Yesterday, I put out a call to my social networks for blog topics regarding social media. The response was incredible! The first question I received was from Meghan Rodberg. She asks:
“How does an MMO company introduce features through their own websites that fansites have traditionally provided (eg wikis), without cannibalizing those fansites? :)”
First, for those of you that dont know, a MMO is a Massively Multiplayer Online Game. Think World Of Warcraft, Everquest, and Diablo among others. A place where lots of users interact. A lot of these users really get into these games and create fansites. These sites offer anything from a place for users to share game hints, support, fan fiction/artwork, wikis and well community.
I’m going to assume a few things about Meghan and her MMO company:
– They have an existing MMO company with a MMO product that runs as a desktop application.
– There are fan sites already out on the web
-They want to offer more services, information, tools to their users with the goal of users staying on/within the MMO webpages.
So how do they do offer these services without cannibalizing the others? Better yet how do they do it without making their users mad? The users who created these pages are no doubt what we call Power Users.
Well I see a few options here, all share them in list form, people like lists.
-Why reinvent the wheel? If the sites exist and you have Power Users behing them, which has traffic and a community, enforce, why not just link to them? No doubt these PU know your product really well. They are your number#1 evangelist. Why not just link to their site as a resource? You will save time, money and you have created your own company evangelist.
-If you’re not comfortable with the sites being outside your control, then bring those people in with their fansites. Have them work for you. Yep, integrate those fansites into your MMO pages. Again you have created your own evangelist. You bring those users who use these pages to your sites and you have not recreated the wheel. I hate doing that.
– I ask this question to you. If the wikis are already out there. The users have fansites that do this. They must be passionate about the MMO. Why do you need to offer wikis? As you stated your afraid it will cannibalize the fansites. I agree.
-Something to keep in mind here. This is very dangerous territory. A company like this needs fans/users who are evangelists. Its where the business comes from. The MMO needs to make sure to respect these third party sites. There needs to be compromise, they need to find a way to work together. This may be from linking to them, to asking them, what they want to see on the MMO site. A focus group could be a good thing here. Maybe there is something better then wikis that the company can offer.
What do you guys think? How would you solve the problem?
