5 Community Platforms and What Makes Them Unique

By Jacob Morgan (@jacobm) Sep 28, 2010

There are a lot of community platforms out there and it can get a bit confusing trying to distinguish one from the other. Here’s a brief rundown of some of the popular community platforms on the market today and what I believe makes them unique.

Hopefully this will serve as a good introduction and overview to some of the leading and popular community solutions on the market today.

1. Lithium

Lithium brands themselves as a social CRM platform (pretty much just like everyone else) but really they are a community management platform. My understanding is that while Lithium has the capabilities to offer internal community solutions their focus is specifically on external customer communities.

What makes them unique?

What really makes Lithium unique is an understanding and a focus on game dynamics and analytics. The founders of Lithium are gamers, hardcore gamers (as in they have won competitions), which means they understand what makes things addicting and what works and doesn’t when it comes time to incentivizing people to act a certain way.

Dr. Michael Wu leads the efforts around understanding influence, community, game dynamics and analytics and all of this is baked into the Lithium product which is something I believe no other vendor at this point in time can offer.

2. Jive

Jive Software has really been ramping up lately and after attending Jive World last week, I can say that the company is really building an amazing product. Unlike Lithium, Jive has a strong focus on BOTH internal and external communities with a bridge to bring the two together. The most complaints I have heard from people though is that the cost is very high. However the product is worth it to a lot of companies.

What makes them unique?

If I had to pick a single feature that makes Jive unique it would be their widget builder and marketplace which it is safe to say no other vendor in the space has (that I am aware of). Basically Jive will allow you to customize widgets and custom applications that enable you to display, collect and integrate information and systems together (for example a CRM system with a community platform). I'm sure there’s going to be a lot more said on this in the near future.

3. Get Satisfaction

These guys offer a lighter version of community management solutions then the above two. The cost is also MUCH less (huge emphasis on MUCH) and they even offer solutions to small and medium size businesses (but yes they do have enterprise clients as well). To my knowledge Get Satisfaction allows for both public and private communities.

What makes them unique?

They offer the perfect solution for organizations that are looking to get started with something simple and easy that doesn’t require a lot of time, effort and customization to set up and launch. Not everyone wants or needs a comprehensive analytics solution with game dynamics or a customized widget builder. For those companies, Get Satisfaction is one of the best solutions on the market. I don’t want to downplay their product.