The Business of Belonging

Community. It’s a hot topic right now – all sorts of businesses are talking about creating communities of users. But what are the actual benefits?

Author David Spinks has been deeply involved in communities since before his career even began. When he was a teenager, he ran an online community for players of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4, a skateboarding video game, and found himself taking it quite seriously.

Later, he realized that his passion for online community married perfectly with his interest in business. He eventually launched CMX, a networking platform for community professionals – and hasn’t looked back since.

Communities aren’t just online phenomena. Spinks’s own CMX platform, for instance, has many online components but also hosts a yearly in-person summit. (At least when there isn’t a global pandemic.) But – surprise, surprise – it was personal computers that prompted the rise of virtual communities. In fact – and this probably won’t shock you either – the company at the forefront of community-building was Apple.

Let’s go back to 1985. Apple is pivoting to the Mac, but its users are confused by the new product. They’ve grown used to its predecessor, the Apple II. So they write letters (remember, it’s 1985) to Ellen Petry Leanse, Apple’s communications specialist. Leanse eventually spots something weird about these letters: a lot of them feature a mysterious code. She’s amazed to discover that they’re online access codes. 

That’s right – as early as 1985, Apple users were gathering online to discuss and solve their tech problems, completely independently of Apple! Here’s the thing: Back then, businesses didn’t care very much about users. Once you’d bought a product and leafed through the instruction manual, you were on your own. Customer support was little more than an annoyance to businesses. Customers were a cost, not a benefit.

But Leanse realized there was an opportunity here. So she set up the Apple User Group Connection, making the online community official. She took the users’ feedback seriously, and she shared updates with them.

Guess what? This move was good for both the users and the business. Apple’s support costs dropped, and customers ended up spending more and staying loyal.

Plenty of online communities still give companies competitive advantages in exactly that way – just think of Salesforce’s famous Trailblazer community of users helping and teaching each other about the product.