Web communities often seem geared for leisure time activities rather than "getting stuff done" in the business realm. However, social networking sites are at least as useful in the business world as for interacting with hobby affinity groups. The China Access site is demonstrative of using the power of a web community to establish international business opportunities through networking and knowledge sharing.

When Bryght first launched "ready to go" Drupal hosting back in 2004, there wasn't anyone else offering the same sort of product - or commercial Drupal products at all. With two fundamentally different products (shared hosting and virtual private hosting) aimed towards quite different markets with very different needs, the messaging needed to be clear and targeted.

When this venerable publisher of romance novels came to Raincity Studios, they arrived with a deep understanding of their customers and already had a vision of a participatory community in mind.

Votika is the brain child of a business grad school student Yuk Man Liang who approached Raincity Studios to fill in the talent gaps his team lacked for building and launching a cultural voting community site.

The concept is a weighted voting scheme in which community members assemble "top ten" lists of everything from politicians to "hot babes" and then vote list items up or down. The goal is to harvest the opinions of trend-setters and "Joe Public" alike to
enable social networking and cultural exchange based on similarities in taste and opinion.

The Mozilla Foundation and Raincity Studios worked closely together to take Spread Firefox - basically a community for enthusiasts and contributors - to next level.

Starting from a solid Drupal base (built by RCS pal Chris Messina), the aim of the gig was to freshen the design and massage the usability in order to encourage more participation in promoting the web browser.