Seth Godin thinks that online community organizer sounds like a good job to have in the future. He sees some desirable characteristics as:
It would help if that person understood technology, at least well enough to know what it could do. They would need to be able to write. But they also have to be able to seduce stragglers into joining the group in the first place, so they have to be able to understand a marketplace, do outbound selling and non-electronic communications. They have to be able to balance huge amounts of inbound correspondence without making people feel left out, and they have to be able to walk the fine line between rejecting trolls and alienating the good guys.
Tangler is looking for community managers at the moment. They define their needs as:
We need people to spend time to help other new users use the product and supporting new groups.
We are looking for two or three people to work three hours a day using our online application.
Looking for people who are:
- Friendly.
- Very good with writing English.
- Fun
- Helpful
- Confident on computers and using the Internet.
- Interested in a broad range of topics.
Are Seth and the Tangler guys talking about the same person? I think that they are, and I think that as social computing grows, there will be more job adverts like the Tangler one.
Hey, yep, community developers are where it’s at. Seth and Tangler are like (insert two fingers held closely together) that.
We took the lesson from Flickr about holding the hand of new users to begin with until the community looks after itself. We also learn a lot more about what the priority features should be because we have people with a close relationship with users who didn’t really like us and users who love us.
I have to say that for a college student it’s a pretty fun job to have.
Cheers,
Mick
Hi Mick,
thank you for your comment. It is good to see Tangler growing stronger/faster/bigger - you’re doing a great job
Personally, as much as I’d like to be a professional community manager I’ve priced myself out of the “part time job suitable for college student” market - I wonder if community manager will become a full-on profession with qualifications and professional associations and all that structured stuff? I am pretty sure it will happen - maybe I should start the “community manager’s association” now to cash in early
Cheers, Andrew