Welcome back! It's good to see you again. Please note that I am now publishing all new material at my hub site: In Context Blog

According to Steve Rubel in a recent AdAge column:

In the near future, every online marketing program will start by asking how to engage a community in a way that first meets its goals, not the marketer’s. During the Paley Center summit I attended earlier this month in Silicon Valley, Vint Cerf, one of the so-called founding fathers of the internet, talked about this concept at length. He was referring specifically to the power of video inside virtual worlds — video is a hybrid between offline and on.

That’s just the beginning, however. The most exciting moments will come when marketers use online communities to foster connections offline. That’s the big idea behind Meetup.com, a social-networking site that facilitates real-world meetings, and why it’s thriving. It’s also why eBay Live, the annual gathering of thousands in the eBay community, is a successful event.

Fostering offline communities is a great idea, but how are we supposed to manage it when so many of our contacts are in places like Guam, Singapore, and England? Don’t get me wrong, I would love to meet these bloggers, but part of the excitement of the online community is that people from all over the world can count each other as acquaintances, if not friends.

I must say that I am all for designing social media with the goals of the community in mind, but as the technology of the internets brings the global community closer together, geography still rules offline relationships.