They come, they hang around for a while, and then they disappear. There's something about online communities that spark people's interest but rarely keeps it. A lot of people want to meet others, or want to get in touch with friends in different ways; and in the past few years, online communities have been an effective medium for that kind of action. But their novelty seems to taper off rather quickly. People tend to get bored with being in the same chatrooms. What's the longest standing on-going active membership do you have with an online community? But weren't they so cool when they first came out? Here are a few that have entertained me over the years.

EdNet: the School Board's BBS, which closed shut down in my first year of university... many moons ago
Six Degrees: they started, they had success, they died, they relaunched, tried again, died again. According to their website, they're relaunching soon!
eCircles (Adobe): similar to Six Degrees, but with photos. Their site no longer exists.
College Club: still doing well - 149,449 members online, I just checked.
Asian Avenue: apparently still alive and kicking, but I can't log in because I don't remember my account or password - where's WhipCream?
Friendster: ah, the newest of the bunch. But let's face it, friendster's a bore. It was only fun when you had new people to add all the time. The fact of the matter is, while the website was conceived as a way to meet new people, getting messages from people you don't know on friendster makes you think they're desperate. I wonder how long this new "fad" will last. I happen to log in once every month at most, just to see that nothing has changed.

Any other "hot and happenin'" communities you'd like to share?

And then, there was a time when disk space sites were the newest thing. Some of them would give you 10MB, 50MB, 100MB (!!) of free online space. But somehow, these companies came to realize that there were actually quite a few people out there who WANTED free space online and that it would be expensive to accommodate them. So they shut down.

So what's the next killer online app? More interactive Internet games? Video (non-XXX) chatrooms? How does one keep an idea going so it doesn't suffer the fate of some of these other online communities? How do you attract people while continuing to get paid for your work? Will banners and advertisements really do it? I wonder.