The community we all deserve

I know I’m a quintessential millennial because earlier this year I sat in a silent room with some of my closest friends while we all took the Enneagram test — just so we could talk through our results and compatibilities for hours afterward (and yes we tweeted about it).

If you’re interested in knowing, I’m a 6 or the “Loyalist”. I mention this because in my results there was one sentence in particular that stood out to me:

“Sixes are not necessarily group people, but they like the feeling of belonging somewhere — of being a part of something greater than themselves”.

This kinda describes me perfectly. If you know me well, you know that I don’t like big events or crowds and my social anxiety makes me super awkward, but I do love being part of a tight and loving community.

But a community is a hard thing to build and nurture, especially as someone who struggles to strike up conversations with new people. My saving grace has been two things:

1. I have a best friend from high school who is a mega-extrovert, can’t get rid of me, and basically shares her friends with me (thx Maria Salamanca)
2. Twitter has reduced the friction of talking to new people for me such that I’d say I’ve made >50% of my new friends over the last 3 years from it. While I cringe at the idea of walking up to new people IRL, I feel okay about sliding into the DMs of people who I’ve confirmed have some form of shared interest.

Number one is hard to replicate, but if you get so lucky to find someone like that, make sure to keep them around.

Number two is worth exploring because it’s not unique to me and it’s been so important to building my own community. And in a time where we’ve seen a decrease in volunteerism, fewer Americans reporting religious affiliations, more Americans than ever living alone, and a gradual decrease in knowing who our neighbors are, the need for community is more important than ever.

Existing social networks aren’t perfect, but when you get them right they can be powerful. I believe everyone deserves to have a community where they feel like they belong and are loved and in a world where we have access to so much technology, that should be possible.

So I’ve spent some time digging into current social networks, trying to understand some of the ways they are evolving, and outlining what I hope they look like in the future to help build positive and engaged communities.

In a lot of ways, social networks have ushered in an amazing era of connectedness.

Facebook and Instagram, alone, have over 2BN and 1BN monthly active users (MAUs), respectively. Twitter has over 300M MAUs, Snapchat has 190M daily users, and LinkedIn has 645M total registered users. These user bases translate into billions of messages, posts, “likes”, and other forms of digital interactions happening across the globe every single day. We are, theoretically, more connected than ever before.

However, we all know this is not the whole story. We’ve seen increased instances of cyber-bullying, social networks have been vehicles for the spread of misinformation, and there have been massive data privacy issues that have left consumers feeling like they have little control over their own data.

And, ironically, people are lonelier than ever before. A 2018 national survey by Cigna records nearly half of Americans as sometimes or always feeling alone. One in four rarely feel as though there are people who really understand them, and only half report having meaningful in-person social interactions on a daily basis. The survey also found that Gen Z, our most digitally connected generation, is the loneliest. While social networks alone, can’t be blamed for increased loneliness, they do incent behaviors that can have detrimental effects on a user’s well-being.

But consumer behavior is shifting to embrace attributes of social networks they’re excited about — self-expression, creativity, and curation.

For example, only 51% of those ages 13 to 17 say they use Facebook, down from 71% in a 2015 Pew Research survey. The sites that are most popular with teens today are YouTube, with 85% of teens using it, Instagram (72%), and Snapchat (69%), suggesting a movement towards more creatively-oriented networks.

A lot of these sites help to enable more creative forms of self-expression. For example, TikTok, which had 500M monthly active users as of June 2018, provides an entire set of video-editing tools, filters, and features that allow you to incorporate music into your videos. Users are even given tools to create “duets” with others!

Some of the more verticalized networks (think Twitch, Discord, Bravado, etc.), similarly show high rates of engagement. Twitch, which focuses on gamers, alone has 15M unique daily visitors spending an average of 95 minutes a day on the site. The site allows gamers to both share what they love to do via streaming and create connections with others who have similar interests.

The demand for connection in these networks is even going offline.

In fact, a few years ago Twitch started to host TwitchCon, its annual in-person convention, which now claims to have over 50K participants. Users who attend get the chance to meet each other and their favorite streamers, attend sessions on how to grow their business and play the latest games.

