You haven’t heard of WindowsLaunchpad.com, have you?

No, not the site that is on that domain name now. The Microsoft Windows enthusiast site that existed on it back in the early to mid-2000s.

You’ll have to forgive me, as I don’t know when it launched. I just know that it recently turned 10. I wasn’t an active member, though I did make some posts. So, why am I mentioning it?

Because WindowsLaunchpad.com is a memory and because it means something to me.

To delve into why is to get into community at it’s true essence, which is the connections we make with other people.

photo credit: kastner

I’m a fan of both Jason Calacanis and Gary Vaynerchuk and Jason recently had Gary on his show, This Week in Startups. It’s an hour long, but if you are an entrepreneur or if believe in social business or online community, put aside some time. The clip is embedded below (warning: expletives).

A lot of what Gary discusses is related to online community and the business of building community. At one point, he discussed the ROI of caring and of doing good things – what a business will likely be doing if they are building online community and doing it well.

photo credit: mel_rowling

I’m tired of forum saviors.

Once in a while, someone pops on my radar (often times, because they e-mail me to introduce me to their product, website, whatever) who says, in one way of another, they are here to save forums. It’s not that it’s frequent or that they are particularly noteworthy, but when this happens, I always find myself cringing.

Forums don’t need you. They don’t need me. They don’t need anyone. And they don’t need saving.

Forums have survived this long and they are everywhere. The space is always growing and improving. It can always get better and I always love hearing about new ideas and companies who are interested in this space. Let me say that again: I love hearing about new ideas. Not about how great you are and how we’re lost without you.

photo credit: wwworks

With some regularity, someone tells me that something I wrote here or something I said online or at an event, pertaining to online community, is common sense.

The funny thing about common sense is it’s only common if you have it. And many people don’t. Maybe they once did and then they forgot it. Reminders can be helpful.

Sometimes, when I speak at an event, someone will say that they didn’t get anything out of the talk, that it was too basic for them or it was common sense. It’s not a meaningful portion of the room, just one or two people.

On Quora, this question was asked: “Why haven’t web forums evolved over the last 10 years?” The person who asked the question elaborated by adding: “I’m exaggerating, but only slightly. Most forums are partying like it’s 1999.”

This isn’t, necessarily, an uncommon belief. Some people see forums as this archaic beast that is lingering and (in their mind, if not in reality) declining. They see Facebook, Twitter and, yes, Quora, as something completely new and fresh. But is it so?

I would suggest that forums have evolved in the ways that they should.

photo credit: ritcheyer

I wrote this post before I published the “Maybe it’s My Fault” post. At first, I thought that I might include this, or something like it, as a sort of disclaimer or at least some form of context, at the end of that post. But, then I thought: why weaken my words or their impact by disclaiming them when there really was no need?

I wanted to allow people to interpret that as they may, as a reflection of themselves and their experiences. So, instead, I decided to write this post before that one was published, and then publish this one – regardless of how that first one was received.

photo credit: achimh

Maybe it’s my fault.

Maybe I led you to believe it was easy, when it wasn’t.

Maybe I made you think my success started at launch and not in the trenches.

Maybe I made you think that every community I managed was a success.

That my experience was built on numbers and not people.

Maybe it’s my fault that you didn’t see that failure gave me strength, that my pain was my motivation.

photo credit: OakleyOriginals

I don’t throw around the word friend lightly. If I meet you at a conference and we talk for 20 minutes, I don’t refer to you as my friend. You’re an acquaintance or something that I have met.

That’s nothing personal – it’s out of respect for you as much as myself. Nothing against people who would call that person a friend, I just try to limit my use of the term.

And there are certainly different tiers of friendship. From my best and closest friends, to people I am developing a friendship with to others that I may have drifted away from. They are all my friends.

photo credit: Wyscan

More than 5 years ago, rel=”nofollow” was introduced by Google as a way to limit the impact of blog comment spam on their index (and the indexes of other search engines that agreed to support the initiative). And (seemingly) every meaningful blog platform or software bundle jumped on board, making it a standard feature for their users.

Essentially, if you add rel=”nofollow” within the HTML <a> tag for a given link, you are telling search engines not to give that website credit for the link and for it not to affect that page’s ranking in the given search engine’s index. It can be a little more complicated than that, but that is a basic explanation.

Lanyrd launched in September. I love Lanyrd. What is Lanyrd? It’s “the social conference directory.” That’s probably not enough. Lanyrd aims to help you “find great conferences to attend,” “to discover what’s hot while it’s on” and to “catch up on anything you missed.”

It’s built on top of Twitter (in so much as you need to share your Twitter details to unlock it’s true power) and it shows you what conferences the people you follow are attending, speaking at or talking about. As you may know, I speak a bit. Here’s my profile on Lanyrd.