I have some ideas on how we’re going to try to have this happen on Viddler so that less dividing happens outside of the group structure, but can actually happen within it, while keeping the main group intact.

Thanks for jotting down your thoughts!

I’ve considered clubs, groups, affiliations, and gatherings in an effort to be a ‘part’ of something. I think it satisfies a part of human psyche to ‘belong’.

Where it gets really strange is when you combine human’s innate sense of belonging with it’s additional sense of uniqueness. We want to belong to a group (if you will), but we also want it to be exclusive to those that qualify for that particular elite status.

Consider Apple Fanboys. It used to be a cult status symbol to put an Apple sticker on your car. You were ‘bucking’ the trend, displaying your underground fanaticism for Apple computers and that you should be revered in some manner.

Blinging something you love is a related topic as well. You like to parade your exclusive affiliations to show that (in essence) you are unique. Is it the desire to be unique that drives this? Probably. [heavy discussion ensues.]

I’m sure that allowing individualism on viddler will promote growth of groups and help spawn cliques, categories, rooms, clubs, pools, et al.

This is a long topic, and I’ll stop there, but I thought I’d mention it. Some of this stuff you know more about than I.

Cheers.

Also, regarding your tips for Viddler - you are correct. There are several ways we’re going to be joining these communities together - most of which came from how they are already doing it themselves.

Thanks for the comment, now get back to taking over the world from down under.

There are definitely points in a community’s growth at which it splits. I think the only way for that to work is if the splits are non-divergent, eg. despite some people identifying more with Mopeds than Motorcycles, they’re still motivated to maintain their membership in the Two-Wheeled Transport community. Flickr works because everybody still loves sharing their photos, regardless of if they’re family snaps, moody self-portraits, studio work or soft porn (not that any of those groups are necessarily exclusive on Flickr…)

I guess the trick for Viddler is to work out ways to help those groups form in a cohesive fashion, rather than a divisive one. Paving the cowpaths already pioneered by your users would have to be the first option, surely? Group profile pages for friends or machine tagging to specify the group(s) are the first things that come to mind late at night when I should be working