(2003-03-06) Udell Blog Vs Forum

Jon Udell tried Web X/WebCrossing for Group Discussion hosting, and is reverting to a WebLog focus. What's broken, for me, is the idea that an online community is a place where people gather, and a centralized repository of the discussions held in that place. In that model, I've concluded, the costs are just too high... There are tradeoffs, of course. People do miss the feeling of direct interaction... Of course there are, and will continue to be, vibrant and successful newsgroups and discussion forums. But I'm convinced that destination sites and centralized message stores are not the future of online community. Blogs are. They solve a bunch of problems. They also create a few new ones, but these feel like really good problems to tackle. As Bruce implies with his comment about work dynamics, ad-hoc assembly and loose coupling will increasingly characterize both social and technical architectures.