If we’re smart, right now we’ll be thinking about how to build online communities for people that have never participated in one.
That is about 6 billion people (91% of the world’s population).
This is the developing world in the East and the aging population in the West. It’s the improving infrastructure in Africa and the competing schemes to bring a laptop to every child.
There are huge, gigantic, markets. Many already have strong offline communities. How will they understand the internet? How they can they benefit from using it? Who can we connect them to? How can we help them improve what they already have?
I don’t know the answers yet, but we should be thinking about it already.