Newegg.com hatches online computer and technology community

Newegg.com, a web-only computer, consumer electronics and communications retailer, has launched a multi-faceted technology community site dubbed Eggxpert.com. The venue aims to be a destination for Newegg.com’s customers – computer and technology aficionados – and will include a newsletter.

Newegg.com positions Eggxpert.com as a “meeting space for a community that will exchange ideas on a broad range of topics, build personal relationships, come to identify with Eggxpert and Newegg, and ultimately consider it a virtual home-base to revisit time and again.”

The new site includes a blog with advice and product reviews written by technology experts, along with “personal space” designed to encourage visitors to get to know one another on a deeper level than simply as casual chat friends, says Newegg, which is No. 10 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide.

The web community initiative includes a newsletter, scheduled to debut in late June. “We’re the community bulletin board,” says Joyce Li, newsletter content manager. “Customers can count on us to alert them to what’s hot, what’s news and what they might want to dig deeper into on the site.”

Also in development is a technology database called Eggipedia. Originally meant to serve as an archive for the thousands of product information pages on Newegg.com, Eggipedia now is planned as a free-content encyclopedia for all things technological. Like its Wikipedia namesake, Eggipedia will permit users to edit existing entries and create new pages by supplying their own information.

“We have so much good material written up for our product pages that it seemed a waste to take them all down after a product went out of stock,” says Chad Chen, Newegg.com vice president of marketing. The database is slated to go online this summer.

Newegg.com boasts more than 6 million registered customers.