Part One: Community Farmer - Seeds

Jacquellyn McNeill Hamalian, a dear friend of mine, asked me today:  "You know, one of the things I've tried finding is any kind of community or group for anything having to do with paralysis/spinal cord injury or anything related to it. I haven't been able to find other people aside from a few pages that have posts that are really old and not really an "active" community. Any ideas for me?"

I told her yes, I had an idea -- create one! You'd be surprised how many people will gather within a particular subject matter once there's a place to go. More often than not, many people think others don't believe that "Rock, Paper, Scissors should settle everything." Well, you'd be wrong as almost a thousand people do. The point is that just because you can't find a predetermined group out there doesn't mean that there will not be members should this group become an entity. It starts simply enough with one person that's willing to push the snowball down the hill.

This post will be a bore to some that know of social community applications. To others, it might be just the thing you've been looking for to start that one group that you haven't been able to find. Or perhaps you want to start a local group based around a common interests (such as a Church, charity or outreach program) or even an event.

I'll get into the fine art of creating and guiding conversation in some upcoming posts but for now, let's just get you started on getting a group up and running.

Here's a list of group and social community applications:

• Facebook
• Ning
• Going On - more education and 'social learning' in nature
• Grouply
• Group Site - networking and community development
• Igloo - oriented social community software
• Mixxt
• Webs
• Mzinga
• Groups
• Connect Platform
• Spurz
• Social Go
• Buddy Press
• Wall.FM
• Yuku
• Qlubb
• Pling
• Thats Today
• Blast Groups
• Big Tent
• Community Engine
• Zerista - mobile community applications
• Flickr Groups - photography groups
• Posterous

Comparison chart of many of the above mentioned products.