Believe it or not the internet is made of people. Okay, so there are lots of machines talking to each other (even more so in the age of IoT), but the biggest revolution this connectedness has brought is in bringing people together who might not meet otherwise. You may be the only one in your town into some obscure band, but there may be hundreds of others around the world who want to talk about it.
The internet has had many ways to bring people together and I've used many of them. Forums, IRC, chat rooms, reddit, Facebook groups, Google Groups and so on. Many of the social sites have tried to expand from linking people who know each other to linking people with a common interest.
At the start of this year we got the Steemit roadmap that includes mention of communities (on page 9). It actually talks about 'community namespaces], but I suspect they are exploiting programmer terminology about separating code/discussions based on some prefix, a little like web URLs separate sites. We've not heard too much about this since then, but Ned mentions communities several times in his AMA (ask me anything) that happened last night. He says they aim to release this feature by the end of Q2, i.e. by the end of June. He also mentions it in this interview.
Communities could make the Steem/Steemit platform useful to a whole new set of people. Up to now it's been a blogging platform where you could also earn from commenting. Discussions are grouped around a very loose set of tags, but nobody had control over any of those. As I understand it the community namespaces will have an owner and moderators who will have some say over what goes on within the community. I know people like the freedom of Steemit, but communities need protection from those who try to attack or abuse them. Those who spam or post non-relevant content may find themselves ejected. In the wider Steemit we can do this ourselves by ignoring or even muting those who spoil our experience, but in a community you are not following specific people.
The name Steemit implied some sort of competition for Reddit and this will give some equivalent functionality. On Reddit you get 'karma', but Steemit pays you in something you can actually spend. Being able to earn something from being part of a community ought to be attractive.
There are some open questions they we may have to wait a while to resolve. How will the community names get allocated? There could be a 'land grab' for words like 'food', 'football' (soccer or hand egg?) etc. When the Tsu site introduced something similar there was an approval process for public groups. The owners stand to do well from them, but they will have responsibilities. Will priority be based on reputation or SP? I expect this is being mapped out by the team and we will hear in due time. I just can't help speculating.
What communities would you want to join? Would you want to run one?
Title based on various discussions I've heard around community evangelist Jono Bacon, who wrote a book about it, but tends to get teased by his friends. Communities are fragile things and it's hard to get them right. We should learn from those with experience.
Mine cryptocurrency in the cloud at Eobot, including Steem. You can earn as you chat using WowApp. If you use these links I get a small reward. You can recruit others to do the same.