Startup Idea #76: Forums 2.0

I first thought about the potential of message boards when a business plan from a startup landed on my table. He was trying to marry the features of social networks within the vibrancy of the message boards. I thought this was the right approach but somehow felt that he was missing a bigger potential. In my mind, that potential is to enable the community to do stuff together and that means a whole set of tools that build upon the current forum software, to enable communities to organise information, find each other and coordinate their actions.

i) A Ning or Blogger for message boards: Lefora is a step in the right direction (See screenshot below). If this get enough traction and open ups its platform, lots of interesting things can happen.


ii) Techmeme for forums: We need a way to enable forum users to track the hottest discussions in forums. There can be many different versions of Techmeme, each tracking different themes. If each of these can be streamlined to form FriendFeeds or Twitter like services, it will add a lot of value in terms of attention allocation. An alternative version of this videato become a De.cli.ous of forums where users can tag their discussions through a simple plug-in.

iii) Enabling threadless-like participation: This is granddaddy of all the opportunities. If each forum can, through the use of light weight coordination mechanisms, be coordinated in a threadless-like manner for different consumer goods, the value this unlocks is going to be awesome.

Posted in: community,startup business ideas