The Gravity Principle: What Really Pulls a Community Together

By Derek Rector

For too long, most niche online communities have been “digital empty lounges”, collaboration spaces built with good intentions, but lacking the fundamental pull that truly brings people together to get work done.

Consider a simple experiment: pile toys in the corner of an otherwise empty gymnasium, then invite a group of children inside. In the opposite corner install a lounge with a large sign that reads “Play Here”. Without guidance or instruction, the kids will ignore the lounge and naturally gravitate toward the toys. Their job is to play, and the toys are resources that help them do that. There is no need for signage or announcements. The draw is self-evident. Toys pull them in. Children form community where toys are abundant.

This is gravity at work, and it illustrates a fundamental truth about how all communities form. People do not gather around abstract concepts. They gather around tangible value—something useful or necessary. In ancient times, settlements formed where there was water, food, shelter, and security. Now, in the context of digital platforms, the resources and tools members need to get their work done must be infused with community from the beginning. Without this integration, community remains an intention, not an outcome.

Over the past two decades, many organizations have launched online communities with the hope that conversation alone would be enough to sustain them. Engagement can’t be manufactured. Time and again, these platforms falter. Even with sustained community management and marketing, they tend to sputter.

A community is what a group of people become in the presence of things they need. Only that essential mass can pull people in. The core issue is not technology. It is the absence of gravity.

Why Presence Alone Is Not Enough

Too often, digital communities resemble that lounge without toys at the end of the gymnasium that the children ignore[TV2] . A space is created, a structure is built, and members are invited to participate. But without resources or tools of practical value to pull them in and guide them to relevant people, there is little reason to return, let alone engage. Community requires a purpose shaped by the resources around which it forms.

People do not gather because they are told to. They gather where their problems are addressed, where their time is respected, and where their goals are supported. If a platform fails to provide those outcomes, even the most enthusiastic launch campaign will eventually lose momentum.

Aligning Technology with Human Behavior

The media theorist Marshall McLuhan famously argued that every medium is an extension of the senses. He was right. Technologies that endure do so because they amplify the senses and extend how people behave without any technology at all. Services that oppose our instincts eventually fail, regardless of how well they are marketed or how great their dominance of that market is.

Face to face, without smartphones, people seek solutions where they find the biggest pile of resources, and lots of people who know about them. They find teachers and guides. They form ad-hoc teams. They trade and barter as needed. They solve problems together. Communities that support ancient patterns of problem solving by putting everything in one place, work because they accelerate what humans do naturally. We are wired to solve problems together.

The Illusion of Engagement Metrics

Working people are not seeking places to spend more time during the workday. Most are trying to get their work done fast. If an organization accelerates access to accurate information, experienced peers, and qualified suppliers in one place, it will thrive because it saves time. If a community feels detached, it will be ignored.

In recent years, many organizations have applied consumer social media metrics that covet eyeballs, time, and referrals as proxies for community health. In doing so, they have lost sight of what meaningful engagement looks like in the context of work. Unlike personal platforms where people consume their own time, professional communities have no choice but to respect time as a scarce resource that employers pay for. How often each member visits is important, but it’s best if they don’t stay long. Effective solutions need to be found fast. There isn’t time for doom-scrolling. Organizational mission success is what matters most and should be measured first.

Designing for Context, Not Conformity

There is no universal blueprint for building gravity and infusing it with engagement. What works for one organization may not apply to another. A buyer’s guide might serve as the central resource for one group, while a curated research archive or a professional directory might provide the necessary pull for another. It could be a key reference manual, an archive of technical specs, a collection of benchmarks, a database, a how-to video collection, a credentialing system, a showcase of role models, archive of training courses, or even an AI agent... Each industry, movement, or initiative offers its own opportunities to position community when contemplating gravity.

This article is the first in a series that will explore strategies needed to build gravity and cultivate a purpose-driven community. In the meantime, a great place to start looking for clues is the annual conference.

Most organizations do their major in-person meetings well. The whole team is involved in hosting it. They understand their industry, its stakeholders, what they all need, and how they engage at the event. Most organizations know how to translate that understanding into gravity that pulls people in to register, attend, and participate in context. The best organizations keep it fresh, they don’t conform to last-year's focus. They create context by offering what their industry needs most each year.

Every organization's big, in-person meeting is actually a community paradigm with gravity, context, and purpose that already works. Learn from it. Build on it. Extend it digitally, 52 weeks of the year.
Making Gravity Intentional

The Gravity Principle invites organizations to rethink how they approach online community. Rather than beginning with a structure or a platform, and hoping that community will follow, start with purpose, contemplate member journeys, think about how they get things done in person. Most importantly, identify what participants need most and design the community within and around those resources, tools, and experiences.

When an organization provides access to enough of something essential, and offers a chance to engage right there, community is the outcome. Just like the way a town forms naturally in the place where resources are available, an organization’s member community will take root, and flourish, where the people getting work done can find the things they need. That’s the effect of gravity.

 How about a bold statement at the start like: "For too long, online communities have been digital "empty lounges" – spaces built with good intentions, but lacking the fundamental pull that truly brings people together."