People are now trusting community based ecosystems for their goods and services.
And a good community has the means to organically ostracize and punish those who are parasitic and predatory to the members that depend on the community.
With the aid of technology these communities now have the capability to prequalify potential members, reward the members for participating (gamification methods), and even disqualify dishonest members.
And a good community has the means to organically ostracize and punish those who are parasitic and predatory to the members that depend on the community.
The nature of a good community is designed such that participating in it actively and honestly makes it stronger.
Displaying harmful behavior towards the community also becomes apparent such that consistently being dishonest and predatory towards community members inherently get more expensive and contain the risk of being banned from the community.
We are seeing a trend where technologies that incubate communities with an self-enforcing behavior structure have a tendency to produce loyal and passionate community members which transmutes the relationship between service providers and consumers from a transactional nature to more of a wholistic nature.
The result which is a loyal following of a brand as well as a community that gets the most delight from the service and experience they are getting from the brand.
This sense of belonging towards digital communities and ecosystems pave the way for the adoption of exchange of values through the use of cryptocurrencies.
In recent years companies like airbnb, couchsurfing and showaround have redefined what its like to experience traveling like never before by focusing on the hospitality of the local culture.
This community based model is a counter-reaction to the model made popular by corporate giants in the travel, real-estate, and transportation industries.
This sharing economy model have shown the way forward in terms of building a brand with a loyal community based around it.
They have paved the way for community based digital ecosystem by focusing on the customer experience and redefining the underlying infrastructure around it.
For example, with couchsurfing, they understand that the pain point for travelers is the accomodation options determine the experience.
So they understand that local hosts can help the pain point in both accomodation and price.
The success of the platform is held together by the accountability system they have in place that documents both the experiences of the host and the tavellers.
This allows the platform to build a track record of safety and slowly builds trust among the community of users.
Showaround has a similar accountability model that is gaining traction among travel enthusiasts in the tour guide industry.
The community model implemented by companies like couchsurfing and showaround has proven to be a good example to use as a basis for its own community model because of its proven successful track record and safety.