Community Pays

Sam Lawrence has a great piece about the supersonic Nike+ community, including an interview with Nike-dude Roberto Tagliabue.  Community is often seen as a sort of love-in with no commercial value.  But here's Nike's experience: "As of February, 2008, Nike+ members have run over 50,000,000 miles, logged over 14,000,000 runs and issued over 450,000 challenges. We created the world’s largest running club at nikeplus.com. 40% of community members who didn’t own Nike+ ended up buying. That is pretty tangible."