Facebook Groups and Discord are often the first place teams turn when starting a digital community. They are familiar, easy to set up, and help people gather quickly. For early-stage growth, they check the right boxes.
But over time, these platforms reveal their limits. Conversations start to drift away from the product experience. Moderation becomes time-consuming. Data is locked away. And the community becomes something that exists around your product, not within it.
Eventually, a question surfaces.
If not there, then where should the community live?
What Matters More Than the Platform
The better question might be: what kind of environment helps a community thrive?
It turns out proximity and context matter more than the platform itself.
Community works best when it is close to the experience it supports. When users can share, react, or ask questions without jumping between apps. When the conversation feels like a natural part of using the product, not an afterthought happening somewhere else.
This is the strategic shift. You are not just moving away from Discord or Facebook. You are moving closer to your users.
A Better Model: Community That Lives Inside the Experience
There is no one-size-fits-all answer, but strong communities tend to share a few traits:
- They are embedded into the product or brand environment
- They offer continuity across the customer journey, not just a one-time touchpoint
- They feel like an extension of what the product already helps users do
That is why more teams are exploring in-app communities. It is not just about having a chatbox or a feed. It is about turning community into a layer of your product experience, rather than a parallel channel on someone else’s platform.
This model helps users stay engaged. It turns static usage into participation. It invites your most passionate users to help each other, contribute ideas, and build relationships all without leaving your app.
What That Could Look Like in Practice
This does not mean recreating Reddit or building your own social network from scratch. Often, it starts small.
Examples of embedded community in action:
- A travel app that lets users post trip itineraries or reviews during the booking flow
- A fitness app that includes challenge groups or progress-sharing spaces between workouts
- A marketplace that creates discussion groups around product categories or sellers
- A learning platform where students share tips or ask questions right inside each module
The common thread is not just that these features are social. It is that they are integrated. They show up where users already are, at the moment they want to engage.
This makes the community feel less like a destination and more like a dimension of the product itself.
Why It Works: Retention, Engagement, and Trust
When community is part of the product, you unlock a different kind of value.
Users spend more time in the app. They contribute content. They return more often. And they build habits around both the product and the people they interact with.
Recent studies show that products with in-app social features see significantly higher retention and engagement. One found a 40% average lift in retention among users who interacted with community elements. Others saw 2 to 3 times more sessions per user over time.
There is also a deeper benefit. In-product communities give your users a sense of belonging. It invites them to participate, not just consume. And that emotional connection drives loyalty in ways that purely transactional UX cannot match.
You Do Not Have to Abandon Public Platforms
This is not about choosing between Facebook and something else.
Public platforms still have a place especially for awareness, discovery, or SEO value. They are familiar entry points and offer massive reach.
But they are not built for continuity or control. If you want to shape the full journey from first interaction to long-term engagement, then you need a space that reflects your product, your users, and your purpose.
That is where the embedded community begins to shine.
Bring Community Home
If you are asking where a community should live, you are already on the right track. It is not just about tools. It is about alignment.
The strongest communities are not bolted on. They are built in. Community that lives inside the product does more than keep users around. It makes the product feel alive. It builds trust between people. It turns your app into a space users return to stay connected to others.
Facebook and Discord may help you get started. But long-term? The most resilient communities live closer to home.
This is Episode 4 of the Beyond Social series, exploring where communities should live when platforms like Facebook Groups or Discord no longer fit. In the next post, we will explore how to turn social attention into owned community and share a practical approach for moving your followers with you