Considering the disasterous results of AOL/Time Warner merger, his resignation from the Time Warner board isn't surprising. But it is a sad reminder of how much AOL has changed since the Quatum Computer Services, Inc. first introduced America Online to the world as the Macintosh Telecommunications Research Project.

Back then and throughout the rest of the decade, community was a key ingredient of AOL - and of the online world. While community was also a key ingredient of CompuServe and GEnie (an online service run at the time by the General Electric company), AOL seemed to put more emphasis on community, and had a new twist - it was easier to use than Compuserve or GEnie. That made AOL more accessible to the leading edge of home computer users than either GEnie or Compuserve.

As computer prices came down, the cost of using online services came down, and the number of home computer users went up, the communities on AOL grew. And grew. And grew some more. AOL, under Case's direction, became an ubercommunity - a place where you could always go to find others with similar interests.

Mass marketing and mass distribution of AOL disks, of course had a lot to do with that. But so, too, did buzz marketing. People who tried AOL would tell their friends how easy it was to use, and how much information they could find online.

That access to information and ease of use - whether it was for recipes or tips on marketing a home business - was the hook for many to try AOL. But the glue, invariably, was the community. Once on AOL, people came back day after day, because they made friends in the forums and chat rooms there.

That sense of community no longer seems an integral part of AOL. In fact, voluneteer community leaders were given their walking papers last June. The result, according to one of those former leaders, is that the communities are largely gone, too. Message boards that were once popular - if you can find them at all - now either have no messages, or are filled with get rich schemes and other ads.

Having run some of those communities on AOL (my company ran small business and professional forums on AOL from 1990 to 2001), I'm not surprised they seem so insignficant in today's AOL. Active message boards are high maintenance with little monetary return for any organization that runs them. And live chats are fraught with a whole different set of problems, too.

Other types of communities have sprung up in recent years. There are many listserves that act and feel like communities. And here and there on the web there are large active communities addressing very specific niches- Webmasterworld.com is one of them, for instance. There are also the social networking types of sites - where you can find people with similar backgrounds or interests.

But there seems to be no one ubercommunity any more. No one place that people go knowing they're likely to find others with similar interests. And that's a shame.