Your next customers. They are coming from Facebook. You need to welcome them with open arms, make it easy for them to sign-in, and bring all their friends to your community.
Which brings me to news that was too cool for me to just tweet. Telligent’s friends at 4-Roads have developed a Facebook Connect module for Community Server that you can implement on your Community Server site today! The module is Nexus and it’s pretty cool. Here is my own crude visualization:
And here is a video that illustrates the results you can expect…
On a more serious note. Facebook is going to remain a central location for users, a starting point online, and essentially represent the mainland of the online world… but you have these cool islands you want people to visit. People do all sorts of cool things on your island they can’t do on facebook… but you need to build them bridges to the island. This lets you do just that.
Check out http://www.4-roads.com/shops/products/nexus_5F00_personal.aspx for more information.