Electric Minds

Electric Minds (commonly abbreviated EMinds) is a long-running virtual community that has survived several changes of fortune throughout its existence. As of 2005, the community has over 1600 registered members and hundreds of active discussion topics covering a wide range of subjects.

History

Electric Minds' history can be divided into three parts, each of which corresponds to a platform on which the site ran at the time, and also to the organization controlling it.

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Founding

Electric Minds was launched in October 1996 by Howard Rheingold, noted user of The WELL and author of The Virtual Community, as a vehicle for developing his ideas on online community. During this period, Electric Minds was an incorporated entity in San Francisco, California, and the site ran on a server donated by Sun Microsystems, using WellEngaged conferencing software (derived from the software used by The WELL) along with a custom content-management system. The site achieved early success when Time magazine named it one of its top ten Web sites for 1996. In April 1997, Electric Minds hosted the online discussions for the chess match between Garry Kasparov and the Deep Blue supercomputer.

Related Topics:
October - 1996 - Howard Rheingold - WELL - San Francisco - California - Sun Microsystems - Time - April - 1997 - Garry Kasparov - Deep Blue

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That same month, however, Softbank, one of the major investors in Electric Minds, elected to discontinue its funding of the company, leading to fears among the community members that the site would soon be shut down.

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Commercialism

In July 1997, Rheingold sold Electric Minds to Durand Communications, Inc. of Santa Barbara, California. Durand had its own community technology platform, CommunityWare, which was adapted to host Electric Minds with as little disruption to the community as possible. Electric Minds became the largest CommunityWare-hosted community, with tens of thousands of registered users; the expectation was that Durand would be able to use it as a showcase to attract potential customers who would pay to have their communities hosted on CommunityWare. Rheingold acted as a consultant to Durand for several months after the sale, but left to pursue other projects.

Related Topics:
July - 1997 - Durand Communications, Inc. - Santa Barbara, California

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In 1999, Durand Communications was acquired by Webb Interactive Services (formerly Online System Services) of Denver, Colorado. CommunityWare was expanded by merging it with other software to create the "WebbMe" Web portal, and Electric Minds maintained its preeminence among the communities hosted on the site. Electric Minds continued to operate even as Webb's focus moved on to other products and projects; however, due to ongoing costs and lack of space at its colocation facility, Webb announced its intention to shut down WebbMe--and Electric Minds--in December 2000.

Related Topics:
1999 - Webb Interactive Services - Denver - Colorado - Web portal - Colocation - December - 2000

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Community-Based Revival

It was at this point that a group of dedicated community members stepped in to keep the community from dying. Eric Bowersox, who had been an engineer on the CommunityWare and WebbMe projects, created a new conferencing software system, the Venice Web Communities System, based on the original CommunityWare design and using a similar user interface. Community members pooled their money for a simple server, and hosting was found for it at an ISP in South San Francisco, California. After Webb closed down WebbMe in January 2001, the community members kept in touch via a private conference area on Cafe Utne until the new server and software were ready. Electric Minds reopened in its new environment in April 2001, under the control of its community members. Since then, the community has experienced three major interruptions of service due to hardware failures, as well as a number of software problems, but continues to persist.

Related Topics:
ISP - South San Francisco - California - January - 2001 - Cafe Utne - April

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