Acronym

Meatspace responsibilities got the better of me during November (eg, 10-day trip to Australia), and I wasn't able to get this post up during the chock-full-of-Web2.0-goodness spree last month... To add some practical examples, I'll quickly cover the IGDA's own foray into the use of social networking sites.

Given our techy nature, our first inclination was to simply expand upon our existing basic/custom member directory tech to include social network style features (ie, buddy list, post wall, intros, etc). But, we never got around to it... There was certainly the notion that we wanted to own/control the network for our members.

Around the same time, some members got vocal in our online discussion forum, convincing me to set up a private group in LinkedIn. Looking over the thread you can actually see me defending the idea of an IGDA specific internal social network, and then eventually watch me crumble under the pressure...

So, earlier this year, we set up a private group within LinkedIn - a fairly painless (and free) process. Once the group was set up, we mentioned it in our monthly email newsletter a couple of times. After a few months, we had over 1300 members within the group (of approx 14k total membership).

One of the benefits of LinkedIn is that it allows you to upload a list of members for pre-approved access to the private group (of course, there are other tools to add members on the fly, approve ad hoc requests for access, etc). Meaning, the association has control over who can gain access to the group, hence group members. Given the more serious business-like nature of LinkedIn, controlling access and the signal-to-noise ratio has been important and appreciated.

Also, this control over access has allowed the IGDA to leverage our LinkedIn private group as a benefit of membership. And, we've gotten several dozen new members (along with heaps of praise from existing members) simply so they can access the private group.

As the final wikinomic coup-de-grace, I recruited the most vocal member (ie, from the forum thread above) to serve as our volunteer "group manager". This person now handles any of the ad hoc requests along with any other admin/moderation tasks.

Now, in parallel to all this, a handful of other IGDA members were early Facebook adopters and set up an IGDA Facebook group without anyone on staff/leadership knowing about it. Really, I had no clue, until I got an invite to join the group (after the group already had about 1000 members)! This was not because they were trying to hide the group, but more so because they just didn't need us to do it.

Unlike the private LinkedIn group, the IGDA's Facebook group is an "open" group. With nearly 4000 people in that group, I have no clue how many are actual legit members of the IGDA. And, I don't care. Given the more relaxed/personal nature of Facebook, it is less important to maintain that some level of privacy as on LinkedIn.

Though, as an experiment, we did set up a private Facebook group just for the attendees of fall Leadership Forum conference...

And, all that said, we are still pursuing a social networking option that will reside at igda.org. More on that later...