This week I attended a panel discussion about building online communities. Among my many great “take-aways” was this gem:
Traffic does not equal community.
On one hand, obvious. Yet, it still gave me an “aha” moment.
When you’re around the Web every day, and all the talk is getting more traffic, it’s easy to lose track of what you’re actually achieving.
Take a site like YouTube, the video sharing service that has more traffic than God. It has comments, user profiles, and voting, staples of many communities. But it’s not what I’d call a community. (Perhaps it follows my social network rules too closely?).
Granted, you can get traffic (even do good stuff) and make plenty of money without having any visitor interaction. There are thousands of people who start forums and buy posts in bulk from people who make fake accounts. This is actually accepted practice. They game the system, get into search results, and get lots of traffic.
For now, on the Web traffic may still equal dollars, but it sure doesn’t make it a community.
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