Master's Thesis from the year 2009 in the subject Business economics - Marketing, Corporate Communication, CRM, Market Research, Social Media, grade: 1,5, University of Applied Sciences Essen, language: English, abstract: Since a few years, many people talk about web 2.0 without knowing exactly what it is. It is not a new web standard, no new innovative product of Apple, no net movement or revolution. In fact, it is a paraphrase for the new active role of users. The technological progress makes it possible that users participate in internet actively. Their role changed from a watching to a creating one. New tools and features enabled users to generate content. With other new websites, social community websites came up using these new possibilities. By now, social communities like Facebook or studiVZ have millions of members. The huge acceptance on users' side made those websites a real trend in web 2.0. The huge number of users makes social communities to an interesting business. Experts say that social communities are not only a trend, but also an important business in future. Although there are already some established companies acting on the market for social communities, the market will see a lot of new social communities in the next years. There are only a few general social communities dividing up the market. And there are enough topics which are not occupied as yet. Only those social communities will beat the competition and will remain, which are able to generate revenue and profit.