There has been quite a bit of collaboration lately on the idea of social media described in terms of Home Bases, Frontiers, Outposts, and Communities. If you have not gotten into the discussion and thrown in your two cents I would encourage you to read the following posts and discuss:

1.The Founding Father: Chris Brogan: Using Outposts in Your Media Strategy

2. Darren Rowse of Pro-Blogger: Home Bases and Outposts, How I Use Social Media

3. Steven Sanders: Home Bases, Outposts, Frontiers and Communities

4. My Post on the matter: Home Bases, Outposts and Frontiers Using Social Media

Steven talks about adding on the concept of communities to the mix of home bases, outposts, and frontiers. In his post he talks about the concept of communities:

If you look at Kyle’s picture of his social media model, you’ll start to notice that it resembles what could possibly be a persons house or lifestyle.  The different areas are the different things a person runs through everyday.

So If you look at this chart belonging to an individual person, then it makes sense that there are similar charts being used by others that help to build your “Communities“.

I like where Steven is going with the concept of communities. Below you will find his version of the concept of communities:

I decided to take it a step further and call the communities concept Borders. To be honest with you it is the same concept at communities but I wanted to keep with the wilderness theme.  Here is my reasoning:

According to Wordsmyth.net borders can be defined as:

The area close to or the dividing line between two countries or political regions.

To me the border defines the outlying area where we still influence and coexist among our neighboring communities. We have out home base, our outposts, the frontiers, and then the border where we wander out and coexist with other communities in the form of communication and collaboration. The only downside to the definition of border is that it means a dividing line. In no way are the borders of our social media “bases” a dividing line but more of place for the facilitation of online relationships and information sharing.

My concept in visual form:

The purple area represents the borders we define in our social media experience. It is an open territory where we cross into other users boundaries and share information. It could be defined as an open border.

Any thoughts?  If there has been any more thoughts shared in the matter please let me know. I would love to add it into the mix.