Degrowth for Abundance - Community Social Media - How it Could Work: The Homepage

This is the start of an overview of how community social media could be set up. This isn’t implying that everything is the right answer, a lot of that will happen via design and implementation, but can be used as the start of a high level overview.

I believe the best implementation of community social media is in discreet and definable communities, with lots of overlapping relationships, and I am on Orcas Island (population 7k), I’m using Orcas.Social as the placeholder URL. It’s clear, clean, and easy to remember. As time goes on different branding / defined community may make more sense.

The Homepage

The homepage will be the first interaction most people will have, so it’s key that it bears in mind execution risks for adoption. This means it’s key that it delivers value from the very beginning.

The homepage goals are:

Provide immediate value without requiring account to community members, organizations, businesses and tourists.
Provide increased value to those logged in with an account
Lead in to onboard people into creating an account

These goals are at odds with corporate social media's homepages, which are created as account creation / sign in funnels, not to share value. Their objectives are to own you and your experience so they can milk it for profit, and their homepages reflect as much whereas community social media are to always deliver value to the community.

We have a good sense for the needs from the early community conversations. This informs the content on the homepage.

It’s also worth noting that this content will be filtered and curated to maximize value and minimize noise. There will also be some quick filter links to quickly get to needed information, like school, kid-friendly, 21+ and over, free and open to the public, etc.

Events: These are pulled from (and link back to) a community calendar.

Announcements: A feed of important announcements or information. You could envision information about power outtages, unusual openings or closings, etc.

Photos: We want to set the stage for Orcas.Social to be a place to experience awe, beauty and friendliness this island has to offer.

Account: We do want to make sure people see that they can log in for a more customized experience. The account creation on boarding will be so vital, and so recognizing that the homepage will be a key part of the first step.

Imagine going to Orcas.Social to see what you could do with the kids on Saturday. Because it collects events from a lot of sources, you able to easily see that roller skating was cancelled, but see that there’s an all ages concert at OddFellows and a screening of the latest animated movie. Two of your favorite restaurants are closed but you see there’s a food truck popup at Con’s. You and your family decide to check out the concert, grab some food at the pop-up, and then decide whether to go back to the all-ages concert or watch the movie!