Message Boards: all dried up?

Back in 1997, John Hagel and Arthur Armstrong (McKinsley consultants), published ‘Net Gain’ – a book that tried to show how millions of dollars could be made by aggregating virtual communities. Howard Rheingold (author of Smart Mobs and Virtual Communities), in his BBC address, is, however, frankly skeptical about online communities becoming profit-making industries for entrepreneurs. “The greatest impact of virtual communities”, he says, “will not come from advertising revenues for online chatrooms, but from the new forms of culture that will emerge from virtual communities.”

So, is growing sustainable communities around your organization laborious, time-consuming, and largely thankless? If your message boards and chatrooms are well-designed, expertly moderated, and driven by the commitment to broaden communication with all stakeholders, they can be very effective – but this is actually a cost, with no easily measurable ROI.

A look at the general BB space is largely disheartening. Most message boards devolve very quickly into trollscapes, meaninglessness, and bad behavior. Affinity groups (people with learning disabilities, cancer/sclerosis patients, scholars, etc) that show a strong need to communicate are the few exceptions. Big players like Yahoo, however, have just launched new versions of their message boards, so there’s still some kind of business model here that seems to work.

Highly specific boards with firm codes of conduct, targeted at communities that have the affinity, desire, and drive to communicate – that’s perhaps the way to go. The profit model still doesn’t look too good, though. Contextual banner ads are all very well, but when was the last time you clicked on one?

So for the online marketer, message boards should perhaps be approached from a different perspective altogether. A perspective that hinges purely on the community building aspect till value and sustainability are clearly evident: and only then exploring the possibility of profit.