The other day I was talking to a friend about the various communications outlets I use such as this blog, my RSS reader, Twitter, Facebook and a host of other services. My friend then asked what kind of people read Leveraging Ideas? I explained that the make-up of my readership is basically smart people who ‘get it’ technology wise. He was surprised that my readership comes from all over the country, including a huge span in age and profession. I explained that this same group of highly-connected people tend to use and interact across a number of different mediums (Twitter, Friend Feed, Tumblr, etc) though some choose to focus their attention on only one or two services.
So, my friend asked, “Are there a lot of people in this technology tribe?�
I’ve often struggled with the right term, or phrase to describe all of ‘us’, the folks using Twitter, writing blogs, and generally conversing on social media via the web. In my case, the tribe I’m a part of extends well beyond one service. It also extends beyond what I would call my network because most folks I follow on Twitter and who read my blog, are people I’ve never met. Yet we’re still connected. Here are a few phrases I’ve heard used to describe us:
- Early adopters
- Bloggers/blogosphere
- Twitterverse
- Web 2.0 Community
- The Geeks
Of all the terms I’ve heard, I like the tribe metaphor best.
According to this definition, a tribe is “a descent or kinship-based group in which subgroups are clearly linked to one another, with the potential of uniting a large number of local groups.�
Seems dead-on to me.