Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba launched this wiki on April 22, 2006, to track the creation of company- or brand-oriented fan clubs and customer communities (i.e. social networks) as components of citizen marketing and customer evangelism.
They intend this wiki to be helpful for anyone researching examples of fan communities dedicated to discussing, dissecting, or expressing devotion to a product, company, or brand. It's not the purpose of this wiki to document communities organized around an industry or sector (i.e., TiVo vs. digital video recorders).
The requirements for a fan community to be listed in this wiki are:
What should not be listed in this wiki are:
To add a fan club or customer enthusiast community, or annotate the content of communities already listed in this wiki, log-in using the password collaborate.
Created, or maintained by a company
Started in 2001 by the WD40 company, it has over 100,000 members as of April 2006. It also has a customer-based board of directors.
Created and maintained by Discovery Education, a division of Discovery Communications. Launched in February 2006, the site is for people (primarily teachers) who use the company's unitedstreaming product. Found in the site are discussion boards, user-created blogs and user-contributed teaching resources.
Started in 2001, the Ambassador program is the brainchild of Maker's Mark CEO Bill Samuels Jr. As of February 2006, the program has more than 225,000 members. Each ambassador has his/her name engraved on a barrel of bourbon twith a group of other ambassadors.
Created in 2000, it's the official customer community for accounting software Quickbooks.
Channel 9/Microsoft developer community
Microsoft community for developers. Contains video interviews with MS product managers and executives, forums, wikis, and a funny-looking mascot :)
Carnival Connections is a Carnival Cruise Line managed community for groups to plan a cruise. Members can send invitations and create private communities for friends and family to create itineraries and stay informed about upcoming cruise details. Members can also post trip reviews and participate in forums.
Created or maintained by fans with no company sponsorship
Started by a TiVo customer, this community has over 120,000 members as of April 2006. The community has also organized its own TiVo conference.
Over 40,000 Nissan car owners connect with each other through the site's forums.
LUGNET, International LEGO Users Group Network
LUGNET unites about 3,000 LEGO fans through discussion groups, web pages, and services.
Almost 40,000 members belong to the "ultimate online sneaker community."
Almost 19,000 members belong to this community whose mission is to add "Fuel for your MINI Obsession."
With 1,500 members, it calls itself "the official booster club of the National Hockey League´s New Jersey Devils."
Billed as the largest independent fan organization in the world (as determined by the Guiness Book of World Records), Starfleet has 4,000 members in 240 chapters united in their fandom of Star Trek.
The Cardinal Ratzinger Fan Club
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger is now Pope Benedict XVI, but there's a fan club, blog, forum and community dedicated to him and his work in the Catholic Church.
Community marketing on Wikipedia
Nancy White's Online Community Toolkit