Online Communities in the Post-Facebook Era

Matt Mecham‘s code has powered far too many online communities to count. Developing popular online community software since 2001, he worked on YaBB and founded Ikonboard, before co-founding Invision Power Services, the company behind Invision Community.

Given his long view of the industry, Matt sees the timeline of online community as progressing through a few eras: The early years, when he began developing software. The middle years, where platforms became more cognizant of UI considerations and SEO. The recent years, Facebook opening to the public and the resulting impact. And now, which he refers to as the “post-Facebook era.” Where will online communities go in that era? Plus:

The community software business shift from licensing to SaaS (software as a service) New features vs. bloat Why he turned down a job offer from vBulletin Our Podcast is Made Possible By…

If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Higher Logic.

Big Quotes

“Running a good community is transcendent of the software you use.” –@mattmecham

“Facebook is very much about now, what’s happening now. You try and find, even in a group, even a moderately busy group, trying to find something from last week is chaos. It’s crazy. It’s really really hard to do, so I think people that have had success with Facebook Groups are now looking at the next step. What’s the next step that they’ve got to take? They understand that they can’t keep a Facebook group because it’s too chaotic, once you get to 5,000, 10,000 people posting.” –@mattmecham

About Matt Mecham

Matt Mecham is a print designer turned Perl developer turned PHP developer. He has been creating community software since 2001. Matt founded Ikonboard and then started Invision Power Services with Charles Warner in 2002. 15 years later, their product, Invision Community, powers countless communities. Matt leads development and social media marketing. He still codes and, even though he’s been doing it forever, really enjoys it.

Related Links Sponsor: Higher Logic, the community platform for community managers Matt Mecham on Twitter Wikipedia page for Ikonboard, an old community software platform that Matt developed, starting in 1999 Invision Community, community software by Invision Power Services, the company Matt co-founded with Charles Warner YaBB, a long-running community software platform, where Matt was once part of the development team “Jarvis Entertainment Group Acquires Ikonboard.com” press release Forumbee, Zendesk, CMNTY, Open Social, Discourse and vBulletin, community software platforms mentioned in our discussion about the shift from the licensing business model to SaaS Bravenet and ezboard (Wikipedia page), two services that essentially offered SaaS forum hosting in the 1990s Community Signal episode with Mike Creuzer, where we discussed vBulletin’s platform changes “Managing Online Forums,” Patrick’s book Invision Community on Facebook Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts

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