Economics of Forums
Forums are the forgotten child of web 2.0. They hold nearly all the same attributes as blogs, social networking and the like but none of the modern valley pixie dust.
One area that got me back into (reading at least) forums was affiliate marketing, where there are many great examples (sitepoint and earners forum are two good ones).
In both are marketplace sections that function as a clearing house for anything from domain names to thriving niche communities and often poorly executed projects in need of a little tender loving care.
Lee Dodd is a guy who buys, develops and sells sites such as those and here is a great post on how he thinks about online communities and forums.
