That is a good question that doesn't have an easy answer, but let me first say that I'm glad you found us. When a friend recommends a book to you, you can't look at several pages and expect to understand and appreciate the entire book because it's the entire experience that they are recommending and in order to get the full effect you have to dive in and read the whole thing. I feel like Hubski is similar in this regard. In order to understand what makes the "community tick", you must invest some time. That said, I'll try and provide some links below but it really boils down to having multiple conversations and interactions with one another over a broad array of topics. #tngpodcast -This is a podcast that I put together interviewing and asking questions of the Hubski community around a topic. It's been a few months since I've done one but I'm currently working on one titled "why do you write." #storyclub -A relatively new addition to Hubski, this is where a number of us collaborate on building a short story together badges -We are able to give one another appreciation for the best content on the site. (an idea we've had and utilized long before others have) We read together I would highly recommend subscribing to the Hubski Newsletter that insomniasexx has been putting together, it's a great way to see some of the most interesting posts and conversations, plus she features old content "from the vault" that might help you better understand where we've been in the past as a group. You can read past newsletters here As I mentioned, these are just some of the things that help us form tight bonds. Really, these are just some of my favorites. There are so many more. Hopefully some other people will jump in and help me out. If you have any questions about the site, let me know. Welcome.
This is a bit of a tangent, but I've been chatting to insomniasexx a bit recently about marketing and growing Hubski, because I'm in exactly the same situation with my startup. I then stumbled across this thread (well, because I follow you, thenewgreen) and a couple of the things you said here rang really familiar, and I thought it could be helpful to chip in at a more general level. But Twitter was commonly misunderstood as being a way to "share what you had for breakfast." You had to use it for a while to really understand it. They got past this by pushing Twitter as a way to find new content from interesting people and letting people get sucked in over time. No real conclusions to offer here—just a few thoughts that tangentially connect with some of your examples. Hope they're helpful.In order to understand what makes the "community tick", you must invest some time.
It's a common situation: you've got a kick-ass product, it solves a very real problem, people who use it are head-over-heels in love with it, but there's a bit of a "dip" that requires you to take a leap of faith and use it for a bit before you get hooked. Twitter's subtle effect was that of adding an "ambient awareness layer" to the internet—a sort of dim "knowing" about what's going on in the world.When a friend recommends a book to you, you can't look at several pages and expect to understand and appreciate the entire book because it's the entire experience that they are recommending and in order to get the full effect you have to dive in and read the whole thing.
I love this example because it's true; yet not an immutable problem. Book services like Readmill let you shortcut this whole process. I can recommend a friend a book, but the chances of them reading it aren't huge if they can't see how it would immediately make their life better to read. It just goes into the "later" pile. But the Readmill book page contains my own personal cliffnotes: https://readmill.com/Zygar/reads/glut-mastering-informaion-t...
And, haxcloud, if you're into music that's one of the liveliest areas of hubski -- people sharing their own music, new music they find, old music they want other people to find, etc. #weeklymusicthread #newmusic Don't know if anyone else covered this, but taking a look at the tags page will show you where the most activity is.We read together
Well. We try.