Why do we call people participating on our websites "users?"

Aren't users drug addicts?

Questions like this cames up in every panel I attended at Search Engine Strategies where social media was a topic of discussion.

The point here is that referring to your "users" and "users" will cause you to treat them as "users."

For example, it's easier to force users to watch an ad between login and the content they're trying to access than a member of your community.

It's easier to force users to put up with truncated RSS feeds than people in your community you're trying to have a conversation with.

It's a subtle difference that helps enable conversations. You don't hold conversations with users. You have conversations with community members.

Thanks you, dear Technology Evangelist user community member, for reading this. :-)

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