DISQUS

Nick, your views are echoed by Facebook's founder in that you cannot "create" community. His term for facebook is elegant organisation.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/jun/11/mon...

It also ties in nicely with Clayton Christensen's perspective that people hire tools to get jobs done.
http://www.dinarstandard.com/innovation/Clayton...

One way to start could be to define the jobs, even in a broad sense (eg building social capital), and wrap a service around those goals. To get it right, it is worth thinging about how the community would define recognise and define social capital.

These might be of interest:

http://blog.mixergy.com/why-how-to-build-social...

http://www.slideshare.net/missrogue/making-whuffie

http://www.slideshare.net/missrogue/happiness-a...