Service & Support Community

This type of community is geared toward helping members find answers to their questions and solutions to their problems, typically regarding your organizations’ products and services.

Developer/Partner Community

Part service and support, part community of practice, developer and partner communities are built around members helping each other with technical and business issues.

Affinity/Loyalty Community (Community of Interest)

These are communities based on the personal and professional interests of individuals. Fan, hobbyist, and enthusiast communities are examples, where the latest info can be shared among people with common passions.

Professional-Peer Community (Community of Practice)

Built around a specific topic, industry, or discipline, professional-peer communities (also known as communities of practice) focus on learning, sharing, and networking. They share a common vocabulary and set of understandings.

Private Community

This type of community is often described as a 24/7 focus group. Private communities are typically small, usually with fewer than 500 people, and consist of members who have been recruited to provide regular feedback on products, services, ideas, and so on, for marketing, product development, and R&D.

Below are community types and the technology this is commonly used to support the objectives of the site:

• Service & Support: Discussions (Q&A), Living docs (wikis), Reputation/Rewards, Uploading Docs

• Developer/Partner: Reputation/Rewards, Announcements, Ratings, Living Documents, Uploading docs, Rich media (training), Friending

• Affinity / Loyalty: Blogs, Rich Media Support, Discussions, Reputation/Rewards, Ratings, Announcements

• Professional-Peer: Friending, Member-generated groups, Rich Media support, RSS feeds, Reputation/Rewards

• Private Community: Discussion threads, Blogs, Polling, Ratings, Live event chat, Living docs (wikis), Uploading docs