1. Be early - Fred was one of the first VC bloggers to give people a real time glimpse of his thoughts.
2. Be consistent - There were some notable VC's who blogged before him, but none with the daily pace he has consistently met for years. This regularity is hugely important.
3. Be successful - He has amazing credibility based on his investment portfolio. With their thesis driven approach, USV has assembled the best collection of "Large communities of engaged users" in tech. He has also invested in companies that have become some of the biggest brand names in tech e.g. Twitter/Zynga.
4. Be talented - I can think of a few VCs that meet most of the above criteria, but Fred is a really good writer with a strong POV. He almost always brings a fresh thought to stale issues and rarely uses his blog as a commercial for his investments.
5. Be Human - If you read Fred's blog you know what music he's into, where he vacations to, what his kids are interested in. He's a full personality, not just a repository of info about term sheets or financing structures.
I think the points that the OP makes are important, but are not the primary cause of Fred's success.
But there are many successful blogs that do not have an engaged community that comments at that volume. I was trying to explain just that aspect. I should have written that upfront. I also agree that being early and consistent helps in building the community.
If words like "good" and "bad" aren't to your liking, please substitute productive/unproductive, useful/useless, interesting/boring, liberating/stifling, or whatever arbitrary dichotomy you prefer.
As for the AVC community, I don't find it particularly interesting. It attracts a lot of fanboys, especially Android fans who consider anyone who buys an iPhone to be sheeple brainwashed by the Steve Jobs reality distortion field. And it attracts a lot of people who are basically promoting themselves or their businesses, and they're trying really hard to exude gravitas. Fuck gravitas.
Community is not an end in itself. A community is just as likely to embody dynamics that enforce a soul-crushing conformity as it is likely to be nurturing and supportive. All communities are mixed bags—I think that's inevitable, but don't hold me to it—and the processes that create a community are going to shape the community and the way its members interact, so I would suggest looking at AVC and asking yourself whether you want to create an AVC like community before you decide to consciously harness, deploy, or whatever those processes to create a community.
Oh, and the idea that you can replicate anything involving a group of people using a recipe-like approach is ridiculous. Life's complicated.
