How to Build a Successful Gambling Player Community in 2025: Chapter One, What is a Community?
This is the first chapter of the series "How to Build a Successful Gambling Player Community in 2025".
The Form and Essence of Community
The company recently launched a gambling player community project. In a discussion with the newly recruited product manager, they frankly stated, "I am not optimistic about the forum model, communities are outdated."
📌My view:
Community is not a specific form of presentation, but a way of expression and connection.
Forum formats like BBS and Tieba may become outdated, but the core of the community will not perish.
Its essence lies in: people gathering due to common interests or goals, forming a network of relationships through content and interaction. The form of presentation will evolve with technology, but the value logic of the community always exists.
Narrow and Broad Definitions of Community
Many people reflexively think of BBS, Tieba, QQ groups from twenty years ago when they hear "community." However, equating community solely with these old platforms is too narrow.
Narrow definition of community: Based on traditional models like BBS and Tieba, relying on incentives, UGC, and discussion.
Broad definition of community: Emphasizes content + relationships, where users connect through content and then form a network of relationships.
Looking at the present, we find that many platforms, even if not traditional "forums," still have community characteristics:
Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book): Interest circles driven by note sharing, with tags as community entry points.
Douyin/TikTok: Comment sections and fan groups under algorithm recommendations, essentially forming weak-link communities.
Instagram: Bonded by lifestyle, with images as social currency.
YouTube: Interaction between channel owners and fans, with comment sections as natural community prototypes.
The Unchanging Core
The form of presentation evolves from text to images, then to videos and live streaming, constantly updating.
But one thing remains unchanged: people connect through content, form relationships through connections, and stay because of relationships.
Technology will continue to advance, and the forms it takes will evolve, but the core logic of the community has never changed.
Four Characteristics of a Complete Community
To more specifically identify the operation of a "community," it must have the following four characteristics:
🔵Content incentive mechanism: Why post?
🔵UGC/PUGC supply: Who posts?
🔵Content carries relationships: How does content become interaction?
🔵Community rules network: What maintains order?
📌Insights from the Gambling Player Community
Returning to the context of the gambling player community, we can conclude: the forum model may be outdated, but "community" as a concept will not become obsolete.
As long as there are sufficient incentives (benefits, honors), and the produced content (information, skills, tools, videos, live streams, etc.) is good, the community order will be well maintained.
No matter the country or cultural background, it is possible to gather players who love gambling, generating practical returns for users, and content and social value for the platform, thus creating economic value.
No matter if you are building a website, shooting a video, or creating a TG group, as long as it meets the "incentive—>content—>relationship—>rules" four conditions, it is a true community.
For example, in the TG ecosystem, a certain group sends daily benefits from cooperative platforms to attract people to join the group (incentive), while hosting PUGC live streams of playing slot machines (content), and users discuss game-related content in the group, with strict governance on SPAM. This already forms a community prototype.
In other words, there are no barriers to community. Just grasp these four cores, then combine today's technology and media forms to find the most suitable way of expression.
You can have your own community. (End of Chapter)
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