Thank you Lou for your comment! It is really rema...

2010-01-06T16:07:38.328-05:00

Thank you Lou for your comment! It is really remarkable how important and overlooked those that choose not to participate visibly are to a community. But, by the same token, thanks for being an active poster :)

Excellent post, Vanessa. It's too easy to dism...

2010-01-06T16:01:18.103-05:00

Excellent post, Vanessa. It's too easy to dismiss the "silent majority" in our communities, simply because they don't show up on the radar. Active Readers (love that term!) are being influenced, and that translates into tangible actions and benefits.

My first community fell apart in 1999 because of t...

2010-01-05T13:14:48.086-05:00

My first community fell apart in 1999 because of the lurker issue. I am writing a book of my online experiences for Kindle and other online reading devices.

Interestingly enough, since I'm commenting on my dear friend's, and queen of B2B's blog, the B2B communities didn't move me to write about them like the B2C communities did.

It was getting to know the secrets of the members' lives that moved my heart. You can see our creative writing collection here.

We wrote this at the time when The Well was the most famous entity in the online community world. I think we were just as good as they were.

The online world has changed. B2B people have realized the value of communities and have found their business plans, thanks in no small part to Vanessa.

The B2C members who were 7 in 1999 are now 17, buying merchandise, and joining communities with 151 million members. An automated moderation software industry is burgeoning to deal with the dangers that have developed in those spaces.

But back to V's point: lurkers. Here is The Story of Socks.

You will see how the lurker issue destroyed a beautiful work of collective art. I suppose something had to destroy it because the world of privacy protection linked to commercialism, and the massive growth in B2C community membership would not make our Socks community possible today.

But like the last line of the movie Last of the Mohicans, "Once, we were here."

Comments on Building online communities for business: Active Readers On Online Community- Do They Matter...

Thank you Lou for your comment! It is really rema...

Excellent post, Vanessa. It's too easy to dism...

My first community fell apart in 1999 because of t...