Forums and online communities
Forums and online communities have many uses on the internet and have been around since the net began. In fact the internet was initially designed to be a certain kind of education community for universities. Aren't we all glad it spread like wildfire into the homes and business's of the rest of us.
In 2009 it is harder than ever to start and maintain a successful online community. This is because there are already vast and highly advanced social communities online (Facebook, MySpace, BEBO etc etc) and the chances are you could do very well in simply utilising one of those.
You may wish to have your own online community.
For smaller online communities all needs can usually be covered with a forum. A forum is a place where people can post notes and questions to each other and answer over time.
The biggest use of forums online are for communities that focus on a particular person or topic.
For example a forum may be based around a pop star or it may be based around an application such as photoshop. Fans of celebs or users of products then find interest in the forum by that common denominator. A successful forum will usually end up with thousands of members all interested in the main topic of the forum. Obviously the forum owners can make massive profits through forums either with clever positioning of advertisements or by marketing their own services exclusively to the community.
A level up from forums are full blown social networking sites. These sites are unlimited in scope and use. Sites such as facebook have all but cornered the market in this area for very simple reasons. For example, you can log into facebook, create a group then start inviting people - all for free. Because of this the number of companies trying to start full blown social networking sites would do better to start by simply using what is already there.
In the rare case where a brand new social network is required a company could be looking into hundreds of thousands in development costs so if you are looking into creating a social network you will do very well to research the full costs etc beforehand.