Although I appreciate the gusto in this post, I gave up gave up on the community manager is or is not a social media manager debate a long time ago. You're 100% correct, but it's a battle that can't be won at this point. Time to move on.

Great insights David. It's true that most people don't equate "community building" with "community management" these days--but in reality, that's the goal. It's impossible to encourage innovation from the top down. A community manager needs to encourage and enliven the spirit of innovation amongst there community, which often means making the community successful.For "maker" brands like Soundcloud, Shapeways, and even 10gen the essence of their product is "what can you make with this?". So while community managers need to create an environment where that innovation is possible, they also need to make their users successful. I think that's what keeps us going through the "tough times". We're constantly a cheerleader for our community, committed to making them awesome.

This are great points and insights, David. Love the break-down of the definition. At the risk of being too specific (for large networks of engaged users), one of my favorite definitions comes from Christina Cacioppo at Union Square Ventures, who says that a CM is: "an empathetic storyteller who is the product's external voice, the users' internal advocate with a genuine passion for helping people.

What I see a lot lately, is that the concept of CM is being used to connect a brand/company with users rather than creating an environment for people to connect with one another, something you mention above, which I love.

The way we've approached it is to think about "what legacy I want to create should I ever leave SoundCloud". This puts me in check to create the foundation, internal and external guidelines, infrastructure, team and processes to support this. Today, this includes community support (CS with a twist), trust & safety, rights & privacy, program management, internal community building and a lot more. 

This is a snapshot at the natural evolution of my role and the conscious decision by our founders to ensure that Community has a seat at the (senior management) table, a commitment that was possible because we were able to showcase and scale the value of a solid CM organization while we grew to 150+ employees serving 20+ million members.

Great points. Thanks for making them. I recently had coffee with someone who works at an agency focused on community for brands, but as they talked more and more about their business, I came to the conclusion that what they really meant was that they run Facebook pages for brands and tweet and Pin things to try and make them go viral and get attention. They eschew every custom platform out there; they're broadcasting only on the most popular platforms. This seems pretty different than building online communities and stretches the meaning of community to become "connecting people around a brand." Nothing wrong with that, necessarily, but it's exactly what you're talking about: They're using the positive sheen of community as a positioning strategy. 

"Those who are actually building community already knows what it means to be a community manager."

This is the most important sentence I read in the above. I know what I do is community building - although I do much of what this article, and the one yesterday, told me is not community management. I use a website and social media to communicate the belief of the company so that people may decide whether they too share it. I use email marketing to build a local audience that will get invitations to offline events, which I also plan. I blog in order to share the community news and spotlight particular members or aspects of it. 

The objective of all those actions is to build community, both online and offline, and there's no one that has ever been able to tell me why I'm not a community builder. What do community builders actually do? Because "facilitating interactions between people" is pretty vague, in my opinion.  

I think a lot of these points are spot on, but as an employee in an 11 person company, I find it impossible to separate community from marketing, support, and product (my title: the somewhat vague, Marketing & Community Manager). I would love to read something about how to grow and separate the community branch from the rest as a startup grows and changes. It's all very well to say a community manager should only focus on community, but in the beginnings of a company, it's just not possible or that clear.