The Power of Community
March 14th, 2006
Kathy Sierra of Creating Passionate Users fame is at SXSW and has posted some great quotes from some of the talks.
One set is from the guys at skinnyCorp, who is responsible for the creation of Threadless (online t-shirt site that moves more than 60,000 shirts a month).
“Community replaces advertising.”
“The community could kill Threadless… we don’t think they will, but if the community thinks we deserve to die, we probably deserve to die.”
“We turned down Urban Outfitters, because if we put our shirts there, then we’d just be one more cool shirt on a rack of other cool shirts. There would be no story and no community. Then our work becomes just cloth and ink, and that’s not why we did it.”
That’s powerful stuff – especially the comments on the Threadless community. The skinnyCorp guys know who holds the power – the control – and they respect that. Some people out there are still trying to hang on to an illusion of power, which is futile.
So where is the community for your company, product or service?
Are you talking to them?
Are you listening?
Other posts by Spike.
olivier blanchard says:
Excellent.
March 15th, 2006 at 1:55 pm