8th
Communities and why they’re important.
Communities go way back…before the internet! *gasp!*
The dictionary says a community is: a social group of any size whose members reside in a specific locality, share government, and often have a common cultural and historical heritage.
Interesting. So a community is a small, medium or large group that shares some of the same interest and background.
Your family is a community. Your sewing club is a community. The people you work with is a community. Heck, the girls you go to mall with every Saturday…they’re a community too.
I have personal experience with a bunch of different communities…online and offline. Recently, one of the communities I was introduced to was the Cancer community, by way of the organization LIVESTRONG. Also, I’m a geek, so I’ve been involved in communities that are into podcasting, or building stuff on the web, listening to music…you get the picture
How do we keep in touch with our communities?
Well, some of you remember those things called Newspapers. And local TV keeps you up to date on your community. A channel like ESPN keeps the community that is interested in sports up to date.
The internet is an awesome way to interact with communities too. You have your friends and groups on Facebook, the people you follow on Twitter, and of course email. These are great ways to stay active, involved, and informed.
It’s all about the people
So communities are my passion, staying connected to people…keeping up to date on the world around me, especially when it comes to my interests.
I’m a texter, and I work for a company who builds cool technology around texting. So clearly, we had to find a way to make texting community friendly.
Because right now, it’s not.
1 on 1 texting, and maybe the occasional blast out to 3 people letting them know you wont make it to the show is the extent of how we utilize texting to stay in touch with our communities. And that’s not really social.
textPlus aims to solve that problem.
Texting is great for instant communication. It really doesn’t get anymore instant than that, I mean other than shouting in a room full of people :) Research shows that texts get read and answered infinitely faster than email and phone calls, or posts to a message board.
Remember that sewing club? Why not create a Community where if you want to ask your fellow sewers a question, blast it out to them…via text message. That means no matter where they are or what they’re doing, they’ll get to reading the message. No computers needed, no WIFI needed, just what they have already…their phone. And when they respond, everyone sees it.
The next version of textPlus is going to let you do just that.
Twitter is great (I love it), but it’s wide open. You follow 500 people, but are they all interested in the same things? More than likely not. It’s hard to pull out the information that matters most to you when its all thrown in together. And there’s apps and lingo and geeky things, and you know…signing up.
With the next version of textPlus, you can create a community for your weekend drinking buddies, one for your family, one for your blog, even local news could set up a community on textPlus to share news and have conversations with the people who care the most.
That’s why communities rock.
And that’s why textPlus is going to make it easier to keep everyone in the loop. The people in your community don’t even have to sign up to a website or register anywhere. Send a message in a way that you KNOW will get through…with texts.
_drew
