intothefuzz

Following up from last week’s Q&A with Markos Moulitsas, our latest chat about building communities online features sports blogging legend Tyler Bleszinski. After creating the highly influential Athletics Nation site, which became an overnight success when it launched in 2003, he went on to co-found SB Nation, a network of more than 200 popular sports blogs.

Our chat took place a weeks ago over IM, with my comments in bold…and big thanks to Tyler for his time and wisdom:

So way back in the old days when blogs weren’t in the mainstream (and required a decent amount of know-how even to set up) you started up the Athletics Nation site. What was your inspiration for doing that, and what were your goals when you were getting it going?

My inspiration came from feeling alienated as an Oakland Athletics fan. I couldn’t seem to find enough coverage of it. My appetite was insatiable and I had a degree in journalism. So my friend encouraged me to start a blog.

Truthfully, I think he was largely tired of hearing me talk about Eric Chavez’s potential and whether he’d ever reach it or not. So he, being a blogger himself, encouraged me to start Athletics Nation. I had no idea if anyone would show up but thankfully people did, and quickly.

Do you think there’s a direct correlation between the lack of A’s coverage that was frustrating you and the success of your site?

I think so, because I think as companies like ESPN got bigger and bigger over the years, they started ignoring a huge segment of the population of sports fans. A’s fans, Royals fans, Tampa Bay Lightning fans, Cleveland Browns fans, we were all in the same boat. Our needs were being ignored by other traditional media companies in favor of scandal (Barry Bonds, Terrell Owens) and the East Coast media bias.

That’s interesting – I see a Mozilla parallel right away, in the sense that there was a pent up demand for a new browser before Firefox launched, thanks to several years of Microsoft dominance and inactivity. Anyway, when you started the site, what were your expectations? And how did you promote it?

I honestly didn’t know what to expect. I thought I might just be preaching to myself and no one else. But when people started showing up on my little Typepad site, I realized that there were a lot of people just as frustrated. And the A’s weren’t just ignored by the national media, they were ignored in their own backyard because of KNBR-AM, the huge sports talk station in town also ignored them in favor of the cross-Bay rivals, the Giants.

I was thrilled that so many people had the same perception that I did. So my friend and I realized that there was a business opportunity there. We went ahead and surveyed the baseball blogosphere at the time, which wasn’t incredibly well developed. But there were a lot of great blogs out there. I started recruiting on a vision that we would be stronger as a collective rather than individuals.

I read an interesting quote from your friend Markos in a New York Times article about SB Nation: “There are some parallels [to other blog networks]. But none of them are building community. At the end of the day, our company is going to sink or swim on how well we can build community.” How big a role did this notion of building a community play in your success?

Well, we try and do more than just exist in the sphere of the site. Every year I have Athletics Nation Day where we have hundreds of people get together at the Coliseum and attend a game. You get to know the person as well as the screen name. We try and foster a sense of belonging.

As long as you love the green and gold, we’re going to love you, and I think so many of our sites have taken that exact approach. Athletics Nation truly was the model for a good deal of our now 200 sites.

Was this whole emphasis on community-building something you consciously planned out, or did it happen organically in the process of creating the site and filling that void?

As for the community building, that was something we knew would be important from the very beginning. In order for our sites to sink or swim, it was going to be dependent on people showing up and interacting. If they didn’t, many a community has died a rapid death.

As someone who has personally built up or fostered many successful online communities, what advice would you give on the best way to do that?

Truthfully the best way to do that is to be yourself but also have a genuine approach that you care what the people who visit your communities want to discuss. Ask them questions and don’t just believe that your belief is always the only way. I think a lot of bloggers get into it to stand on their soapbox and while that’s a part of it, your audience often has great contributions as well.

Do you have a sense of what people are looking for (consciously or not) when they become part of an online community? And I mean that not in a specific way like “being an A’s fan” but in a more general sense…

I don’t want to speak for everyone, but I think people are just looking for a place that has honest opinion and someplace that also regulates the community as well. It basically forces people to treat each other with respect. A place that doesn’t tolerate the old message board, wild, wild west mentality of saying anything to anyone.

How do you maintain that? The openness + level of respect, that is…a lot of sites aren’t as successful in doing that and basically devolve into a lot of pretty unpleasant comments and chatter.

Well you need to be really clear about the community guidelines. Put them up front and even implement a system to monitor them. At Athletics Nation we use a three strikes rule, which is appropriate for baseball. And it’s monitored by their peers among the community.

In terms of looking at your success and how you’ve built up these communities, how would you describe the balance between technology (as in the blogging platform and the ability to have community policing of the comments, like you described) marketing (generally spreading the word) and the product itself (the content on your blogs)? In other words, what role have each of those elements had? Is one more important than the other? How do they fit together?

I think you have to balance them all. They’re all really important. The technology enables our bloggers, but without a really strong blogger who knows how to build community the technology wouldn’t create the community on its own. It’s all stuff that run hand in hand.

Where do you see SB Nation going from here? Do you have goals you haven’t met yet?

Oh yeah. I started the company to be the number one online sports destination for fans of any team and any sport. And until we get there, I won’t be satisfied. The company started in 2003 with the launch of Athletics Nation and I really think that we can get to where we need to be. I’ve never been more positive about it.

Great stuff. Any final words you’d like to share? Pieces of advice? A message to Mozilla?

Here’s my message to Mozilla: keep adding kickass features to Firefox. I’m a big time fan.

Thanks…and we will!