Interactions online aren't that different from offline interactions, they're just better.

If you were a bride-to-be in Atlanta looking to get the names of a few good wedding photographers in your home town of Memphis, TN, you could pick up the phone and call each of your few friends that have both remained in Memphis and have been married. This is the way it worked for decades and many brides just had to work with the two or three qualified responses they could find.

Today, things are a little different in execution, but not drastically so. As a bride today, you can go to theknot.com and pose the same question to a forum. Since theknot.com is an active community with rabid supporters, you’re sure to get a much higher number of responses from those in a similar situation. So, instead of posing a question to two or three direct and indirect personal connections, theknot’s online community links you to thousands of potential contacts who are likely to be willing to answer the same question. The only real difference is that you'll have spent far less time gathering information and will likely have exponentially more qualified answers. 

Aside from the seemingly endless access to information, vendors, ideas and trend information, theknot.com’s true value is that it makes interactions that already happen in real life more efficient and thus, more effective. In other words, to create a successful online community, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel – you just have to make it out of space-age material.

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