The demand for IRL connection is not surprising. Research suggests physical connection makes a difference in how we build relationships, make decisions, and ultimately sustain communities. While online interactions can help to reduce the decay rate of relationships, face-to-face interactions actually help to strengthen relationships with some of our closest friends. Physical interactions can also help to establish the trust that is really difficult to establish online. Moreover, research has also shown that physical connectivity often results in people paying more attention, more easily picking up on subtle cues, and even mirroring the emotions of others around them.

While hot takes on IRL experiences have been picking up steam recently, the concept of taking online to offline is obviously not new. A good early example is meetup.com. Founded in 2002, Meetup was created post-9/11 when there was significant demand from people to feel like they were part of a community. As of 2017, Meetup had over 35M users and well over 250K meetup groups, highlighting the demand people have to be in community with one another.

That said, while I love the concept of Meetup.com, if you’re anything like me, the idea of meeting up with people you don’t know in-person (without some form of facilitator or shared goal), is a little daunting.

So I’ve been particularly excited about the new set of companies that help to enable connections in more facilitated or guided ways.

For example, there are companies that orient around leadership development and building social capital. Chief is a private network for women who are senior leaders at their companies, Enrich is a network that creates curated groups for senior executives to learn from one another, The Cru connects members to 10 women who help them reach their personal and professional goals, and Lunchclub helps users achieve their professional goals by connecting them 1:1 with relevant people.

There are also companies that focus on particular affinity groups. The Wing, an in-person community for women, is one of the most well-known examples. If you haven’t heard the incredible interview with Audrey Gelman on her big vision for The Wing, definitely check it out here! Other awesome examples include Revel Gatherings, a community for women 50+, Ethels Club, a social club for people of color, and Peanut, an app that helps moms meet in person.

There are also companies that offer communities centered around specific experiences. The Well has developed a wellness ecosystem, including health coaches, yoga, and guidance on nutrition for its members and the Wonder creates a fun and playful environment for families.

There are so many more that I didn’t include, but this list helps to illustrate the general trend of creating communities that center around shared values and experiences. Beyond that, they also help to reduce the friction in building and maintaining community — this can include providing a physical space, handling the logistics of experiences, and/or curating the right connection for you.

While I don’t think the next generation of social networks have to enable IRL connections, I do think (or hope!) they will share a couple of characteristics:

• Safety: Users should feel physically and psychologically safe. This means safety from potential harassment, bullying, or judgment.
• Acceptance and belonging: In the process of me writing this up, I spoke to a few people who have gone through AA, arguably a very engaged and trusted network. The insight that always came up was the belief that everyone, despite their background, belonged and everyone was accepted. That no matter what you did, the community would be there for you. If you start to think about it, very few people have that type of community outside of maybe their immediate family.
• Transparency: Community members have a right to know exactly how the community works, stakeholders involved, and who is reaping benefits from the community and how. Transparency around data privacy, for example, will be super important.
• Shared values and sometimes lived experiences: In some cases, this can manifest in communities that center around particularly affinity groups, especially ones that have been historically marginalized and/or isolated (e.g. women, PoC, the elderly), but it can also be communities that have some sense of shared values (e.g. a love of physical fitness).
• Facilitation: We are all busy people and I don’t think that is going to change anytime soon. So I think that it’s important there is some level of facilitation that helps the community to get connected and stay engaged.
• More balance between contributors and takers: I think we’ve come to accept that it’s normal for online communities to have <10% of contributors and for the vast majority of members to be consumers. Unfortunately, research actually suggests that “social snacking” or passive consumption is one of the behaviors most closely linked to lower well-being after using social media. I think future communities will potentially flip the numbers on contributors vs consumers.
• Accountability and shared goals: I think communities become stronger when they have shared goals and are responsible for holding each other accountable. There’s a different kind of relationship that you build with other members when you are looking out for their success — this can be career-related or even focused on your physical health (e.g. Weight Watchers).

If you’ve made it this far, this was basically a very long way of me saying that I have a hard time making friends and I don’t think I’m alone in that.

I believe everyone deserves to have a community where they feel like they belong, are safe, and have folks they can rely on. And if we can figure out how to get people to Mars, we can figure out how to make sure everyone has the community they deserve. Here’s to hoping we can make that happen soon.

If you’re building anything in this space or just want to geek out about it, please reach out to me at jomayra@reachcapital.com!

Huge thank you to Maria Salamanca and Alex Marshall who are my friends despite my social awkwardness and were great thought partners as I wrote this.

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