👋 Welcome to another week in Rosieland, it's a jam packed edition!
🌈 This week in Rosieland:
- Step one towards your pathway to building community without letting social networks have all the fun | Article
- Making sense of community knowledge is a superpower! | Reflection
👋 I research, write and support people who want to build better communities.
Come learn with me as I share everything I know.
Stoop Coffee: How a Simple Idea Transformed My Neighborhood | Patty Smith
Sometimes the simple ideas of every day things together is all you need for community to start building community.
This one started with having coffee on "stoops".
Is it prosocial design’s time to shine? | Everything in Moderation
From this research, we can see that users change their behavior based on where they are and who they’re around. This means there’s an enormous opportunity for social platforms to take an active role in helping their communities thrive.
Grassroots movements are building garden cities | Stephen Mackintosh
Community requires action.
I am a big picture person, but the more I spoke with people, the more I realized that community solutions come from communities. We have our work cut out for us, and until then, the future is up to those of us who choose to demonstrate, vocally or visually, that we can craft for ourselves a more engaging future through the invitation of public space.
Why Community Should Report to the COO: Driving GTM Alignment and Business Results | Joshua Zerkel
Community is inherently a horizontal function—it spans multiple departments and objectives. So why place it in a single silo when it can have a greater impact on your company’s overall success? That’s where the Chief Operating Officer (COO) or the Head of Business comes in. These roles are responsible for aligning cross-functional teams toward common business goals. The COO’s broad, strategic oversight is the perfect place for community teams to drive long-term value across the entire go-to-market engine. This makes them the perfect leader for overseeing community efforts and unlocking their full potential.
⭐️ Tools and Resources:
- Prosocial Design Network: The Prosocial Design Network connects research to practice toward a world in which online spaces are healthy, productive, respect human dignity, and improve society.
- Digital Thriving Playbook! A resource for creating online spaces that help people thrive
- Loomio: Make great decisions without meetings Loomio helps you create a more engaged and collaborative culture, build trust and coordinate action
🗓️ Upcoming events:
- Hyperlocal Heroes: Building Community Knowledge in the Digital Age | New_ Public
- Community Week - London
📰 News
‘Careless People’ Is the Book About Facebook I’ve Wanted for a Decade
I’ve reported on Facebook for years and have always wondered: Does Facebook care what it is doing to society? Careless People makes clear it does not.
Jason Koebler
The Tumblr revival is real—and Gen Z is leading the charge
https://www.fastcompany.com/91310237/the-tumblr-revival-is-real-and-gen-z-is-leading-the-charge [Eve Upton-Clark at Fast Company]I love this. Tumblr is so back: “Thanks to Gen Z, the site has found new life. As of 2025, Gen
Ben Werdmuller
Why publishers are pivoting to community as a new source of growth
Discover how community engagement for publishers drives growth through retention, loyalty and first-party data across direct, owned channels.
Viafoura
Rebooted Digg launches early-access community with $5 fee | TechCrunch
The reboot of early-internet social news site Digg is underway. Original founder Kevin Rose and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian have launched an
Sean O’Kane
Building Pollen has been one of the greatest adventures. Today, that… | Hillary Bush | 98 comments
Building Pollen has been one of the greatest adventures. Today, that chapter comes to a close. Pollen was based on the simple idea that more people should have the keys to their own economic outcomes. I've seen the power of entrepreneurship around the world and at home, and sought to make it accessible to anyone who wanted to bet on themselves and go solo. The independent journey is insanely hard, and we aimed to fill the gaps with tools, coaches, and a network that matched the caliber of the people taking the leap. Over the past three years, we experimented relentlessly — launched dozens of sprints, built bespoke tools, created a deep library of p2p resources, worked with incredible coaches, ran live events, and cultivated a vibrant community. We eventually went B2B to build professional service marketplaces for growing companies. But in the end, we couldn’t find the slipstream needed to create a sticky product and build a big, large scale business in this space. Taking big swings means you might miss, and that's okay. But, you never know until you try! And I’m unbelievably proud of what we built and the customers we impacted. I believe more than ever in the people we served and the future of independent work. I’ve got plenty of thoughts on the market and would love to share with anyone else swinging at this. I hope someone wins here. This obviously isn’t the outcome I hoped for, but I’ve learned so much—professionally and personally—and in many ways, I still feel like I’ve won. I’m incredibly excited for what’s next and will share more very soon. No matter what flavor, entrepreneurship is hard. But I never did this alone. Thank you to Pollen's amazing investors, teammates, and collaborators who believed in us and let us swing for the fences. What a gift this journey has been!
Devon Miller Micah Rosenbloom Brent Willess Amanda Herson David Frankel Eric Paley Chauncey Kerr Hamilton Charles Hudson Nico Berardi Antonio Osio Andrew Humphries Faith Cohen, Ph.D. Nitesh Banta Jamie Cox Austin L. Church Leszek Juraszczyk Melissa Frost (Kandrach) Sam Sorscher Morgan Steele Jess Little Dan Sommer Steve Selzer Juraj Pal Claire Vo and many, many more | 98 comments on LinkedIn
Hillary Bush
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