-- Charles Darwin 

We're living in fluid and dynamic times. It's easier than ever to travel the world and stay in touch electronically with people who live far away. As a society we're working harder, juggling more roles, and spending more of our free time at home -  exhausted from our multifaceted lives, fearful of the violence that we see in movies, TV and video games, and physically removed from our family, friends and neighbors. So we go online - to shop, play games, trade collectibles, argue politics, or just shoot the breeze. The Web is becoming our collective town square—more and more, people are turning to Web communities to get their personal, social and profesional needs met. This translates into a tremendous opportunity for Web community builders.

 I first felt the power of online communications while working at Sun Microsystems in the mid-1980s. Soon after joining the company, my boss asked me to name my computer, and I impulsively chose "Naima"—the title of a beautiful, haunting jazz ballad by John Coltrane that I'd learned the night before. My public identity on the Sun intranet became "amyjo@naima"; and within a few weeks, I started to get email from Coltrane fanatics all around the company. They invited me to join a private mailing list, and jam with them after hours. Because of my online identity, I'd found people who shared my passion - and that changed my life for the better.

How is a Web community different than one in the real world? In terms of their social dynamics, physical and virtual communities are much the same. Both involve developing a web of relationships among people who have something meaningful in common, such as a beloved hobby, a life-altering illness, a political cause, a religious conviction, a professional relationship, or even simply a neighborhood or town. So in one sense, a Web community is simply a community that happens to exist online, rather than in the physical world. 

But being online offers special opportunities and challenges that give Web communities a unique flavor. The Net erases boundaries created by time and distance, and makes it dramatically easier for people to maintain connections, deepen relationships, and meet like-minded souls that they would otherwise never  have met. It also offers a strange and compelling combination of anonymity and intimacy that brings out the best and worst in people's behavior. It can be near impossible to impose lasting consequences on troublemakers, and yet relatively easy to track an individual's behavior and purchase patterns—which makes Web communities notoriously difficult to manage. To complicate matters further, the legal issues involving privacy, liability and intellectual property on the Web are just beginning to be addressed, and will evolve rapidly over the next few years.

Although the focus is on Web communities, this book also illuminates deeper and more fundamental aspects of community building - the social and cultural dynamics, the power of a shared purpose, and the roles, rituals and events  that bind people together into a group.
 

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