What is the best way to host an online community?

Of course, it depends on the community. I almost always use facebook groups.  Here's why: People are already there It takes 30 seconds to set up It has all the basic functionality to build a healthy community It creates trust and transparency between members since they're using their real identities It's really well designed for conversation Forums are outdated.  They can still work, but they're due for a big makeover.  There are a few companies working on solutions, like and .  They're geared more towards closed groups than open forums. One day might open up their platform too, which would be big.

If you like how 'Quora' works and how it builds this community around thoughtful advice, have a look at what we build for our own needs athttp://www.kutpoint.com/. http://www.munplanet.com/ is an example of a community with a reach over 500K using the Kutpoint platform to engage students interested in issues surrounding the United Nations. Check it out it's free to signup and you can play around to see how it works.  Here are some interesting links to checkout the community. Topic Feed - http://www.munplanet.com/topics/fridays-with-munplanet Home Page - http://www.munplanet.com/ Question Page - http://www.munplanet.com/questions/international-security/do-you-think-that-cities-could-replace-states-in-the-21st-century-the-return-of-city-states Event Page - http://www.munplanet.com/events/change-the-world-model-united-nations/apply-for-cwmun-and-visit-un-headquarters-in-new-york-3-scholarships-available?suggest=cwmun Topics - http://www.munplanet.com/topics

Facebook Groups are great for smaller groups for the reasons mentioned by David. For a community of more than a few hundred people, modern forum software can offer so much more: Branding Moderation functionality beyond banning and editing a post Organizing discussions into categories Domain specific functionality, for example a developer community might want syntax highlighting, a car community might want make/model/year tagging Owning the data and setting the privacy policy Deciding what is acceptable vs unacceptable content Etc. Good forum software will also offer social logins to make joining easy and a good notification system to keep people coming back.  Forums have been around for a while and there are lots of old ugly forums out there but forums remain one of the best ways for a large group of people to come together and have meaningful long-form discussions.

Some others have already mentioned this, but one of the most popular ways to start an online community today is to create a Facebook Group. This is different from a Facebook Page which is just a profile for your brand or business. A Facebook Group is an actual community where group members can post their thoughts and questions, and discuss things with each other.Creating a group is easy and you can http://blog.thinkific.com/use-facebook-groups-build-thriving-community/ for the exact steps to create one. What's difficult is growing that community and ensuring it stays engaging and active. The best communities are the one where everyone participates and provides value to everyone else.To bring get people to join your community, invite them via email, your blog, your social media channels, and encourage group members to invite people they think will be a good fit. At the same time, make sure you don't invite just anybody. You want to ensure a safe and valuable environment, and some people will join just to spam and profit.Also, to keep people engaged and coming back, provide value on a daily basis. Start conversations, ask questions, answer questions, connect people, that sort of thing.http://blog.thinkific.com/use-facebook-groups-build-thriving-community/ for more ideas to grow and maintain your online community.

don’t use FB groups. It’s a big trap. It’s true, most people is in FB, UI/AI/UX is great, but because of that, you compete with an unbelievable amount of FB technology to consume your attention. It’s quite difficult to create a sense of tribe, shared values, understanding and trust, while competing with notifications about new viral videos or your friends life. It is difficult to have a sense of tribe or community in your timeline.I suggest think to be outside FB with a small owned space in Internet, and bring invitations and traffic from FB. There are new platforms that are doing pretty well. IE: http://meta.discourse.org, is fantastic. Most open source projects are jumping to it for many reasons: modern design, great technical architecture, on heavy development, great email integration, portable, single sign on, etc.

I'm not sure I can say which is best, but an important fact to note is that between focusing a community on a self-hosted solution (ie, Vanilla, Lithium, UserVoice, etc.) and a third-party solution (Google+, Facebook, etc.), I believe the self-hosted wins out over the long term.Why? I think it's better to be in control. When you set up your own solution (or pay someone to set it up for you a-la UserVoice/Lithium), you don't need to worry about it getting shut down for some reason out of your control. When you use a third-party solution that becomes a factor - you surrender a good deal of control over your destiny.Of course, when forming a new community, it's also best to take advantage of multiple channels to engage with your members. Just because you set up a Vanilla-based forum doesn't mean you shouldn't also use Facebook to engage with your members.As far as the question about forums being old-hat goes, my guess is that a tech-savvy group is going to be more engaged with a more traditional forum-style site, so it may not be that big of a deal. However, regardless of the type of community members, you'd be well-served using a solution that takes advantage of newer concepts like gamification rather than relying on an old-school plain forum like phpBB.

From my experience as community manager at My Dream Store i would say the best platform to host an online community would be Facebook day! Community is not just about the count of members. A good relation with your community has a major role to play in community building.The good relation builds up when you can informally communicate with your fellow community members which very well can be executed over a Facebook community. Pitching your product or service effectively follows after building a friendly effective community

I fully disagree with the idea that forums are out-dated. In fact it depends on your goals but  forums propose to do a lot of things you will never be able to do with facebook groups or Google+ or blogs. It is also easy to build a forum communitues as there are a lot of free forum builders like Forumotion for example.  It is very easy to use and very rich in features and possibilities of customizing .