Web community affiliation refers to a community of members who generally congregate based on dissimilar or diversified interests and have little, if any, peer to peer association with each other, outside of personal associations. Web communities are generally much larger than hub or pool communities as their appeal is in the personalized collection of micro-networks of personal or professional associations within the larger community.
Where is web community affiliation useful?
The very unfocused nature that promotes web communities to grow so vast is also what makes them so difficult to monetize. Monetization by nature requires that you understand and appeal to your core demographic. If there is any low hanging fruit in developing a revenue model around web communities it must be something that appeals to most people as a necessity, such as a service fee, or low-impact desire, such as the impulse-buys strategically located by the checkout of grocery stores. Find something that appeals to everyone or something that appeals to the largest clusters within the community, separately.
Silo-ed interest indicates potential concentrations of unique market-worthy demographics. For web communities existing online, dividing the community into segments based on similar participant responses through polling, games, statements of approval or buying habits may be the best indication of how or what to offer for conversion.
By far the best use of web communities is not in what they promote but who they promote. Relationships and shared information between users, by in large, is the real currency and usefulness of the web community model.
What is an example of a typical web community affiliation?
Web communities are the beaches, parks and playgrounds of the community world. Facebook, linked In and MySpace are all good examples of web communities…which also explains their piss-poor monetization models.
