If your Web site is pointed to by many other sites, then it is a successful part of that community. Alexa automates the classification of such sites and helps individuals find other sites the community has discovered. Scott Kurnit of the Mining Company and David Bohnett of Geocities both spoke about their existing community efforts. The two companies have created umbrella sites where many communities live and grow. But they have taken very different approaches.
Individuals stake out a place in a neighborhood of their choice and create a site.
Although each individual is responsible for personal content, Geocities creates the infrastructure and encourages traffic to the individual sites. However, as Geocities has grown, certain flaws in the structure have appeared. Many of the neighborhoods seem too nebulous, so the initial home page of Geocities has gone to a more traditional subject organization, thereby hiding the themes. In addition, navigation tools seem to be missing, so it is difficult to find the sites related to a particular subject. However, for all its faults, Geocities has created a popular site, one visited at least once a month by 20 percent of Web households.