Huuhtanen went on to make the point that some newer companies jumping on the trend forget that just building the community isn't enough. New features and activities need to be added to keep users coming back and encouraging others to join. This idea is something that drives the site Urbaniacs.com, which launched on May 5, 2005. The hip-hop infused superhero community offers new games and features on a regular basis. In a sort time, Urbaniacs has cultivated 150,000 unique visitors a month. And its feverish fan base has already begun creating fan sites, some of which help new users navigate the world. Some fans even wrote a detailed history of the site for Wikipedia.

Afro-liscious Funk Daddy is only one of the characters inside the Urbaniacs world. © Urbaniacs.

Created by Josh Fisher, a veteran of TV animation production, and Barry Collier, the former lead developer of Neopets, Urbaniacs features many things that other animated communities contain like a virtual economy where users play games and earn Urbos to buy virtual merchandise and community functions like chatting and character battles. However, unlike other sites where there are vast amounts of characters for users to choose as their avatar, Urbaniacs features 12 distinct funky superheroes, which users can mix and match heads, torsos and legs to create their own personalized Urbaniac. Moreover, unlike other sites, each of the original 12 characters, in addition to three others, have distinct personalities and backgrounds and live within the Urbaniac universe with players.

When asked about how the site came to be, Fisher said, "The intention all along was to create a living, breathing community that was nonlinear entertainment where users could create and personalize their own entertainment experience. The vibe for Urbaniacs is this fun, funny and funky world where you create your own urban hero or villain. This is a living comicbook."

Fisher came up with the core idea for the characters and world, and when he presented it to his friend Collier as something to create a small online presence around, Collier said the idea could be expanded into a larger online world. Thus, Urbaniacs.com was born using Fisher's experience developing animated properties for TV and Collier's programming skills and experience from helping build Neopets.

In regards to keeping the world safe for kids, Fisher is personally watching the site on a daily basis and has developed relationships with users via his in-world alter ego I.B. DaMan, aka Mayor DaMan. As mainly a two-person organization, Collier does most of the animated games and Fisher writes the content. Helping the dynamic duo, Pete Michail, who, during the day works at Renegade Animation, spends his nights designing characters and environments while Erich Meyr takes Fisher's "silly ideas" and creates Flash-animated shorts from them.

"The big thing for me is how do you personalize your own entertainment. I think Urbaniacs represents a way for our users to do that. It's all about personalizing and customizing your own experience," said Fisher.

Another way Urbanics tries to keep the site fresh and engaging is to offer users group activities and contests like rap battles and an Urbaniacs Christmas ornament contest. "I think it's important to engage people that way. You want to feel like you're not operating alone. Communicating and competing with each other is what makes it a community."

Urbaniacs co-founder Josh Fisher is also Mayor DaMan in the online world.

Fisher added, "A great example of the community is one of the users asked, 'What's the name of the river that flows under the bridge in the header?' And I said, 'Oh, that's the Urbanville River.' And somebody else said, 'Well, what's the name of the bridge?' And I said, 'I don't know.' Then somebody said, 'Why don't we have a bridge naming contest?' So I thought it was a great idea. So for a week we took submissions and then Barry and I picked the top 10 best names. Now we have a survey going and you can vote once a day on your favorite name."

"The thing that I've learned about social communities is that at the end of the day, you're content can be spectacular, but it's all about the people that find it," Fisher adds.

Because the site has no outside funding, the revenue comes from banner ads. Once the unique visitors reach around 400,000 to 500,000 monthly, Fisher plans to expand to adver-gaming or integrated corporate messaging. "An ideal situation for us would be to partner with a corporate sponsor who would sponsor gear. Like Nike could put a virtual Nike store in our community. Because of the vibe of the site, anything you could have in a city; you could have on the site, because it lives in a city."