I couldn’t help but invoke the great title of the Pink Floyd song in writing this little opinion piece on communities that sit behind walls.

A short while ago the formerly student only social network Facebook announced that they were opening up the Facebook architecture to allow 3rd party developers to write applications for the site. You didn’t need to hear this from me. The news (like news of the iPhone) was everywhere.

I really didn’t know much about Facebook since I thought that only students or those with .edu email addresses could join. This change occurred in September 2006 so now you know how out of the loop I was. The Facebook platform sounded interesting so i decided to find out more.

One of the first things I found out about Facebook was the fact that in order to use any feature of Facebook I had to sign up for Facebook. To get to any content or community within Facebook you need to sign in to Facebook. My discovery and analysis of the platform didn’t need to go any further.

I’m one of those people who is categorically against sites that require people to login to get to information or content. As a user of the web I reserve the right to not sign up for an account at any given site. If I enjoy the site, the content and the people I find there I will sign up for sure. But I avoid services that won’t let you in without signing up for an account.

Scott Heiferman, the founder of Meetup.com, calls sites like these walled gardens. A recent post on his blog likens Facebook to the old AOL. AOL used to be pay to play. If you didn’t have an account you couldn’t access their feature. That has changed. AOL is now open to all.

In 2007 we have Facebook creating tools for people to build communities and applications inside their walls. Scott explains, “If you want access to their big base of users, develop something in their proprietary language for their people who live in their walled garden.”

Here’s the question for you. As a person who wants to build community should you build one inside a walled garden like Facebook? I think not.

Online community is about building, growing and sharing. All of that becomes much more difficult when you stake your claim inside the walls of a castle.

Protection is certainly important on the net these days. I protect my communities (Amazin Moments Clubhouse and Music Buggy) by requiring a login for certain features. But people can browse the site and experience the content. Community content can also be found in major search engines.

Communities that are open can be discovered a lot more easily than those that are closed in. Do you want people to be able to discover your community? Communities that are open typically enjoy branding that reflects the needs of the community and not those of the castle they are contained within. Do you want to build the brand behind your community for yourself or for others?

Online communities require a significant investment of time and effort to build and manage. Be careful that you don’t put in too much time and effort building applications or communities that will sit inside a walled garden. Your efforts might wind up resulting in benefits for others while creating a situation that prevents your community from getting the maximum exposure possible.

[tags]Social Media, Community, Facebook, Walled Gardens[/tags]