Today, instead of flitting about from site to site dabbling in the nuggets of information, a new class of Internet user is making a home away from home. Hard information is still very important to them, but they seek far more than that. They want company and a sense of community - the cyberspace equivalent of meeting colleagues down at the pub after work. To these Internet citizens, or Netizens, content is no longer king. They're less likely to randomly surf Web sites laden with fancy content.
Content is why people visit a site, but community is why people stay.
Call it the colonisation of cyberspace. The biggest factor is the changing demographics of the users. There are now some 40 million people around the world on the Web, up from 1 million in December 1994. As that number grows, the online population begins to look more like the mass population. As these ordinary people from all walks of life, even engineers, venture into cyberspace, they often find it a dizzying place, what with hundreds of thousands of Web sites to choose from.