Communities of Purpose: The Third Type of Community

I’ve been thinking about different types of communities recently. Two forms of community that are often discussed are "communities of interest" where the members share a common set of interests (e.g. a community of people interested in Japanese culture), and "communities of practice" where the members share a common set of skills (e.g. a community of marketing professionals). To these I would add a third type called a "community of purpose," where the focus is on a shared goal (e.g. a political activist community or a community collaborating on a common project). Most existing community tools today are either focused on building communities of interest or communities of practice. But I am more interested in creating tools that help people create more productive communities of purpose. To do this we need to merge the functionality of groupware and knowledge management with emerging community tools for social networking, blogging, and wikis.

(Note: Jason wrote in on April 12, 2005 to inform me of his previous blog posts about this concept, which he also called "communities of purpose" — that not only makes him the originator of the term, but it also officially makes it a meme.)

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6 Responses to Communities of Purpose: The Third Type of Community

  1. Communities of purpose

    Nova Spivack has a short blurb titled Minding the Planet: Communities of Purpose: The Third Type of Community. He mentions wanting to create tools to help people create more productive communities of purpose. The question then, is what should such…

  2. BlogSoCool says:

    Blogging

    Do you think blogging is cool?? Nowadays, media and corporation are attacking us

  3. Communautés d’objectifs

    Nova Spivack, sur son superbe blog mindingtheplanet.net, nous propose

  4. Marc's Voice says:

    Communities of Purpose: The Third Type of Community

    Nova Spivack raps it out….. Communities of Purpose: The Third Type of Community I’ve been thinking about different types of communities recently. Two forms of community that are often discussed are “communities of interest” where the members share a …

  5. Wondiring says:

    Community Types

    Nova Spivac talks about three types of online community: Communities of interest (people who share a common interest) Communities of practice (people who share a common skill) Communities of purpose (people who share a common purpose) Number three is a

  6. Breaking News: America Discovered

    Remember that idea I came up with when I started this blog? Yeah, nobody else does either