Others seek their revenue through member supported communities via paid memberships. Virtual communities spread by the word of mouth. With the help of search engines, anyone can find any type of community that they are interested. Many sites provide reciprocal links to sites that can help a community grow. The success of a virtual community is measured by the number of messages posted per day, by the number of message boards on the web, by the number of page views per month, or by the number of hours that users spend in chat rooms per month.
Successful communities boast high numbers.
I visited a place called The Well . Founded by Stewart Brand and Larry Brilliant in Sausalito, California in 1985, it began as a dialogue between the independent writers and readers of the Whole Earth Review, the magazine from which the idea of the WELL came from. Over the years, they have founded advocacy organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and discussed the topics in books like Howard Rheingold's The Virtual Community and John Seabrook's Deeper . In Cyberspace of course. It is a huge virtual community made up of electronic villages from around the world.