The future of the internet is likely smaller communities, with a focus on curated experiences

The year we wanted the internet to be smaller

Why tiny, weird online communities made a comeback in 2017

Community ≠ Marketing: Why We Need Go-to-Community, Not Just Go-to-Market

Community is the “new” moat (or so some have said), and it’s true: Having a community helps protect against competitor companies or products entering your territory. Whether that community is a group of power users, open source contributors, creators, or even just a brand (or franchise)’s super fans, it lends greater brand awareness, higher switching... Read More

Online communities and social communities: a primer

What are online communities and for what goals can they be used? A primer with plenty of community marketing and management tips.

The rise of community-curated knowledge networks

The Internet put thousands of years of human thought at our fingertips, and enabled billions of people to create content. At least 2.5…

Part I: The Next Great Online Community

There’s a lack of innovation in community software. Let's dive into internet history, and get inspired!

Come for the Network, Pay for the Tool

Paid groups, bespoke social networks, and the meaning of community for internet-native businesses.

When Community Becomes Your Competitive Advantage

If a company can transition from simply delivering a product to building a community, they can unlock extraordinary competitive advantages and create a superior business model. In fact, strong communities help support the ideal business model. Specifically: • Enthusiastic members help acquire new members, resulting in lower customer acquisition costs and a tight viral loop. • Members of a community are loath to abandon it, resulting in increased member retention and therefore improved lifetime value. • Members of a community support other members in that community, resulting in high gross margins due to a lower cost of service. The result of this are very real network effects: as engagement grows, the community gets smarter, faster to respond, more globally available, and generates more value.

Rewilding the internet with ATProto

So far, many of the projects in the ATProtocol ecosystem have focused on bringing parity—making projects that replicate our existing tools and platforms, but with the affordances of the protocol instead. That's cool and we need to do that, but I think we can go much farther, and take this opportunity to challenge some of the biggest assumptions of what the modern internet is for, who builds it, and how we interact with it. This talk is in conversation with several of the talks from last year, and in I'll argue that we'll never get away from skeuomorphism until we've fundamentally changed the definition of what "the social internet" means in the first place.

Where Tech Companies Build Communities

The customizable, scalable community platform powering over 22,000 communities. Create knowledge through conversation.

Welcome to the Post-Naive Internet Era

The grand idealism of the free and open internet might be over for now, but in its place falls a more practical mindset. Just like Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurs are entering their “Hard Tech” era, the people building web alternatives are also entering their Post-Naive Era. Here are the names to know.

Digital gardens let you cultivate your own little bit of the internet

A growing number of people are creating individualized, creative sites that eschew the one-size-fits-all look and feel of social media

Thoughts on Communities | unDraw Blog

Even with the best intentions and people eager to join, most attempts to create communities fail and will continue to do so.

My journey to the heart of the forgotten internet

Slowly but surely, huge swaths of the internet are vanishing. But the artefacts of the early web are still out there, and they have lessons for the future.

The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier

Howard Rheingold tours the 'virtual community' of online networking.Howard Rheingold has been called the First Citizen of the Internet. In this book he tou

The evolution of expert communities

A look at how online forums grow, thrive, and then decay.