Business Week carried a short read on companies that use online community building for focus groups and to develop products. Not a new topic by any stretch but still good to read this in the mainstream media.
What’s interesting here are the comments. Just look at the first one below. I guess the rules of engagement are still being written…
Community
The (continuing) power of online comunities
I’ve recently had the need to seek advice from a couple of the more popular online communities. I dropped by the QuickBooks community to ask a question about using QuickBooks template features. A forum moderator stepped up and saved the time and dime of calling tech support.
I then hopped over to Craigs List to find out if anyone knew where we could plan a Birthday Party at a local movie theatre.
Key was response time in both instances. The info delivered was right on-target and the people were friendly. Both exchanges worked without a hitch- if I can only remember passwords now! No Spam either!
These exchanges both left a smile on my face and took me back to earlier days of online communities. For the first time, I also thought about upgrading Quicken!
The Well is for sale
webcommunities reports that:
The Well, an online community founded in 1985, is to be sold by it’s current owner Salon.com. Salon bought the community in 1999 for US $5 million. Since then, it’s always managed to turn a profit but memberships (costing $120 to $150 per year) have declined from 6000 to 4000 between 1999 and
today.
Salon expects to achieve a sale price of around $500,000 – about the equivalent of one year’s subscription fees. That’s probably a bargain if the members themselves buy the community…
More.