Back in 2009, we created "Area 51" on CrazyEngineers - a mysterious, invite-only section on the community. It was like the Illuminati. You could only join by an invite, and you were never supposed to talk about it.
Everyone could see Area 51, but nobody could get in without an invite, and we rejected most of the requests to join. Those who got in did the only thing they were allowed to do: boast that they had access.
Until then, every section on CrazyEngineers was public. Area 51 turned it into a hybrid community. The public forum kept bringing in new people through Google, and Area 51 gave a few of them something to boast about. If you're building a customer community, you have to make the same choice: public, private or hybrid.
What public, private and hybrid mean
Let's get the basics out of the way first.
A public community is open to everyone, which means anyone can read your discussions, and so can Google and the LLMs. ChatGPT even has its own crawler for this, called OAI-SearchBot, which goes around finding pages for its search answers.
In a private community, you need to log in to see anything. Slack, Discord, WhatsApp groups and private Facebook groups all work like that - if you aren't a member, you don't see a thing.
Hybrid is a mix of both. Most of the community stays public, and you keep a few channels private for specific people or topics.
Public community: merits and demerits
When I was heading growth at my previous company, I built a community for React developers. We kept it public, and that was a very deliberate choice because we wanted every single discussion to attract new users.
We were building a content loop. A developer would ask a question, someone from the community would answer it, Google would index the discussion, and the next developer stuck with the same problem would find it, read the answer and join. That loop gave us organic growth.
That's what I like the most about public communities. Your members do the marketing for you without even knowing it, and a good discussion keeps bringing people in long after it was posted. I've explained how SEO and AEO work on Jatra if you want to go deeper.
The downside is that everything is out in the open. If a customer complains, reports a bug or starts an angry thread about your product, it'll show up on Google and in LLM answers, and that's literally the last place you want it to be.
You also end up depending on Google a lot. CrazyEngineers grew on Google search, so when a Google update wrongly hit us in 2012, we really felt it.
And public communities attract everyone, spammers included, plus people who just don't belong there. On Jatra, Jatra AI screens new public posts for spam, and your moderators still make the final call.
Private community: merits and demerits
A private community works the other way round. Only the people you let in can see anything.
That makes it the right place for things you don't want the world to read: support issues, bug reports, complaints, or a small invite-only group.
It's also quick to start. Earlier this year, I pitched Jatra to a company that wanted to test a community with a small group of their existing customers. They picked a Facebook group over Jatra.
That's their internal decision. If they'd asked me, I'd have told them to start with a WhatsApp group and move to Jatra once it works.
The biggest demerit is that nothing in a private community compounds. Every good answer stays behind the login, and Google's own documentation says its crawlers can't access content behind a login page. So nobody new finds it on Google, LLMs never see it, and the only way someone joins is when a member invites them.
Hybrid community: merits and demerits
A hybrid community keeps most discussions public and makes a few channels private.
That's how we run the Jatra community. The Customer Feedback and Customer Support channels are private, open only to customers and select members. Complaints and bugs stay hidden from Google and LLMs, for the right reasons, and customers still feel heard. Everything else is public and keeps pulling in new people.
Area 51 worked the same way on CrazyEngineers, just with more mystery.
Hybrid has one demerit: because it attracts users organically, you have to vet them. Not everyone who finds you on Google belongs in your private channels, so someone has to decide who gets access.
Frankly speaking, that's a good problem to have, because it means people are finding you.
Public vs private vs hybrid, side by side
| Public | Private | Hybrid | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Growth | |||
| New members find you on Google and LLMs | Yes | No | Yes |
| Old discussions keep bringing in members | Yes | No | Yes |
| Protection | |||
| Complaints and bugs stay out of search | No | Yes | Yes |
| Room for invite-only groups | No | Yes | Yes |
| Effort | |||
| Quick to start a small test | No | Yes | No |
| Little vetting of who joins | No | Yes | No |
Hybrid is the only option that says yes to both growth and protection. What it costs you is effort, because you make more setup decisions and vet more people.
Private ties with hybrid if you simply count the rows, but it gives up on growth completely. A community that doesn't bring in new people is just a support channel.
How to choose
My advice to anyone building a customer community is simple: go hybrid.
Keep everything public by default. Make a channel private only when it has a reason to stay out of Google, like customer support, bug reports, feedback, or an invite-only group like Area 51.
Tip: Don't make a channel private just because it feels safer. Every private channel holds discussions that nobody new will ever find.
If you're only testing whether your customers want a community at all, start small and private. A WhatsApp group does the job. Once people show up and start talking, move to a platform where you can open it up.
Jatra runs public and private channels in the same community, so you can start hybrid on day one and decide channel by channel. If you want a second opinion on which channels to keep private, book a call with me.
Your job is to make sure the good discussions stay public, because that's where your next members will come from.
