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Online community continues to be the nut that just won't crack for publishers and their business models. All those eyeballs, all that peer-to-peer energy, so little advertising. User-generated content areas like message boards, photo galleries, and self-serve blogs often wither from disinterest or remain segregated silos that are disconnected from the other content at a site and certainly alienated from advertiser interest. Brand hubris leads too many sites to construct their own social networks (a la Facebook) in the truly bizarre belief that their visitors (who already have vibrant Facebook communities) really want to build another one at a magazine site. Chant the trendy mantra magazines are communities to ourselves often enough at every industry conference, and I guess eventually we believe it.
Instead of chanting (although this has its benefits in troubled times), let's explore what is working. I am on a personal mission of late to uncover successful ways in which heretofore impersonal, sometimes imperious, media are learning to embrace some of this community energy within their brands and not just as ghettoes in some "Community" navigation...