We intended to make online communities (swarms) work more like real-life communities. A user could belong to multiple swarms. People who don't feel like they

We intended to make online communities (swarms) work more like real-life communities. A user could belong to multiple swarms. People who don't feel like they belong in a swarm could leave (or be forcibly voted out by the group) and join another. When swarms get too big (above, say 150-200) they could splinter into smaller ones. In practice, each swarm would have their own stories and comment threads. e.g. Swarm 'A' hates TechCrunch stories and always votes them down, Swarm 'B' feels that the people in Swarm 'A' are uncivil, Swarm 'C' just loves to make jokes about everything, Swarm 'D' is extremely priggish and has very strict rules about what types of stories should be posted. A user could choose to experience the raw unfiltered site, or just stick to swarms where he or she mostly knows everyone else. We intended to use voting and tagging statistics to suggest swarms in which an unattached user might feel like they belong. Dunbar's Number (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number) was the inspiration.