Le Web: Chris Pirillo on Genuine Community

I agree with him and disagree with him. You can, consciously, choose to facilitate activity. You can offer places for them to interact and incentives for interacting there. But I agree with him in that you cannot create or own communities – just host them. And that simple truth runs in opposition to the corporate urge towards control.

“If someone tries to tell you that community can just be placed inside a box and everything will be beautiful…no.”

And that’s going to be a pain point for companies until the embrace genuine, open interactions with their communities, he suggests. After all, community is built up of multiple, over-lapping relationships and nothing else.

“You, wherever you go, are the community.”