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Online customer communities are everywhere — you just have to look for them — sometimes in unlikely places. Because they are dedicated to serving customers, often they are not evangelized to the general public or consumer audiences. But they are alive, well and thriving within many enterprises.

By way of definition, when we say “online customer communities,” we mean an interactive, often gated, website that a company sets up for customers to collaborate on topics of mutual interest.

And, we are NOT including customer service websites; e-commerce sites where goods and services are bought and sold; online customer panels that focus on customer research; online publications that let readers comment on articles; or blogs, twitter and general use of social media broadcast tools. These styles of interactive interplay are an important aspect of the evolving web 2.0 world, but are not, by definition, online customer communities.

I’ve tweeted and shared a lot of information about online customer communities. Some recent posts, in case you missed them, are “6 Reasons Firms Build Customer Communities” and “Spot the Winners: Three Patterns for B2B Community Success,” which identifies the common characteristics of successful customer community builders.

We’ve also been doing the research, gathering an extensive list of online customer communities and developing a suite of case studies about some of the more innovative examples. So without further ado, here’s our initial list from the Customer Community Project — seventy-one of our top picks — so far.

1. Adobe Learning Communities
2. American Express Business Travel Connexion
3. American Express American Express Open
4. Avnet Bank Of America Small Business Community
5. Bloomberg BusinessWeek Business Exchange: Online Community Management
6. BT Radianz Financial Services Community
7. BT Transform operational capabilities in defence (gated community)
8. Building.co.uk Building Network
9. Caterpillar Caterpiller Community
10. CHCA CHEX Knowledge Exchange (gated community)
11. cio.com Executive Council (gated community) (gated community)
12. Cisco Learning Network
13. Cognizant Cognizanti eCommunity (gated community)
14. Constructing Excellence Collaborative Working Champions network
15. Cortera Community
16. CSC Meaningful User Community
17. CWFM Connect with FM (Facilities Managers)
18. Dell Small and Medium Business
19. Diversified Communications Integrative Practitioner
20. Dow Jones Dow Jones Communities
21. EMC ECN Community Network
22. EMC Customer Council Connect (gated community)
23. EMC EMC-SAP Ecosystem community
24. EMC Networker Online Community
25. EMC TheCircle (gated community)
26. EMC Velocity Partner Xchang (gated community)
27. Flexera Software Community
28. Hewlett Packard Enterprise Business Community
29. Hewlett Packard Business Support Forums
30. Hewlett Packard Software Solutions Community online forum
31. Hewlett Packard Live Network (gated community)
32. HSBC Business Network
33. IBM Communities
34. IBM Center for CIO Leadership
35. IDC IDC Insights
36. InfoGroup Exchange Exchange – Powered by Infogroup (gated community)
37. Institute for Human Resources (Many different HR topics) Community Home Page
38. Intel Intel Software Network Communities
39. Intuit Intuit Community (many different Intuit support communities)
40. Intuit Accountants Community for QuickBooks Practitioners and Accounting Professionals
41. Intuit Developer Network (gated community)
42. Jigsaw Jigsaw Community
43. Kinaxis The Supply Chain Expert Community (gated community)
44. Kodak Grow Your Biz
45. LexisNexis LexisNexis Investigators Network (gated community)
46. LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell Connected
47. Mathworks MatLab Central
48. Microsoft (UK) Microsoft Small Business Community
49. Microsoft Microsoft Developers Network
50. Microsoft Microsoft Dynamics Community
51. Motorola Enterprise Mobility
52. NAHB Reshaping and Enriching our Communities
53. NetPromotor Blogs
54. NetApp New Products for Building a Shared IT Infrastructure
55. NetApp University
56. NetApp User Groups
57. Oracle Community
58. Oracle Oracle CFO Central
59. Palladium Group XPC
60. Pitney Bowes User Forum
61. SaaS4Channel.nl SaaS4Channel.nl
62. Salesforce.com SalesForce Discussion Forums
63. SAP Community Network SDN Community
64. Sage Group Act! Community
65. Sermo MDs-only Community
66. Spiceworks IT Community
67. Staffing Industry Analysts Executive Forum
68. Taleo Customer Executive Council
69. TCN The Construction Network

This list is just a start, so feel free to post a comment about them. If you run, manage or participate in an online customer community and would like to be included, please take a moment to add your community.