I see what you mean, and I think that the direction of evolution is definitely towards tying together, and also opening-up, and making it easier to connect across networks.

OpenID and open standards like Microformats are starting to emerge. Microformats will end up being incorporated into the next major version of Firefox. And, this will allow people to network across social networks, via xfn, hCard, hCalendar, etc. This will likley slow down the explosion of social networking sites, because people will be able to social network from any website, blog, etc, eventually. (I think that creative people are also going to be looking for providers who offer user control over content, too. Instead of people who claim full rights to use anything you put on their site).

I don’t see the nicheing as a bad thing, but as a natural progression, and I’m sure that this is what John Coate observed with The Well over time. That people started breaking off into smaller groups, and that communities started spinning off (like Howard Rheingold’s Electric Minds, which spun off of The Well) What I am thinking about is “How can these niche groups team up to do really cool things that their participants will be excited to participate in?”

I think one growing area is enabling is inter-community cooperation. Many small niche communities can work together and pool their knowledge, and have fun doing it. This is something we’re working on with http://www.communitywiki.org/odd/CollectiveProblemSolving/OrganizedInquiry
(site down for the moment, but check back in about an hour and it will be up).

OrganizedInquiry is an evolving process, and we are going to experiment with extending it to communites like tagging communities, mailing lists, forums, blogs, wiki communities, Second Life, etc. The cool thing about it will be that it won’t really take any special software to do it (although certain web applications software might make it easier, but they are all open source), just some knowledge gained from trial and error.

I wonder if the people building these communities realise how attached/dependent people can become on them. I’m curious to know how John feels about the current state of “The Well”? I work for the company that runs the UK equivalent (CIX) both are fantastic communities, both pre-dating the WWW, but both dieing in today’s Internet climate.

I think Nollind Whachell’s comment touches on the reason that these communities are no longer growing. When the Internet world was so much smaller communities had to be more diverse and discuss pretty much every topic, just to reach critical mass. These days there are so many people online you can get amazingly niche and create a moderately successful community around hamster breeding if you wish.

This is great, but what is lost is the strength of community that builds when you come across the same user in multiple topics spanning diverse subjects.

I personally suspect that the current trend will come full circle, and someone will come up with a way of aggregating all the niche communities into larger groups. Maybe technology like OpenID will help with this… since it can never happen whilst we all have dozens of usernames.

The brands are faciltiators, there is nothing fancy or clever…the good ones just do things that encourage people to get involved talking and looking at what they love most.

Where is the BS in that?

Unfortunately, in Manchester (UK) there don’t seem to be an awful lot of people like John and Tara around and MD’s in Manchester which allow you to create communities instead of bringing home the bacon are like rocking horse sh!t so we may have to wait a while!

I just love how everything he speaks about is very simple and to the point. In other words, there isn’t some “gimmick” or “trick” to making communities. It’s about people forming around something meaningful that they care about and working the best they can, one day at a time.

I also laughed when he said “Now everyone wants their own social network”. It’s true. That’s something we need to start thinking about as a group. I mean everyone wants their own site and they expect everyone to be a part of it. Yet by doing this, we’re separating ourselves instead of gathering into a community around the things we care about within a “shared space”. I mean imagine everyone sitting in their own homes, expecting people to come to them because they don’t want to go to them.

I mean I’ve often considered just dumping my own site in lieu of becoming a community member on a few select sites. As I’ve noted before on one of my posts, I honestly believe people can contribute to the web in meaningful ways without needing their own site. As some people have told me, they just don’t have the time. Yet by commenting, they are still contributing greatly to the Web.