Hey friends! I’m Sapna & currently, on my way to building community software (cause I believe throwing the whole world into one single room together doesn't work but a specific interest group/forum/community does, there's so much power in a community & if you're building one or part of, you know it.)
Muscat (Place I call home 🏡)
I grew up as an expat. Born in India, raised in Muscat, moving around India back again as an adult. When you live that lifestyle you very quickly learn to get good at building community. You seek out people in new places, start recognizing social patterns and hierarchy. Above all, you nurture this insatiable curiosity to learn from others. To better understand your place in the world, to define what you believe in. You can learn so much from a 5-minute conversation.
As a community builder, I’m always thinking about how people meet, connect, and communicate (as our generation grew up on the internet), and crave authentic connection online more than any previous generation. But incumbent social media networks are no longer meeting this need.
If anything, their size is exactly what’s chipping away at the connection and community piece that young people crave (smaller, more intimate communities is what I would say).
Online community sites have emerged as the go-to platforms for the increasing amount of user-generated content posted online, and their perceived importance is growing as internet users move away from me-centric social sharing to more we-centric conversations online.
Internet users in the US trust the consensus of community sites more than social media sites or influencer's recommendations. Gen Z view community sites to be more reliable than an expert’s opinion and almost as reliable as mainstream news outlets. (if you’re a Gen Z, say 👋)
Connection and community are intrinsically related. When I think about connection, I think about several 1:1 chats or very small/ intimate group chats (Whatsapp DMs, BeReal, Instagram DMs, FB Messenger). Authenticity is key here. When I think about community, I think 1: many or many: many - a group of people coming together based on some uniting characteristic, sometimes even anonymously.
Today, people’s entertainment and social needs are distinct - this creates unbundling opportunities in social, albeit with more monetization questions with every unbundling.
My Community Story (How I’m Building the Future of Internet Communities 🏠👩💻)
What led me to join scrappy small community platform startup (my ❤️ for communities)
Pensil started because we wanted the internet to be better for creators, brands and community builders. We were dismayed with the clickbait and content farms, the listicles and liars, the cheap outrage and culture wars. We thought there could be something better if community managers and members were given more control and treated as a higher priority than advertisers without needing to sublimate themselves to attention games.
We believe that who you interact with & conversations you have matters
People have grown up today in this very transactional experience of social media. They notice the loneliness and a lack of human connection flourishing but don't necessarily know why. It’s the water in which the fish is swimming - it's hard to see when you’re in it and it’s all you know. Liking a tweet is not a real human connection and it cannot replace that. Ultimately social media is about exactly that, it’s photos it’s advertising it’s not conversations and belonging.
“Social networks drive you to just add as many people to your network as possible versus fostering deep connections. We aim to bring a balance at the intersection of virtual worlds and community building. The less transactional the better.”
What will the community be about? Who cares. You can create a community about products, it can be a community for nudging 1st-time entrepreneurs or just celebrating womanhood. You would think known community builders with large audiences have it easy here, but the pressure to succeed is felt more among them. The stakes are low if you are not at all known. There is no audience to lose, only one to gain. And gain you will.
This situation of not having a very large audience has something good in it, too. I mean, that it educates you in a certain way: not to consider that great audiences are the most important reward on this earth. I consider that even if I have ten people who join the community, I mean really gain value out of the community, it is enough.
When I talk about communities I often use the word “intimate.” A direct line to one’s audience has obvious benefits, & freedom is one of them, but to me what makes the bond here so powerful is the attention they warrant each other. A subscription is a mutual commitment. Your subscribers really care for the community and you will continue to build a community just for them.
That is what a paid subscription is, by the way, not a transaction but an act of love ❤️
Starting a Community has never been easier. You can sign up on the web here, or simply start the community directly in our iOS or Android app!
Features we designed to help enable the future of Internet communities ⚒️
At the EOD, a community platform should have a feature set that accomplishes 2 key goals:
🕛 Make the community leader's life easier
📈 Improve member experience.
1) All-in-one: Pensil is both powerful and flexible. Pensil’s communities can seamlessly blend async and sync paradigms with posts, events, chat, live streams, payments, and more.
2) Build with LEGO blocks: Pensil spaces give flexibility of how you build and grow the community. We aim to provide just enough guidance — nothing too prescriptive or rigid! We offer robust API, integrations, and embeddable widgets to enable you to plug Pensil into your stack.
3) Own your community: Algorithms shouldn’t decide how you run the community. By using Pensil, you have a direct relationship with your members, you own the community content, and have complete control over the community’s look and feel.
You will always own your mailing list, subscriber payment information, and intellectual property. If you decide to leave us, you’ll take it all with you.
4) Make money on your own terms: Pensil’s Paywalls enable robust and flexible monetization. Community builders can charge for their entire community, a single space, set of spaces, or a combination!
5) Be everywhere: Pensil is native on the web, iOS & Android. Also available in multiple languages and currencies.
This I believe is the future of Internet Communities
We’re excited about what’s possible here. While we are a long way from having this all figured out, you can expect us to experiment with extending ethos of giving power to community builders into new kind of community experiences.
The last era of internet has been dominated by platforms owing people but next era will be about people owning platforms. Watch this space!
The community industry is still new but growing rapidly. Creators, brands, teams are now more aware that they need community but they are not entirely sure how to scale it. So this is my new adventure…hanging out my own shingle, to help brands, creators create authentic community experiences where their customers/community members are engaged and empowered 🚵♀️⛰️
More to this in next issues
If you’re in the Community field, I bet you can reflect back like this and determine exactly what drove you to this unique line of work. It may be similar and it may be drastically different.
Either way I would love to hear your stories so please comment and share how Community came to be in your life.
Thanks for reading The Pattern Seekers! Level-up your community skills
future of (weird) surveillance by Big Tech
https://prada.substack.com/p/grey-area-in-our-privacy-rights