This week’s first Online Community Expert Interview is with Chia Hwu. Chia, a former organic chemist who is happy to be out of the lab after a ten-year stint in front of a bench, is the Community Manager at 23andMe. She has worked in biotech and tech, been a volunteer coordinator and online community manager at various start-ups. Her twitter handle is @chiah and her new blog is at http://socialmediamarketing.typepad.com.
Q: Chia, you have a very unique community, in the sense that your community has the ability explore issues relating to a person’s DNA. Can you talk about the strategy behind the 23andMe community?
23andMe has a very unique community that is based on having your genetic data. We currently only allow members who have been genotyped or have an Ancestry account post to the forums and the level of discourse is extremely high. We are very lucky to have such engaged, passionate and well-educated users who want to talk about their genetic results and share their data with each other. If you are interested in seeing what types of discussions are happening, create a free account and you can read through the threads.
Our community creates a place for people to engage with each other, it’s pretty interesting to see how the interactions happen and how people connect, sometimes through their data and sometimes just in conversation.
Q: Since you have such a unique data set and identifier for each member, can you talk about the unusual challenges and opportunities your community faces?
We do have some very unique and personal data about each member of our community but DNA data is kept separate from the personally identifying data in our system. Unless you decide to “share” DNA data with others (a process similar to friending on Facebook, but you are sharing your genetic profiles), there is no way to see your genetic information from looking at the Profile page. Posting on our community does not imply “sharing” any genetic data, it’s a forum.
One of the unique challenges that our community members face is deciding whether they want to “share” their genetic data with other members who have similar interests in ancestry or health topics. And if they decide to “share”, they have to decide whether to do it at the Basic level (ancestry and aggregate data) or at the Extended level (detailed health risks).
Q: What have the 2-3 most interesting (and surprising) uses of the community that you have encountered?
I have been very surprised that people have been sharing genetic information with strangers, not just a handful but sometimes by the hundreds.
The second thing that has been great (and at times also a challenge) is that people are very passionate about our service. It is surprising to me how much people care about what new features we develop and how attached our members are to a community that is less than a year old.
Q: How are you reaching beyond the hosted 23andMe community to maintain on online presence?
To reach the online audience I use Twitter, Facebook, DNA-ancestry sites and email lists to maintain a 23andMe presence. These are all tools though, to build relationships. I also go to a lot of events to connect with people, especially people in the Health 2.0 and social media space. No matter what, the online communications tools does not entirely take the place of building in person relationships.
Q: What excites you most about your job?
The best part of my job as Community Manager is getting to know people. My favorite part is when I am able to help answer questions and solve problems. I like being the internal champion of our members, sort of like being a user voice.
