Online communities often form around a general topic. For example, discussion boards about the sports teams of every major university and pro team thrive. Political blogs have millions of readers, many of whom post comments expressing their own viewpoints. Media companies are also driving to enhance their interaction levels with users through partnerships with large social networks or the implementation of their own social network features.

Consolidation of these networks is already afoot, however, and the value proposition to an end-user to join your community is increasingly difficult to make which puts you right back at Web 1.0.

But what if you could make your users part of the content equation with a minimal amount of effort on your part? What if they could pose questions about the topic area they are already interested in and have others predict what's going to happen? Suddenly there is an entirely new channel of content available to your users that is completely self generating.

This new channel can be purely entertainment or can be designed for your customers or business partners to make them feel they are helping to drive product development.

Most people call this Web 2.0, we just call it good business strategy.