An Introduction to Community Matters

As online communities expand, prevailing site cultures that once seemed immovable are increasingly put at risk.

The bigger the Community gets, the harder it becomes to both maintain order and serve each and every user in an individual sense. This reduction in personal attention can be devastating for a user base, no matter how positive and nurturing the site culture once was. It leaves room for tensions to erupt and valuable contributors to get discouraged and pack their bags.

Like many things in life, success on the Web has its consequences—and indeed, Bleacher Report has had more than its fair share of good news of late.

We were able to raise cash in the middle of an economic crisis, allowing us to more than double our staff of uber-talented employees and providing plenty of breathing room to sustain the operation well into the future.

We’ve just launched an exciting new partnership with CBS Sports that will bring the lifelong dreams of 32 of our best NFL writers to fruition.

Site readership continues to flourish, and new members are signing up for Bleacher Report accounts at a record pace.

The list goes on. It’s been one helluva ride, and the craziest part is that the journey has only just begun...

And yet, despite how well things are going on the surface, I’d be a liar if I didn’t admit that lately, deep down, something just hasn’t felt right.

As I said: With success come consequences.

Bleacher Report, as awesome and revolutionary as it may be, is no exception.

When my friends and I first started the site a little over three years ago, we had no writers. We sought out to find them, and, soon enough, we did.

But in the very beginning, the benefits B/R presented to sports writers hadn’t yet been proven. So we wrote the articles ourselves to build a foundation that others like us would find attractive.

Debating sports issues was a lifelong passion for the four Founders of this Web site. In Bleacher Report, we had created a product that, among other things, we loved using.

We knew others would love it, too. And they did. It’s since been our pleasure to embark on this journey with an army of contributors far more knowledgeable and skilled than us.

Nowadays, the four of us spend nearly all of our efforts and energies advancing the business itself, publishing articles sparingly. While this may be unavoidable given the rate at which the site has grown, it’s important to recognize the implications of such a trend.

Early last week, my good friend Saraswathi Sirgina wrote me an email titled “You.”

“You.”

I mean, who wouldn’t want to open up an email like that? It made me feel special, as her emails often do.

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