We were in Bangkok recently and the language barrier really got to me. People do flock together from commonality of language and culture. Online communities then need to OVERdeliver more, possibly offering language translation by machine? so finally we’ll be able to, say, chat in Mandarin? Thai? Vietnamese? (With quick simplified machine-driven translation.) There’s a task for Silicon Valley, Noah.

Thanks, Geoff Dodd Perth, Aust.

Great remarks. I 100% agree that Cupertino has a huge draw because of our remarkable school system. Your second sentence is right on point with my arguments. There is a community that built around an initial base of people who came for the schooling.

I think overall there needs to be an initial reason for the communities to form. For that to happen there needs to be an immediate benefit for themselves.

There is a single driving force behind high concentration of Chinese and Indians (both are Asians in my book) in Cupertino and that is the school district. This is really a network effect where other Asians moved in because of the perceived value of the schools and ended up making it real.

Online communities however differ in one respect. Even the best site for any topic is not guaranteed to have the largest community because (a) it is easy to create similar sites and (b) there is no real effort to switch from one to another.

The value delivered by the site to a participant has to be more than the effort to participate in order for an online community to be successful.

Great article…Online communities allow people to converse without any regard to geography…Of course we pay for this ease of use in terms of making it easy, for a few bad actors, to try and make money from such communities via spam and other unsavory schemes. If we are able to get a system to identify and root out some of these bad actors, the on-line communities have a chance to be a whole lot more vibrant and useful.

Noah I agree with this totally and like Seth G says Small is the New Big or Small is beautiful, also strong focus and constant efforts is something which will definitely pay off, the idea is simple dont work for or towards the pay off, but work for passion or anything you love and add a lil effort to it each day and you are Home!

As You have mentioned Daily Strength I would like to mention http://www.Minti.com a site run and managed by and for Young Parents all over the world it started small and now its a Awesome new age Smart Wiki on Parenting very Hip too!

Thank You Noah and Venture Beat

People tend to underestimate the effort required to build and nurture quality community site.

Also information architecture (UI) issues of community sites are hard to nail down.

as for me, i’m regularly involved in these communities:
* geeks / entrepreneurs / internet startups
* microfinance / social entrepreneurship
* ultimate frisbee

in addition to the above, i’ve gradually become semi-adopted by several asian & south indian communities due to many family & friends, and i find this diversity of bay area community to be one of the things i value most about living in california.

what’s interesting to me is that as technology advances, i find myself participating in MORE, rather than LESS offline & online communities… it seems like the internet helps connect people with smaller & smaller niche communities of more specific interest, and help bring them closer together.

now isn’t that special

- dave mcclure
http://500hats.typepad.com/

One point I would like to make for those building community for their online business.

When is the last time you called members of your community to get their personal thoughts?

Yes, your online success can be propelled by spending a few minutes everyday making phone calls to members of your online community.

Quite often things get lost in the written word and thoughts are not fully captured.

Think about this for a moment:

The internet is constantly moving at lightning speed and we (and our community members) are still moving at human speed.

When is the last time you slowed things down to the human pace and really learned what your community wants?

Yes, it’s a time consuming thing to do but serves very well in gaining an understanding of what your audience really wants.

I have had huge success by focusing in on one person at a time and allow the snowball effect to kick in.

Seems to me forum software can very easily convert itself into a social network. Forum members already have their own pages (aka profiles), mailboxes (aka private messaging), and a photo (aka avatar). Let them add each other as friends and presto, social network!

So I think the niche social networks that will thrive have to either:

1) Center around an affinity where there is not a good forum already (looks like Dailystrength is taking that approach)

2) Provide a level of online interaction for a community dynamic that is not content with a simple message board. This is where face-to-face interaction is key IMHO…

Just my 2 cents from the social network that will remain unmentioned by The Noah

You are welcome about not being mentioned;)

I feel face-to-face interaction depends on the organization. Some communities are built from a face-to-face group wanting to have an online presence. Whereas, Daily Strength’s success is from the anonymity they provide online.

I don’t think niche limits the network effects, I just think it reduces it to a smaller exponential growth and that saturation will happen sooner.

Social Networks are definitely a derivative of forums and just provide an easier way to express yourself and communicate with others beyond just a message board.

I’m curious about how important you feel face-to-face interaction is for building community. The obvious core strength of vertical social networks is the tighter, more intimate community. Yet the very nature of a niche also limits the network effects needed to remain sustainable.

It seems to me that face-to-face interaction isn’t that important anymore. Dogster and Daily Strength users are fine with virtual interaction only.

If thats the case, social networks seem like nothing more than Forum 2.0