In the beginning it was the community.

I have been hanging around the net since before it was called Internet, I was around when the BBS did flourish, I tinkered with the Commodore computers and was awed by the first ZX computers. One should perhaps think that it was the interest in technology that represented the driving force behind my interest. Yes, to a certain degree it was of course that. But what kept me and my peers going was something completely different: the community.

As I write this I have started exploring yet another community - the geeks that has gathered around the phenomena better known as Chris Pirillo. I do not even recall when I first heard about him nor when I first started subscribing to the Lockergnome newsletters, but it was many years ago now. Most advances within technology is driven by a need for adaptibility or efficiency. I will make a bold claim: Microcomputers and Internet is something completely different - it is driven by peoples need for communication. Or perhaps peoples need to express themself.

I believe Chris is a part of this movement. Lockergnome has been turned into a business now, but I am quite certain this was not his intention when he first started out. But by being faithful at communicating and noticing potentials he has been able to create a thriving community around himself - and become some kind of a minor celebrity in process. Personally I find these processes very fascinating.

Already back in the late 80ies I was looking into how to create working businessmodels based on access-on-demand. The trouble back then was that few modems handled anything much better than 9600 baud. Of course, technology advanced and we had 19200 baud modems. Slowly we moved on to better lines - for instance based on ISDN with 2 x 64KBs channels - and then later on to ADSL and fiber. For each step new opportunities presented themself, but new stumbling stones were laid out. Several books could be written - and probably already have been written - about some of the challenges early innovators within these new markets were facing.

But as the BBS were replaced with IRC and IRC got replaced with 3D worlds like Activeworlds (and all of its derivatives), Adobes Athmosphere, Blaxxun with more - it became more and more obvious that people were not really all that interested in fancy gadgets. What they wanted were to interact. You could create and set up business models till you turned purple - as long as you did not include the human aspect, you were doomed. This is why I do not believe AW ever really managed to generate a sizable revenue, and this is also why I do not believe SecondLife will last very much longer.

Enter the new millenium - and the hype of the last two years: web2.0.

You know, I never liked the term web2.0. It is not the future of web. Nor does it really include any new technology - it is just that the social web has been conceptualized, and this concept has been accepted more widely. The ning-network this particular community is based is a very good example of how a company has been able to harvest the potential in this new niche. Let people quickly set up a framework where they can build their own communities. Make it easy - make it worth their while.

Which brings us back to the beginning: in the end we are just dealing with yet another example of BBS'es. Each community turns into small islands floating on the vast ocean of Internet. But with one very important exception: now all the users are belonging to a true global village. Their entrance pass to this village is their knowlegde or particular interests. Race does not matter any more, gender does not really matter (unless we are talking about young teenagers with way too many hormones raging in their body and with no selfcontrol), age does not matter (unless you are a 60 year old guy hanging around in preteen-chatrooms - then it is just creepy) - you are finally free to find your peers on a global scale.

Some said that porn was the reason Internet become so successfull so quickly. I do not agree.

In the beginning it was the community.