8.31.2008

An online community that I’m very active with is nikeplus. This is one of my favorite examples of two unique companies collaborating to provide an original and useful product while creating a utopic online community. In 2006 Apple and Nike created Nike+. It’s a little chip that you put in your shoe that wirelessly connects to an ipod Nano. This records your run on your ipod and when it’s plugged into the computer your run is transferred to the nikeplus web page. This is where the community resides. Instantly nike+ gives you a world wide running group.
I believe that this community can be categorized as gemeinschaft because there is a singular common purpose. Members only join this community because they want to identify, support and be supported by other runners. The ties created within nikeplus are not as strong as maybe those created on myspace and facebook, but they are very purposeful. Members join and remain active because the interpersonal ties created on the web page are not duplicated in any other platform, including ftf.
Within this community you can share your run, challenge your friends, train for races as a group, run to support a charity or political campaign, the possibilities are endless. The reason is that the overarching common ground is running but within that umbrella smaller networks form. This is where social capital gets rich.
The community allows members to create challenges that are public, meaning that anyone can join. The challenge can be based on time, or distance, and be individual or team. Below is an example of a current challenge I’m in. It’s Democrats vs. Republicans, most miles until the election.
The social web for this challenge is rather large, as it’s now links 4286 runners together. This provides two areas of common ground, running and a political affiliation. Those runners can comment to each other adding support for their team or egg on the other team thus building reciprocity.
What I commend Nike and Apple for is how they’ve created this community that is CMC based but are driving users in a circular patter of FtF and back to CMC again. An example of this is the Human Race that’s happening on August 31, 2008. The race is a 10k that you can run anywhere in the world and then just plug your ipod in to record your run. It’s creating a common goal and anticipated history by running on the day that the world is running and recording it online! In major cities there are training runs happening all summer and events on the day of the races. It’s giving relationships a chance to grow in both FtF and CMC.

Creating events like this that are happening worldwide can really shape the way we perceive community in the future. If I wore my Human Race t-shirt in a city in another country I might run into someone with the same shirt and have an instant bond and common experience. Yes we share the common experience of running but without the SNA resource I would not be able to identify that person. Running is one small niche of hobbies that people worldwide are active in, but I think other organizations can use this model as a base for very active CMC communities.