I interviewed Jane KnowItAll, the CEO of Communities-R-Us in June 2012. Here is an excerpt from our discussion.

Mukund Mohan: Jane, tell us more about what happened in the community market in the last 3-5 years?

Jane:
Yes it has been a wild ride for sure. In the last 5 years we have seen
an explosion in the number of online communities to the point where
there are more communities than there are people in the world. For
example my dog has an ID chip inserted in his leg, so she can connect
with other dogs (only dobermans) in their RFID community
to discuss how to bark in a more efficient way at Postmen or strangers.
But with humans, the community aspect got its hype in 2008 time-frame,
then faded for a few years, when everyone realized this was not all
that fun, so offline communities became the vogue again, but after 2009
when a lot of privacy and universal online id issues were resolved, communities became the new black.
Mukund: So what has driven the growth?

Jane: Primarily the need for people to connect and feel connected, and the growth of the Personal Social Index, which is widely accepted number replacing your Net Worth as the true indicator of your “wealth as a person”.

Mukund: Tell us more about the Personal Social Index? I have one, but is it like my FICO credit score?

Jane: Its another measure of your self esteem with your peers.
Basically we look at multiple factors such as a) which communities you
are a part of? b) how often do you blog? c) do you say something that
is useful? d) do you snore a lot when you are online? e)  which
communities rate you as an alpha? etc. Its a 49 point online community profile (we stole this from eHarmony and their bad ads). Then we compute it all together and pick a random number between 0 and 1000 and assign it to you.

Mukund: So if my number is 150 does that mean I am a loser?

Jane: Well, 0 to 100 means you are a moron, 100 -250 means you are a
loser, 250 – 500 indicates life but no brain and 500 – 700 means you
have a lot of link love and finally >700 means you know something or
have some pictures of someone that they dont want everyone else to know
about. But now we have potential employers looking at this number as
seriously as the background check, your credit report check before they
hire you.

Mukund: What does the future hold for online communities?

Jane: Who knows, we did not know this in 2007 for example when it
was a fun time and everyone walked around like it was the gold rush for
online communities. What we do know is it will be a lot more parties,
more community news and lot more fun.

Mukund: Thank you for wasting our time.