Help - the community's too big!

Is 'your' community getting too large? There is a lot of focus on community growth but retaining and managing members is equally as important.

Growth brings challenges - could you lose the intimacy that your members came for?

A little while back (ok months back - you'll have to excuse me) Rich@FeverBee had a great post about keeping your community intimate and sub-dividing when the community reaches a tipping poing.

(This figure is often considered 150 based on Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point theory.)

I wanted to expand on Rich's concept because I think he makes a great point.

Firstly if you are working on a start-up or relatively new community - don't try to skip ahead and create tonnes of forums or areas for members to engage. It's a common mistake companies make when hoping to attract a large and diverse audience.

Successful communities almost always launch with a minimal feature set and relatively few gathering places (Community Building on the Web, Amy Jo Kim).

So what about large communities?

Most companies strive for growth and it may take a clever business case to get them to value membership retention.

In seeking growth - is it possible your community could get too large? Would your members seek a niche experience elsewhere?

To adhere to the Tipping Point concept what can you do to break your community down?

We have a two-tiered approach. The first is the forums, we have over 180 and open them according to need. They are ordered in a 'stage of life' manner (pregnancy/parentinfg site) so a member can effectively move through each one suiting their stage (and again with baby #2 and so on). Hopefully they'll make some great friends along the way!

Our second approach is Buddy Groups (they are a continuous thread).

We have hundred of Buddy Groups (BGs) - they are fantastic for member engagment (and loyalty) - and I believe these provide the intimate relationships people seek in a community.

Our BGs can be broken down into basic categories:

- Geographic (tens of these live in each State forum)
- Lifestyle (a group of members who have become friends get their own BG started)
- Specialised Pregnancy (gestational diabetes, high-risk neonatal results, home-birthers)
- Commonality (eg. wives whose husbands who have fly in/fly out mine jobs, brides-to-be)

Could you break your community into smaller groups based on these categories?

Do you have any tips or suggestions on how to keep your community intimate?