A new online “community” for power electronics engineers has been launched by Power Systems Design on their English website. After registration, community members can access design tips, member forums and magazine archives of every copy of PSD Europe and PSD North America since 2004 in PDF format.
I’m sure lots of other publishers will be watching the success of PSD’s community with interest. Publishers can’t afford to be reliant on Google for traffic, particularly as one small change in the algorithm could result in a dramatic fall in traffic. By creating the opportunity for interaction, and providing more resources and information, publishers will build a user base that isn’t driven by search. However, I’ll be interested to see whether putting this kind of content behind a registration wall proves to be the right decision: whilst traffic will inevitably be lower, the quality of interaction and the reach of PSD’s databases will clearly benefit from the requirement to register.
