Note: this was originally posted on the old site on June 16, 2003.
There's a lot a talk these days about building a community of users around a company. Both John Porcaro and Robert Scoble of Microsoft are talking about it a lot in their blogs. It's really what everybody wants to create, including me. I want to create a community of solitaire players (that sounds like an oxymoron, but there you go). It's one of the reasons this blog exists. It's why I started the Goodsol Solitaire Discussion Forum about 6 months ago.
The thing about communities is that they are delicate things and I don't think you can "build" them. They have to grow instead. All you can do is seed them and fertilize them, but they have to grow on their own. In order to have a real community, you have to let the people in it build it themselves. It takes time.
For example, it has taken the Dexterity Software Forum (note: this is now the Indiegamer forum) the better part of a year to grow into what it is now, and it is just starting to take off. Alas for Steve, it's still only the independent software developers part of the forum that has begun forming a real community, the part of the forum devoted to his own products and customers has yet to take off. My forum hasn't taken off yet either. But it's still young and I think it can.
What it takes is a critical mass of people interested in the subject to start posting regularly. At some point, the group hits a tipping point and becomes a real community. It requires time and enough interested people to get it going. I hope that it eventually happens with my forum.
2005 Update: The forum hasn't really taken off as a community, but it isn't a failure either. There are people posting messages every day.
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