If you're a company trying to make sense of how communities impact your business, make sure you listen to the excellent interview with John Winsor over on the Future of Communities Blog.

A couple of nuggets I took away from it:

• Before the internet, the role of a magazine was to "set the table" around which communities could gather. This was where experts would talk, vendors would support them and consumers (often early adopters) would listen and occasionally interact via letters to the editor. The internet has obviously transformed this, and now companies are trying to "set their own community table." (Kind of like this?)
• As communities have grown, the role of the product manager or designer is morphing from the Wizard of Oz's genius behind the curtain to someone who catalyzes a product's evolution via iterative feedback from the community. Obviously, communication is more important than ever.

Good stuff.