In addition to turning on our new SocialVoice community today, we’re also launching a product called LiveBar^TM.

Jenna Woodul, chief community officer at LiveWorld (and my boss), offers her take on LiveBar, including its potential to bring a whole new crop of users into community conversations.

And while we’re truly excited to see just how communities will develop around sites using LiveBar, we also know this: true community isn’t about the tools. Instead, community is about people connecting and building relationships around shared interests/goals/values.

LiveBar makes it drop-dead easy for companies to provide gathering points around the compelling content on their sites. But turning those gatherings into genuine communities requires a commitment to the best practices of community management, too: serving as engaging hosts in the discussions, offering fresh content, recognizing and rewarding members for their contributions, welcoming new points of view, etc. We look forward to watching that happen.