This discussion can quickly get more involved than how a company might use Facebook, because now we are talking about the use of intentional business tools. One local company and customer of ours that provides the kind of tools I'm referring to is HiveLive.

With the goal of better understanding a target audience, one of the advantages of using a virtual (online) community platform comes in leveraging multiple audiences. The audiences I'm referring to specifically are employees, customers and partners.

If you can effectively create the space through which these audiences can participate - you are fostering a new means of sharing, exploring and learning. The results? Better communication, marketing, innovation and loyalty.

If you would like to dig into this deeper, Jeremiah Owyang did a comprehensive report on community platforms for Forrester only a couple of months ago.

We talk about:

1. What a community platform provides

2. Potential trends in community websites (community sites with typical website attributes vs. websites with bolted on community attributes)

3. Challenges with the technology

4. Businesses now focusing beyond the technology, and at the real business value of online communities

Final Note: Thanks to John and Tracey at HiveLive for allowing me to pick up a discussion directly after John's interview with Jeremiah Owyang.