Do Customer-Centric Communities Answer the Scalability Question?

Here are three examples of how customer-centric communities can work:

1. A sporting goods company launches a customer-centric community in which members invite friends and family to join discussion groups around their favorite team(s). As people in these discussion groups share team-related comments, photos, tickets and other content, they do so within the branded portal of the sponsoring company. In addition, they participate in forums posted by the sponsoring company and interact with the company through feedback and other links tied directly to the company’s Web site.
2. A pet supply company launches a customer-centric community in which members invite friends and family to join discussion groups where they can share photos and stories about their pets. As people in these discussion groups share their photos and other content, they do so within the branded portal of the sponsoring company. In addition, they participate in forums posted by the sponsoring company and interact with the company through feedback and other links tied directly to the company’s Web site.
3. A company providing content and supplies to diabetics launches a customer-centric community in which members invite friends and family to join discussion groups where they can share diabetic recipes with one another. As people in these discussion groups share recipes, they do so within the branded portal of the sponsoring company. In addition, they participate in forums posted by the sponsoring company and interact with the company through feedback and other links tied directly to the company’s Web site.

In each of these cases, the viral targeting is explicit. Everyone in the first example is a sports nut; in the second example, everyone has a pet; and in the third, they're all diabetic. It's easy to see how customer-centric communities translate to catalog companies, not-for-profit companies, online publishers, green companies, associations and e-commerce companies.