Facebook has always been bad at building communities outside of your existing friends and family. It’s an online tool to build and maintain your existing community of relations.

In fact, social networks in general have been bad at bringing together people with a shared interest to create new communities. Whereas forums have always been particularly good at it. Look at Mumsnet, The Student Room and Gamespot for some incredibly successful examples of forums used to build powerful, long-lasting communities. Read more »

Earlier this year I co-authored the IAB and Microsoft’s Search & Social Media report with the delightful Amy Kean. Included in this I wrote about brands considering social network pages instead of microsites. Benefits include strong SEO performance and potentially improved user experience because people inherently know how to use the likes of Facebook. Read more »