Non-forum Communities

[memenode]

There are many examples of communities built without forums, or before forums were ever added. Often this can be through a different kind of process of interaction than what a forum typically facilitates, and often it is just within comments to certain blogs.

Has anyone built such communities and what are your experiences?

[iowadawg]

Well, the original communities were bulletin boards.
Today, there is still IRC.
And thousands of sites on the net that are not forums, but communities (facebook, million facebook clones, etc).