My eyes first started to open up to the rapid development of online communities back in January of 2005 when I was researching the purchase of a new cell phone. While searching for information on a new device I came across a site called Howard Forums.

Run out of Toronto, Canada by Howard Chui, the site has been online since 2001 and now has over 200,000 members. You can find just about anything you need to know about cellular service providers (including European carriers), cellphones, software, accessories and more on the site. There’s even a marketplace for mobile phone equipment.

The entire community is housed within the confines of what appears to be standard forum software with a few add ons. RSS and email subscription are supported so you can keep track of conversations without having to visit the site. There’s even a mobile version of the site at wap.howardforums.com.

I spent quite a bit of time away from the community but recently returned since I’ve been shopping for a new phone. I was glad to see the community going even stronger than it was two years ago. The site is obviously earning some revenue as they’ve incorporated more ads and also offer a premium membership level.

Other burgeoning communities and social networks can learn from the approach taken by Howard Forums. The focus on a topic that people are passionate about. They provide a simple, well organized environment with features that help users connect and share information. Finally, they moderate the environment to make sure that discussions stay on topic. It’s a pretty simple formula that you find practiced by other successful long term communities like eBay and Craigslist.

So while all of the sexy communities that reached into the stratosphere in 2006 (like MySpace and YouTube) featured rich media as a strong component of their success, there’s still plenty of room for niche communities based on ideas and opinions delivered with a good old stroke of the keys. In fact, earlier in 2006 CNET acquired a similar type of community (with a parenting focus) called UrbanBaby.com. My wife doesn’t have a MySpace page, but as soon as she got pregnant she was on Urban Baby.

So before you think about jumping into or jumping on the bandwagon of the latest hot online video venture, think about this. How many people thought in early 2000 that Craigslist would be worth millions and WebVan wouldn’t even exist in 2006? Some food for thought on social media hype.

[tags]Social Media, Communities, Forums, Mobile, Howard Forums, Hype[/tags]