Why launch your own community?

[Wayne Sutton]

Why launch your own community?

1. Control your community and your voice
2. You choose the features
3. Private community conversations
4. Your own community is good for personal branding
5. Not depending on other social networks if they go down.
6. It's cool :)

Have you thought about creating your own community? If so why or why not.

What topics are you interested in here on http://community.socialwayne.com ?

[Vik Duggal]

This is the future. I think you'll see people leaving large sites like Facebook and Myspace like we saw them leave Friendster and move to these types of networks that more intimiate. It's like back in the day when they started building cities.

Once cities got too big, they started building new ones. And they had different cultures. Wayne has launched a great community where I believe the theme will be new media. Perfect! Others will develop their own communities focused on their specialties and interest!

What do you think?

[Matt Long]

I've built 2 NING sites.
1 - for an online conference. Used for chat,discussion and the site conference website.300+ attendees.
2 - Online Parent Network for ECU. 600+ members. Successful.
Wayne, good luck. Look forward to the community and your insight. Forge on !

[Val Spangler]

Wayne, thanks for focusing my thinking - to properly "manage" a virtual community requires time, energy and commitment. I'm going to have to mull on that a bit before I commit. Yeah, just another male who can't commit.
(Note bio - happily married for 45 years - I guess that's commitment.) More on the pros and cons would help.
-Val Spangler, @SeniorTweet and Senior Writer Blog.

[The Social Entrepreneur]

I have been working on creating communities for myself and others; there are drawbacks and challenges but over all I agree Wayne that it gives you the opportunity to control your brand and your voice. Many brands miss the boat by not having a way to capture and build relationships with their audience. Ning gives you the opportunity to do something for your personal brand that many large companies haven't figured out how to do yet. Build a loyal and engaged audience.

[Wayne Sutton]

Jay thanks for the comment, yes the goal is to take it from 10 to 10,000, we'll see where I'm at by the end of 2009. It was good to see you at #internetforeveryone too. Take care and thanks for joining.