseudo-annoymity of the Internet and the ease at which people can find and join different groups online. There’s bullying, trolling…
