Notes from “The Nine Tribes of the Internet”

Posted by: Meagen Ryan, Director of Strategy Jun 11, 2009 0 Comments

Yesterday, Rock Creek Strategic Marketing sponsored the Web Managers Roundtable event featuring Lee Rainie, Director of Pew Internet & American Life Project. Mr. Rainie spoke about “The Nine Tribes of the Internet.” I found the talk fascinating because, unlike many of the recent presentations I’ve seen on new media, Pew Internet actually has original data to share. If you are a designer, producer, or developer for any online application, I recommend you view the slides from his talk. Too often we web people develop sites for the first tribe—early adopters Rainie terms “Digital Collaborators.” This is understandable because this is our tribe. This presentation reminds us that different users have different needs, and it helps us categorize them by examining users’ attitudes toward new media.
As I was listening to Rainie, I was thinking about work we do for federal clients. A government agency must develop an online presence to meet the needs of the entire population, which seems like a Herculean task. Fortunately, the presentation provided a few helpful tips to consider when building a new media presence for Government:

• The differing needs of each user tribe make good navigation even more important. Investing time and energy to develop a useful site structure is crucial to communicating with broad audiences. A Government website (or any website) should be designed to meet specific audience needs as directly as possible, with clear labeling and structure that ensures that even the most arcane information is accessible eventually.
• Rainie suggested that Government may never engage a representative sample of the public online. Whether it is because they hate the Internet, they hate the Government, they hate both, or some other reason, some people will never engage online. Additionally, there are some Government services for which most people do not want to use the Internet. Although Government should continue to develop new and better online tools to serve and engage the citizenry, traditional methods will always be necessary to serve the public good.

Rainie noted that Pew Internet is releasing a report on Government and the Internet later this year. I look forward to using their data as we continue to help our Government clients use new media effectively.

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Meagen Ryan

Director of Strategy

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