Once upon a time I used to own and operate an online community. It was successful because it was only through word of mouth which created a private memberbase. It provided a haven with like-minded individuals from the hell of newbies etc. It wasn't very big, only about 300 members with an average of 70 people online at any one time. But still, it was cool and people came. What made it so popular was that it revolved around a set of people with the same things in common: Work, Kids, Responsiblities... "Real Life". In this instance it was just a need for a bunch of adults to have a place where we could chat, message, email and just 'hang out' away from net babies, newbies etc. This online community also extended offline with yearly scheduled visits in different parts of the country (USA), with members even flying in from the UK.
A related note: The site utilized carefully picked free/co-branded solutions. A word of warning, I recently required support from OemMail.com, a third-party co-branded webbased email solution for sites. I reqretfully share that while I find their product decent, though not as slick as say Everyone.net, I feel that their Support is totally lacking with the exception of one lone individual who works in their DNS department.
This is just my own recent experience with OemMail. Perhaps others have had better luck.
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Once upon a time I used to own and operate an online community. It was successful because it was only through word of mouth which created a private memberbase. It provided a haven with like-minded individuals from the hell of newbies etc. It wasn't very big, only about 300 members with an average of 70 people online at any one time. But still, it was cool and people came. What made it so popular was that it revolved around a set of people with the same things in common: Work, Kids, Responsiblities... "Real Life". In this instance it was just a need for a bunch of adults to have a place where we could chat, message, email and just 'hang out' away from net babies, newbies etc. This online community also extended offline with yearly scheduled visits in different parts of the country (USA), with members even flying in from the UK.
A related note: The site utilized carefully picked free/co-branded solutions. A word of warning, I recently required support from OemMail.com, a third-party co-branded webbased email solution for sites. I reqretfully share that while I find their product decent, though not as slick as say Everyone.net, I feel that their Support is totally lacking with the exception of one lone individual who works in their DNS department. This is just my own recent experience with OemMail. Perhaps others have had better luck.