Former director of the Well, recent consultant to America Online, and current director of community development for Salon Magazine, Figallo knows what it takes to create a true community in cyberspace and what kinds of mistakes will torpedo the effort. Figallo believes that community comes from people, and so he begins by focusing on the human element. He writes about the groups that form online communities and how a community builder can foster the process. Figallo includes a great section on building a quality online staff. While he keeps technical aspects in perspective, Figallo doesn't shortchange them--he fully discusses types of interfaces and technical tools.

"Net Gain" is the first book to identify where the next level of value lies on the Internet. Hagel and Armstrong lay out the first economic model quantifying the revenue potential and the investment required to build a successful virtual community.

Building relationships with customers has been a buzz phrase in many business circles for years. Now John Hagel and Arthur Armstrong declare that's not enough. They make a strong case that business success in the very near future will depend on using the Internet to build not just relationships, but communities. The payoff, they maintain, will be phenomenal customer loyalty and high profits. But, they warn, this race will definitely go to the swift. Here's a cyberspace book that could make your business future. Not everyone agrees with Hagel and Armstrong, but with stakes so high they deserves a serious reading.

Cyberculture authority Howard Rheingold was the first to write about online communities in this style that is part-travelogue and part-anthropological guide. This groundbreaking classic explores the entire virtual community, beginning with a selective but probing look at the author's original online home, The Well. Rheingold relates plenty of anecdotes that demonstrate the upsides of online life, such as how he was able to get information on removing a tick from his child before his doctor could respond to his phone call. But the bulk of the material relates to how individuals interact online much as they do in a face-to-face community.

Rheingold speaks to how both friendships and enmities are formed online and how people come together to support each other through misfortune. He gives the example of how computer-moderated communication enabled members of one Well community to send vital medical aid to a friend hospitalized halfway around the world. Rheingold goes on to show how communities can form by various electronic communication methods, using the conferencing system of The Well as one example. He also examines how people interact through mailing lists, live chat, and the fantasy cyberenvironments of online role-playing games. In the process, he questions what kind of relationships can really be formed in a medium where people can change their apparent identity at will.

A level-headed analysis of the nature of community in the online world, and the effect of the online world on real-world communities. Contains some of the best discussions I have encountered about the substantive qualitative value of projects such as the National Public Telecomputing Network, which, to my mind, could serve the same balancing service for the future of the Internet that National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service have served for radio and television in the U.S., Recommended