Remember online communities" 15 years ago, it was the future of communication. Back in the day, Usenet newsgroups, IRC chat rooms and bulletin-board forums ruled. Before clickbait and News Feeds and selfies, people transcended their local communities to indulge their multiple specific passions in high-definition. The common bonds of shared interests created sacred spaces online.
Online communities are valuable because they are niche, tightly characterized and real–in other words, everything a modern advertiser might want from online targeting. After all, in the years before hypertargeted programmatic technology, this is how advertising was done: Messages were placed in specialist publications, be it lifestyle or business, that mirrored readers? particular passions and, therefore, delivered brands a relevant recipient base. The trouble is, it never happened. All of the promise of online community was never quite met with by marketers with the same zeal as their users.
Why not" Who killed online community" Mark Zuckerberg did. More accurately, the rise of social networks–from MySpace to Facebook–did. A product of the rapidly growing internet population, it was the networks that rose to become the de facto social opportunity.
While Zuckerberg started a social network, he?s now running one of the largest media platforms in the world. In today?s age, these networks have become some of the world?s top marketing destinations.
Facebook made $17 b...