Great article at ClickZ on the state of the art in community web sites.

ClickZ: Community Rules by Hans-Peter Brondmo

"What about ease of use?" you ask. Most sites I’ve tried, with a few exceptions, are complicated. It takes effort to learn how to use this stuff. That’s OK, as long as there’s tangible benefit on the other end. When there is, people start using the services to hook up, share, collaborate, and just plain old gloat. The consumer Web is hot.

Though I’m fascinated to see how many copycats take good ideas and wrap them in ever-fancier window dressings, there are some novel ideas, too. I love the Wikipedia phenomenon. Backfence is good, too. Del.icio.us introduced a neat hack in the social bookmarking space (but the space’s killer app isn’t yet apparent). I like the idea behind EVDB, too. There are many others. Lots of neat tools and some good technology… and waiting in the wings there’ll surely be some that will defy gravity and take off.