Every town, school, hospital, business and even every apartment building could use the technology to connect people to organize themselves to build better customer relations, learning environments, parks or simply to find a tennis or bridge partner. They claim that until the technology can adequately simulate face to face communication this will not occur. But you don't need to wait for bandwidth to support high resolution streaming video or 3-D graphics you can succeed using today's technology. What really matters is how you design and support online communities. Neither technology nor social design is sufficient on its own.
Sociability depends on trust, collaboration and appropriate styles of communication.
By making the community's purpose clear, helping to create social policies that guide but do not stifle interaction, and by supporting social interaction. The first half of the book introduces basic concepts, e.g., online communities, usability, sociability, social capital, trust, collaboration, the nature of communication and community, etc. The second part proposes a community-centered development methodology. It provides a non-technical introduction to online community software, and offers guidelines for usability and sociability. The book concludes with a chapter entitled 'Looking to the Future'.