...it doesn't need to be a huge company (or company of any kind) to run these things. Back in the early 2000s, a volunteer who knew about computers would set up phpBB on a church's website, or a radio station would allow one IT person to spend half their time maintaining something like this, and that would be it. No need to turn millions in advertising dollars to have an online community.
I do agree with the parent comment, that we may well see a resurgence of small and medium-sized online communities, for the simple reason that more fragmentation could be a good thing. When a community has its eternal september, people can move elsewhere.
I meant more that even a new, small company would have no incentive to not want to become the next big thing/the next facebook. Good point though that we don't need companies/start-ups to feed us online communities, particularly since the users are almost always the ones bringing value to platform like a message board/forum sites.
I do agree with the parent comment, that we may well see a resurgence of small and medium-sized online communities, for the simple reason that more fragmentation could be a good thing. When a community has its eternal september, people can move elsewhere.