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  Web sites Vol.4(3) September 2002

Something for everyone: communities on 
the Web 
Pierre van Dyk 
pvandyk@global.co.za  

In 1996, Armstrong and Hagel (Schultheis and Sumner 1998) described various types of on-
line communities in an article 'The real value of on-Line communities'. They classified the 
uses of the Web in terms of the electronic communities that have been created. They discuss 
communities of transaction, which facilitate buying and selling products, communities of 
interest, which facilitate the trading of information, and communities of relationship, 
enabling individuals to join on-line discussion groups. 

The Webmaster of South Africa's biggest gaming Web site (www.propecy.co.za) partly 
attributes its success to an on-line community created via the use of forums. A recently 
launched home entertainment site, Take2 (www.take2.co.za), runs a forum, giving users a 
chance to discuss movies and pose questions about DVDs, provide site suggestions and so 
on. Developing a community gives users a reason to keep coming back to the site, and it can 
develop a sense of loyalty. A Newsfactor report (NUA 2002) states that site visitors who 
make use of community features are nine times more likely to return, and twice as likely to 
make a purchase. 

The On-line Community Report (http://www.on-linecommunityreport.com/) provides a 
twice-monthly newsletter and reports on on-line communities, group collaboration, 
knowledge management systems and so on. If you are interested in on-line communities, or 
starting your own, it is an interesting site to start with, providing news on the latest 
developments and links to various community sites. 

Although not all on-line communities have done well, Cashel (2001) discusses niches within 
the on-line community space that are 'faring very well'. One of the most successful trading 
communities he notes is E-Bay (www.ebay.com). Besides offering a successful on-line 
auction service, it also offers chat rooms, discussion boards, a newsletter and various other 
E-Bay-related news and views. 

Cashel (2001) also points to Education Communities, stating, 'on-line education is booming'. 
One that he points to is SmartForce (www.smartforce.com). It provides an 'integrated, 
individualized, collaborative learning community that can be personalized to your learning 
requirements'. Once registered, it provides access to articles and white papers, discussion 
groups, events information and, of course, extensive information on e-learning. 

Ezboard (http://www.ezboard.com/) states that it is the leading on-line community with over 
one million communities and 10 million users. Besides being likely to find a community that 
interests you, it is easy to create your own community to start on-line information sharing. 
Another useful site is http://www.partnerships.org.uk/, which provides a list of on-line 
communities along with information on creating communities.



For on-line collaboration, I recently used Yahoo's on-line groups – a facility to 'create and 
manage on-line email communities' (http://groups.yahoo.com/). It provides a group to which 
you can invite (or directly subscribe) members, and when a mail is sent it goes to the group 
or, rather than receiving mail, you can logon and monitor recent posts. The groups can be set 
up to be publicly available, or members can join by invitation only. 

References 

Cashel, J. 2001. Top ten trends for online communities. [Online]. Available WWW: 
http://www.on-linecommunityreport.com/features/10  

NUA. 2002. Newsfactor Network: Community builds traffic and sales. [Online]. Available 
WWW: http://www.nua.ie/surveys/index.cgi?f=VS&art_id=905357545&rel=true   

Schultheis, G. and Sumner, P. 1998. Management information systems: the manager's view. 
USA: McGraw-Hill 

  

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