Narrow, nurtured, nuanced

We all know that having a great community or fanbase is really important for a meaningful body of work.

But what makes a community ‘great’?

We often look to the biggest ones as examples of what ‘great’ means.

That may be changing.

‘Great’ and ‘big’ be terms used to describe the same place. But they’re not synonymous.

The more the web matures, the more we’re able to organise ourselves around very narrow interests. Interests like your favourite brand of hot chocolate. Or a particular board game. Or an NFT you really like.

I ended up describing it as “narrow, nurtured, nuanced”:

Narrow: the more specific, the better. Nurtured: the more cared for, the better. Nuanced: the more appreciative of the subtleties of the interest, the better.

If you’re building a community… are you building for ‘bigness’, or for ‘narrow, nurtured, nuanced’?