Vibrant communities are critical to the success of software
companies, especially when your customers are software developers. A quick scan
of the biggest players in the software industry reveals some of the largest and
most active online communities on the web: Microsoft’s active .NET community,
Mozilla’s open-source initiatives, Sun’s fervent Java developers, and Google’s
growing API developers. A strong community built around your products can often
be the long term competitive advantage that separates you from your
competition.
The same is true to an even greater extent for web sites
that are built completely around the idea of "community." In the
years that have passed since sites like Wikipedia, Digg, and Flickr have been
introduced, many copy cat sites have tried to imitate their success with
generally poor results. What did the "originals" do right that
enabled them to attract and build their massive followings?
In this article we will take a close look at some of the
most successful online communities on the web and dissect what makes each
community successful. We will then take those lessons and apply them to
practical steps you can use to build a community that matches the quality of
the products or ideas it surrounds.