Community Fads

Currently there is a lot of emphasis on creating communities on the web. Part of the Web 2.0 agenda is for the user to "add value", so the more users the better and more useful the website.

Community sites often involve a more personal or emotional relationship, but this is often a double edged sword. While the emotional involvement often offers a certain degree of loyalty, it also means that things can rapidly decend into social politics and infighting or cliques developing, so there has to be an easy way to manage this.

Also like anything it is subject to to the fickle trends of fashion, and while it might gather momentum from being new and interesting, in order to circumvent this is has to offer something really useful and be adaptable enough to change and adapt to the market.

When I think about the websites I visited before I went to university, in about 1996, I don't visit any of the same websites at all. In fact my longest regularly visited website is Hotmail which (used since my first year at uni) I've held even longer than I've been using Google.

There are a vast number of community web sites I've had involvement in over the decade but few have held my attention for long, some have been rewarding and others not, but even at best the commitment lasts little over a year or two. So community based sites might work but you need fresh blood to keep them going, ensuring that might just offer you some level of success.