Publishers are scratching at this right now: How do we turn our publications into communities? In the magazine world, FastCompany[173] augmented its magazine site with a social network. Last year's Gnomedex[174] conference used introNetworks[175] to power people-to-people connectivity before the event started. Webkinz[176] knows it's not about the cloth or the stuffing. But these are just the start. There are so many obvious community business opportunities in play, just waiting to happen. Why?
Here are some options for some community organizations not yet in play.
Forget loyalty programs and sky miles. Imagine a program where business types can opt in to reveal that they're staying at a particular hotel and that they're amenable to meetings about product pitches, but not job offers, for the next four days. The upside? I'd pay extra to go where the business opportunities would make it worthwhile.
Fear Factor: Stalkers and other liabilities. This can't be too hard to solve, can it?
Marketers have merchandised the life out of the books, everything from pretend wands to real jelly beans, and there's a massively multiplayer videogame in the works (or has it launched?), but what's missing is a place where fans of the books and movies can get together, talk about them, create their own fan fictions and mash-ups, and otherwise sit there in a barrel to be hit with opportunities that would work best for them.
Fear Factor: Kids in the mix means different privacy laws, so, again, stalkers/predators are part of it.
During the 2008 Super Bowl, I was at a local cinema pub watching my team melt down on a 40-foot-wide screen in a roomful of people. I'm a casual attendee, but sports fans are passionate. Where there's passion, there's an opportunity for a community play in social networking. Why not have some kind of site to share videos, pictures, audio, and more? It's obvious that there would be a difference in quality between what an NFL fan would produce and what a huge organization dedicated to the best-crafted sports media can whip up. Allow for profiles, for chats, and maybe even for on-NFL-site fantasy football, an opportunity you want anyway yet haven't figured out how to approach.
Fear Factor: My best guess here is copyright and other legal stuff.
Most trade association web sites are brochureware from the 1990s. They have a home page, an About page, a contact page, a calendar, and maybe one more wild-card page. Here are situations where you have hundreds and/or thousands of members and prospective members who might find value in connecting to each other, as well as to you. Make it easier. Build a space for side-by-side connecting, as well as the part of your site just giving out information.
Fear Factor: I don't think there is a fear factor, unless it's just fear of cost to upgrade their sites.
There are community plays inherent in most every situation where you have tons and tons of motivated customers waiting to be converted into even more valuable community members. I could keep naming them, but the preceding examples should get your head moving. In all cases, I provided a fear factor that might keep people from executing. You may or may not agree with me that these are the reasons why people wouldn't execute a community play. But if you disagree, you'll have to share what else might be holding them down.
Whatever the case, I think there are opportunities not yet being explored. What do you think?