[Podcast] The Golden Age of Online Communities & the WELL with Gail Ann Williams
The Begining of the Online Community Movement
On this episode of the Cohere podcast, Bill Johnston and Dr. Lauren Vargas are joined by pioneering community strategist and manager Gail Ann Williams.
Gail watched the dawn of online communities through her participation and eventual community leadership position at the WELL - arguably the first successful large-scale online community.
Members of the WELL describe it as “the primordial ooze where the online community movement was born.” The WELL was a digital frontier, born from the offline community and culture of Stewart Brand’s “Whole Earth Catalog” counter-culture magazine.
We call Gail a pioneer because she was figuring out complex community issues related to strategy, policy, platform, and business model by herself, more or less in real-time - well before there were any research studies, consultants, or books about online communities.
Gail's journey at the WELL started as a conference manager in 1991, and she helped guide the community through several transformational changes, including an acquisition of the WELL by salon.com in 1999, and the eventual repurchase back from salon.com by a group of passionate members in 2012.
Highlights From This Episode
Milestones in the History of The WELL
Timeline adapted from The WELL’s Wikipedia entry.
1985 - The WELL is founded by Stewart Brand and Larry Brilliant as a dialup BBS
1991 - Gail Ann Williams is hired as Conference Manager
"Early 90’s” - The WELL evolves from a dial-up BBS to an ISP and an early version of the current web-based incarnation
April 1999 - The WELL is acquired by Salon.com
August 2005 - Salon.com announces intention to sell The WELL but is unable to find a buyer
June 2012 - Salon.com again seeks a buyer for The WELL. After failing to do so, Salon.com lays off staff and announces intention to shut down The WELL
September 2012 - Salon.com sells the WELL to The WELL Group Inc., a group of 11 investors and long-time members
The founding of the WELL by Larry Brilliant and Stewart Brand
“The WELL started in 1985 and I joined in 1990. It was five years old and I had heard about it a lot. It was founded by Larry Brilliant and Stewart Brand. (Larry was) a young hippie seeker went to India to find a guru and studied and meditated. The guru said, “Hey, you're educated. You come from America. I have a quest that you should take on your, here's your Dharma, your succinct to-do in your life. You must end smallpox.” And he's like, …what? So he went back and figured out how to do that. And then later on, went on to become a technologist. And so he's a tremendously accomplished fellow and really creative.
Stewart Brand was the Whole Earth Catalog originator. Early on, he'd been a Merry Prankster, in the legal days of the LSD revolution. He's gone on to start the Long Now Foundations; a tremendously creative person. At one point the two of them sat down and they came up with the idea that they would start these networks, dial-in communities where really creative people could connect.They started the WELL, and they had this tortured acronym of the “Whole Earth ‘lectronic Link.”
When the WELL connected to the Internet
“I remember when the WELL first connected to the internet, as soon as it was legally possible to do that.
One of our gung-ho excited users really wanted to understand this emerging (Internet) culture. She started saving everything, and this was before photos were really circulated very much, but she just started trying to save everything that she could read that was on the internet and put it in her home directory.
And so quickly she hit the (storage) limit and I called her on the phone and said, “We're going to have to cut you off because you're racking up a storage bill that would be like $800 a month, and I'm pretty sure you don't want to spend that. She says “I need you to give me a grant because I'm documenting the internet”.
" Oh my God!" So it was just so fascinating to see what people thought was happening, how the world was unfolding, and how we were all figuring out “what the hell is this?”
Scaling the Village
“The idea that the WELL would be giant and everybody would be part of - it was terrifying to early community members there.
They really wanted it to be more like a village. They really wanted that. When there were plans made for investing a lot of money and scaling it, it kind of terrified people. The coziness of it being a small town rather than a grid of social relationships, you know, it really, it feels different.”
Cyber Utopianism and the Lack of Representation
“There was a certain amount of bullshit in the cyber utopianism. It was mostly men, mostly who had money, who were really wonderful creative guys, but they didn't really represent the world in the way that maybe they thought they did.
So from early on, I had this sort of skepticism. Questioning things like: you can't have a declaration of rights for cyberspace because that would be like having a declaration of rights for when you're using the telephone. And that doesn't make any sense. I find myself coming up against this and yet I really hoped that it was gonna solve more problems.”
Communities as a Space for Empathy and Compassion
“One other thing that I noticed on the WELL that I now see on the net and I think it's been a really good thing for humanity even though it's very small:
We noticed really early on at the WELL that one thing that you never saw in your workplace and other parts of your life was that if someone's pet died, they would grieve about it. And people who were sympathetic would, would grieve with them in a way that, you know, they could really work that through.
In their regular life it's like, “how are you doing?” “my cat died” “Sorry.”
It was not something that there was a place for. I've seen this over and over again. A friend of mine recently lost his elderly cat and posted about it on Facebook. And then I saw him face-to-face and he said “So many people reached out to me and they told me about their pets and people - friends of friends, who I barely knew came through. And he was really overwhelmed by it. I feel like that this is one thing that the Internet's really given to people.It seems very strange, but there it's a little part of people's lives that wasn't being honored. And now it is.
And so I feel like that's a tiny little nugget of good. It's small, but it's amazing.
In our conversation with Gail was also cover:
Experimenting with different community business models
How text-based community experiences can be sensory-rich experiences
How privacy, even in private forums, can't be assumed
Additional sources referenced in the show:
The Complicated Legacy of Stewart Brand’s “Whole Earth Catalog” - The New Yorker
The WELL’s Wikipedia page - Wikipedia
Origin of the concept “Information wants to be free; information wants to be expensive” - Wikipedia
“The Virtual Community” - Howard Rheingold
Salon Media Group Sells The WELL to The Well Group - The WELL
The Epic Saga of The Well - Wired
Salon’s TableTalk shutdown: What we can learn from the story of a pioneering online community - Word Yard
The Fall of Salon.com - Politico
Online Community Building Concepts (Almost Proverbs) - Gail Ann Williams
Book of Proceedings from the 2013 Online Community Unconference - The “OCTribe” team
You can find Gail Ann Williams online at:
A final word from Gail about the WELL:
”The WELL still exists and is worth a visit for a month or so by any community professional. Like all discussion-centric communities, the dynamics are best uncovered with some active participation.”
