As early as 2013, information marketers began offering access to private Facebook groups as a leverage to amplify conversion for their products. Marketers soon discovered the compelling power of a community and began selling access as their primary offer. While membership was an easy sell, the engagement within the group was noisy and prompted an overwhelming number of social notifications; members began to see their groups as distractions, engagement faded, and the offer of group membership lost much of its luster. @Slack first entered the public eye as a community development platform when @Pieter Levels published a case study detailing his utilization of @TypeForm's @API for mass onboarding to his @HashtagNomads community. [1] Overnight, offerings of private access communities flooded the market. With Typeform's software only allowing for one-time payments, marketers with continuity offers were forced to convert to a single payment structure. In 2014, @Ghost Influence developed proprietary software for recurring billing and launched their community to makers and marketers seeking to leverage the power of @Reddit. This software later influenced the development of @LaunchPass which became the most popular method for on-boarding members into free and paid Slack communities.
