Community Culture?

Is Community the new rich media? Twelve months ago we were struggling to get students to understand the power of communities and the sheer common sense of leveraging social phenomena in online development; they were much more interested in engagability (spinning logos and splash screens as far as I can tell). Yesterday our new Web Publishing cohort presented their early project plans, and they were almost all smart social networking concepts. Of course there's a lot of blood, sweat and development between a good idea and a workable business plan, but it's heartening to see young designers finally waking up to the pointlessness of throwing multimedia experiences at disconnected individuals through a web browser.