Are You on Craig's List?

Of course, if all we're talking about is connection, then 50,000 people cheering the home team in a football stadium would be a community. But being an observer is qualitatively different from taking part in a community. You're sharing a little bit when everyone cheers or gasps at the game, but you're still just part of an audience. That's why you also need the opportunity for interaction. That's what differentiates a community from a crowd.

What are the prerequisites for building a community?

Community starts with people having something in common, whether that is a subject that interests them or the city where they live. There's a reason why people in a geographic community feel -- or want to feel -- connected.

We've lost contact with our neighbors. We don't know who they are, but we crave contact with them. So creating a new place for people to interact with others in their own town is one way of establishing community. Geography is something that we all already have in common with our neighbors.

That doesn't mean that members of a community must have the same values or beliefs. Shared values are useful to a community, but a common set of values is not mandatory. Neighbors have lots of important things in common, but they don't necessarily have the same religious beliefs or vote for the same political candidates come election time.

What's the right kind of technology to support communities?

People need a convenient arena or forum where they can interact. It can be at a café, around the company watercooler, or at the fax machine. On the Net, that arena is created electronically; it might be a mailing list, a bulletin board, a chat room, or a Web site that publishes information that helps bring people together in person.

But let's be clear: The Net is not about technology, it's about people -- a fact that is obvious to everyone except to we programmers. The most important things we, as humans, need to do -- commercially or socially -- is to connect with others. An online community is no substitute for real-world interactions. In fact, the most successful online communities are the ones that throw parties, sponsor events, host get-togethers -- help members meet one another face-to-face in the real world.

We live our lives, for the most part, in the physical world (although in San Francisco, that's optional). Virtual life is a great complement to real life, but it's only a complement. Usually people find it more meaningful to make an online connection with someone local whom they might have the opportunity to meet, or might already know, than with someone who is half a world away.

You may not care so much about the personal home page of a guy with his dog if he happens to live in another country. You just see a guy and his dog. Big deal. But if this person lives a couple of blocks away from you, then you may be very interested to learn about him. The exception to this, of course, is communities of interest, where people come together by virtue of their passion for a common subject -- say, basset hounds. If you think about it, we're all in a bunch of sub-subcultures.

But I still think that if you're interested in basset hounds, then you're more likely to feel a connection to a community at a basset-hound site that draws people who live in your own neighborhood than you would at a site about basset hounds in general.

What else does it take to build and sustain a community?

The best communities aren't just interesting, they're useful. On craigslist, there's not a lot of abstract discussion. We address everyday, real-world, down-to-earth stuff -- finding a place to live, a roommate, a job, a technology event to attend. The community has grown out of these practical concerns. At its most mundane, what we're doing is basically creating a different version of classified ads. The difference is that they're free. Because we're not charging by the word, people can say as much as they want. And in their postings, people reveal something of themselves -- and others feel a sense of connection. One woman told me that she reads our lists just for the personal stories. It's a window into what's going on around her, and it provides a sense of connection and intimacy with others. That's the common theme: What's going on around us?

Think about when you move to a new city or town. How long does it take to feel connected, to feel as though you know what's going on? Six months? Two years? This approach makes that process happen much faster. So if you want to build community, the most important question to ask yourself is, What needs are you serving? When you go to the Web to feel connected, you don't need another site to provide stock quotes. And you don't need to see pictures of somebody's nieces and nephews. What you need is to hear someone's opinion about a local bar or restaurant, or what that person thinks about a nearby store or another part of the city. It's real-world, everyday stuff. It's so ordinary that it may sound obvious. Keeping it simple works.