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Feb 17, 11:42 pm: The magic number is 6

There a bunch of things about the last Net Tuesday that struck me but here’s the biggest. Make it for 6 people.

We don’t make communities for 1M, 100K, 10K or even 1K. The communities we make are for 6 people. Make that—share it, write it, meet with it—and let each of those spawn more communities of 6. Keep it small enough to really care about and relate to.

That’s one of the things that Mena Trott said the acquisition of LiveJournal taught her. The average number of people in a community is six. And that is a comfortable number. And one we can imagine.

When Seth Mazow from Interplast starting talking, he too was talking about small communities. About the doctors that do the surgeries and the board members for Interplast. He was talking about amplifying a story – told to a few people but on a platform that could reach more.

Seth was fantastic. You’ll have to wait until the audio comes up on our podcast channel (thanks, “Odeo”!) and then believe me when I say it was even better in person. We now have a new NetSquared rallying cry inside the office, “We want to find 10K Seth’s. And help provide the inspiration for 10Kmore!”

So, great. 6.

And then on Thursday night, Billy and I went to the Supernova party and sat with folks from Linden Labs and with Brian Oberkirch. He talked about living in Slidell, LA before and after Hurricane Katrina. You can’t tell the big story, Brian said. There’s no way to get it out or to hear it. But you can tell the small stories. And their are many small stories. And that, too, seemed suited to an audience of six and really seemed to make the point that communities work best when there are many strong connections that end up bound together.

tagged: brianoberkirch, menatrott, sethmazow, sixapart, interplast, supernova, nettuesday, net2, community, 6