Fortunes will not be made out of community-building on the Internet, according to Howard Rheingold, a founding father of Web societies.

Rheingold, author of The Virtual Community and a prime mover behind California's The Well cyber-community, was speaking at a conference launching a professional association for online community builders in the UK.

"It's fashionable to say that fortunes will be made, but I'm sceptical that more than a very few will make real money in the virtual community business, it's too easy for people to own their own online communities," he said.

New cyber cultures

Rheingold: New cultures coming

"In the many-to-many environment of the Net, every desktop is a printing press, a broadcasting organisation or a place of assembly

"Any affinity group can start a listserv [mailing list] or BBS [Bulletin Board Service] using Internet tools. This is a literacy issue, not a commodity.

"The greatest impact from virtual communities will come from the new forms of culture that will emerge from them."

Community central to BBC

"The concept of community is helping to redefine the BBC's public purpose," said Nigel Chapman, Director of Online at the BBC, the host of the conference. He gave examples of programmes interacting over the Net with their audience. Radio 4's Home Truths had gone on to develop features based on experiences recounted in its discussion forum

"We see communities being at the heart of what we offer," said BBC Online's Executive Editor, Sheila Sang, "We have plans to change the way we are structured to subject- rather than programme-based.

Howard Rheingold recommended online news organisations should practice civic journalism - not just unloading information on users but building roles for them to become part of the solution to problems.

Community builders come together

"A humane cyber society can't come about unless it's discussed and planned now buy its population...not by commercial companies," said the man who started HotWired (" I saw it more like a community, the publisher saw it more as a magazine, so I left.")

"You can amplify your efforts to build authentic communities by communicating with one another about best practices. Community builders ought to consider building their own community online and face to face," he said.