Results of International Survey: Online Communities in Business

Thanks to my friend Ari Davidow for pointing me to this survey report

Online Communities in Business: Past Progress, Future Directions

Assembled at the 7th International Conference on Virtual Communities, July 2004.

Among the findings:

(1) Participation in online communities, networks, and teams is growing (82%)
(2) Technologies for online groups is continuing to improve (79%)
(3) Retention of participants is not a significant problem (63%)

Despite these positive signs, some familiar problems persist:

(1) Most organizations can’t measure return on investment (72%)
(2) Many people still don’t understand what online community is (72%)
(3) The discipline of creating and managing communities is poorly defined (59%)