Reading through Groundswell, I had a sense of deja vu. There was something vaguely familiar about a lot of this stuff.

All this talk about people having conversations online with each other, forming groups, getting what they need from the community and other customers rather than from organisations, the challenges faced by organisations around driving value from it all…..

stop right there <looking over my shoulder at my book shelf>. Community Building on the Web, Communities of Commerce, Online Communities, Hosting Web Communities. All excellent books about online communities, all published in 2000.

There’s nothing really new about a lot of this at all – except that this time around, the technologies to enable it are so much better.

I remember back in 2000, when I was working on a project to develop an online learning portal. The big thing the client wanted was an online community for Alumni, so they could remain engaged with them after they finished their courses and could sell them a range of stuff. Among the many challenges we faced (finding partners, developing sensible revenue models, etc.) were with the tools that were available at the time.

Vaporware doesn’t even start to describe it.

This time around, the technology is such that the vision of online communities providing business value is definitely achievable. The tools are there, its just a matter of organisations being creative with the content they provide and courageous with using it to communicate with customers.

Imagine how different our technology strategy for this client would have been had we had the vision of facebook and twitter back then. Though we’d probably be living it up on a tropical island somewhere by now, spending our fortunes earned!