Discussion Forum Software
By Ray Valdés
"Content, commerce, and community" has long been a mantra of Internet startup companies. This is the New Economy's moral equivalent of motherhood and apple pie, a widely espoused principle that few question. Just about every site seeking to become the new dot-com darling claims to adhere to this basic tenet. For example, I found a recently launched business-to-business site for Asia-based electronic component manufacturers that was titled: "88Bay.com—a single B2B destination for content, commerce, and community."
The standard formula for Web-site success is as follows: Use compelling content to draw users to the site (customer acquisition), then implement community features to keep users coming back (customer retention). Here, community features are usually functions such as discussion forums, chat, email lists, and other mechanisms that enable multidirectional connections between users. But it appears that many sites merely pay lip service to this part of the mantra.
The Lay of the Land
For an early dot-com venture in 1995, I surveyed the landscape of community-sustaining technologies and later implemented a Perl-based discussion forum. I have recently gone through a similar exercise for a different venture and have found some interesting contrasts between then and now, which I'd like to share in this month's column.
My specific focus is discussion-forum software, which I consider the primary means of cultivating community for most sites. Of course, there are successful sites built on user-to-user interaction other than discussion forums.
