Last week I caught the stomach flu. I don't normally get sick and this was bad. I haven't been sick like that in a long time. After the 9th visit to kneel by the toilet bowl within a short amount of time, I thought to myself, "I've got to tell whoissick.org about this. I didn't even know the stomach flu was going around."

Now, compare that with websites that are desperately trying to get interaction out of their users. How does one build a site, or rather a community of users that is involved to the point that when kneeling by a toilet bowl in pain, their thoughts turn to this website? Well, what good is my participation going to do? On whoissick, I might be able to alert some elderly man that there is a stomach flu going around and he might want to be drinking more orange juice until it passes. On some retail store, my comments might be aggregated to provide customer service feedback to investors or managers. The good feeling that I have from participating isn't the same.

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