There are Two Types of Community: Feedback and Discovery

[mandy]

As it turns out, there are really two basic types of community, though for most purposes the general press tends to glom it all together. The types are described as either Feedback or Discovery, which also describes the primary jobs of each.

Feedback is by far the most common kind of community, and it is the more loosely constructed of the two. In a feedback community, the focus is on what already exists. This might sound obvious, but not in relation to its opposite. A feedback community seeks rational opinions from customers about existing products and services so that the company can tweak them...

If a feedback community is about the company, then the other type -- the discovery community -- is all about the customer. The discovery community is more like what I was talking about a couple of weeks ago. As the name suggests, discovery communities look for what doesn't exist yet, and they are a mechanism for getting customers to fill up a white board and share their ideas and even their emotions...

full article: http://ecommercetimes.com/story/Two-Kind...65786.html