Facibus On Blogging

Community is, well, sexy.

Bloggers rarely exist without it for long (unless they were famous before they started, like Marc Andreessen).

What does community mean? Dictionaries aside, I like to think of community as a group of people who share something in common and talk about it. Real-life communities exist as suburbs and villages, but also as communities of practice within large organisations - people who share experiences and knowledge. Virtual communities (and who is to say that they are not becoming as real as the real ones?) are also about sharing - links, photos, ideas, knowledge, and also support - sharing the joy and the sadness.

I first experienced virtual communities in the early 1990s through dialup bulletin boards. At the time I was coming through a sort of reawakening of self-awareness and the sense of community helped me to understand who I was and be OK with that. I’ve been fairly heavily into them ever since.

So what does community mean to bloggers? Being totally ruthless about it, it means inbound links and a better technorati rank. But enlightened self interest tells us that this is OK - even if we are doing good only for our own good, at least it is better than being evil.

What do we do about it? Get out there and comment. Join coRank, Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn, del.icio.us and share the link love far and wide. Join forums like Tangler. Twitter like a mad thing. Community is sexy. Embrace it