Product development and support - http://WordPress.com/

Why this example was selected

WordPress involves its community in many tasks and is successfully managing a for-profit business alongside an open source software project. WordPress is heavily focused on supporting and nurturing their community – it is founded on these ideas and therefore it provides another reference for organizations looking to understanding Mass Collaboration.

Sources: participation in the community and interview.

Outcome – 5

WordPress.com is home to more than 5m blogs and visited by about 250m users per month, according to their analytics. That makes them one of the largest online destinations. There are blog products managed by Google as well as a number of other organizations, but WordPress is far and away the largest.

Additionally WordPress Happiness Engineers, play a very important role in making their service work, but this team can remain small and focused, because the community does a large amount of knowledge creation and real-time support, themselves.

People - 4

People can contribute in a range of ways. There is the core software development project at www.WordPress.org. And then, like Mozilla, there are plug-ins and themes. And then a separate area for additional feedback such as new ideas or problems – appropriately called Kvetch.

Participation levels are similar to Mozilla – almost 5000 add-ons and just over 700 themes as of May 2009. It’s harder to get a handle on how many people in the community are providing service and support.

It’s really easy to search and find answers – in fact, for many searches using Google or the WordPress.org or WordPress.com search will get you to the same content (That’s significant in that this community is likely producing the best content, then). Other people quickly respond (if not Automattic employees are watching to make sure nothing goes unanswered). I estimated about 400 or so new posts per day in the community. WordPress Support fields about 300 requests per day (that employees respond to). So, in simple terms the community outperforms in terms of responses and although we don’t have specific numbers, the support forum content seems to dwarf the support content (and likely informs it), suggesting that users who search and find content, are finding mainly community generated content(Abrahamson, 2009)

Tools - 4

WordPress makes use of a range of tools in a similar way to Mozilla. In fact, both projects have their roots in open source software, so this should not come as a surprise. Communication happens via a variety of channels such as forums or IRC. Creators have a place to promote and host their contributions and receive feedback and key statistics such as downloads, ratings and comments.

Similarly, bloggers have multiple options, including the option to easily move out of a hosted service to their own, easily modified and customizable environment. That’s unique among platforms. Like Mozilla, multiple contribution options exist from design themes to add-ons and core code for the platform – touching all aspects of the service except for a few services where the community is likely to be less effective – such as core support and hosting functions.

As mentioned previously, it really easy to self serve - find answers using Google or the WordPress.org or WordPress.com search will usually get you quickly to useful content.

Organization – 5

WordPress enables people to benefit from participation in a number of ways. Some members sell consulting services to people who use the platform – this is encouraged and supported. Others receive regular visible thanks for the contributions. People who participate receive regular feedback about the code or designs. And so they have aligned motivations well with the objectives of Automattic, the owners of WordPress.com.

Further, Automattic has tried to focus on commercial areas that also help the community such as hosting and certain types of support that are areas where communities have not performed well, when left to themselves. This clear thinking about where the commercial organization can support the community is unusual and points to a model that other organization might look to – i.e. seeing the commercial entity as the utility in the way that lights, water etc are provided by local government.