Net Gain

"Speed is God, and time is the devil."

"The benefits of the virtual community go to both customer and vendor."

"Virtual communities are about aggregating people."

"When customers want to make a purchase, they notify appropriate vendors and solicit bids."

"If virtual communities are going to shift power from vendor to customer, why would a vendor choose to participate in (an distinct from organize) such a community?"

"Virtual communities may bring change to a number of traditional roles in surprising ways."

"Pricing models are likely to evolve even further, reflecting the tight linkage in on-line environments between an advertisement and a purchase."

"The aggregation of members, member-generated content, member profiles, and vendors is an increasing return game."

"The combination of accelerating growth and improving profitability should have a magnifying impact on the potential shareholder value created by a virtual community."

"May you live in interesting times."

"As time passes, there is likely to be an additional premium embedded in the acquisition price of a virtual community."

"Long-term winners will begin to emerge from those communities that have evolved from providing members with services to providing them with tools."

"Most players on the Web have "fallen into" organizing a certain type of site."

"It may be helpful to think of the types of consumer community?geographic, demographic, and topical?as pathways, or vectors, along which organizers can enter the business of organizing communities. "

"We suspect that the skills required to organize a community will be as important as any initial advantage a company might appear to have based on its assets."

"Building a virtual community requires passing though a series of "gates" to get increasing returns trajectory."

"How do you get to a critical mass of members?"

"Three major goals of traffic concentration are to engage members, enhance their experience, and extract economic value from services rendered to them."

"The key focus is to create switching barriers that make it increasingly difficult over time for members to want to leave the community and join a competing community."

"A community's growth cannot be "planned" to the same extent that a new food product's launch can be organized on the basis of a five-year plan."

"Each stage of community development has a different skill set associated with it."

"The most effective strategies will be based on the dual concepts of speed and leverage."

"Virtual communities will allow innovative marketers to move closer to treating customers as "segments of one.""