Do you have an account with Friendster? If so, isn’t it a great place to look for your old friends and keep updated with their whereabouts, or even better, to find friends of similar hobbies? What about IRC? Yes the site which gives you a variety of rooms to choose from depending on your interest or age group. If you have used any of these examples before, well I have good news for you. You have been involved in an online community. So what exactly is an online community? An online community otherwise known as a virtual community can be used loosely for a variety of social groups interacting via the Internet. (Virtual Community, 2007)
Ever since the founding of the Internet, people have taken a shift in communicating with one another primarily in the ‘real’ world to communicating with one another via the virtual world. Since the 1980s, there have been a steady incline in ways which help foster such a relationship. From the email, to present day online community sites such as Friendster and MySpace. Internet users have overcome geographical and time boundaries which have always obstructed face-to face interactions.
Besides such basic advantages, online communities provide other advantages such as greater control over timing and content of self-disclosure, organized by shared interest instead of place, higher level of willingness to help and also helps foster contact with others who are different. (Wellman, Gulia, 1996)
However, with respect to online community sites, the key most important advantage would be that Internet users no matter how distant they are from one another are grouped together according to interest. For example a car enthusiast from America would be able to share his knowledge and ideas with another car enthusiast from across the globe. With the development of online forums, people who share similar interests may trade ideas and comments with others outside of
their usual community. In a way, this can be seen as an example of the global village which was often discussed by Marshall McLuhan.
For this blog entry, the class was required to sign up for Twitter, an online community site which allows its members to inform each other about what they are doing and their thoughts. (Twitter, 2007) Members who have added one another to their profiles are then able to constantly update their entries via SMS or through instant messaging.
I feel that Twitter can be considered an online community in fact I believe that it can be likened to a combination between two other forms of online communities. One of blogging and the other is that of Instant Messaging. Reason behind this would be similar to that of blogging, Twitter enabled me to share my thoughts with others and receive comments from them. However unlike blogging, the recipients of my updates and thoughts were limited to only people whom I had added on my “friends” list. After receiving updates on myself which I had posted, those who chose to comment on anything which I had mentioned could just reply with the pace of Instant Messaging. Because of this speed, a few of my course mates including myself were astonished at the speed in which Mr. Kevin Lim replied to our conversations, making it seem as if we were all within the same room when we were all spread out in different areas.
Besides an example such as this, Mr. Kevin Lim pointed out that we could actually use Twitter in order to post and discuss questions with regards to his class during class time. Alas another characteristic of an online community where by people connect with one another because of similar interest can be seen.
An example of Twitter members lending a helping hand
cheillalala @mandycola: how can you do it? teach meeee.... :) about 13 hours ago from web in reply to mandycola
mandycola @cheillalala: click on "Badges" at the top, then copy and paste the html code into your blog template. about 13 hours ago from web in reply to cheillalala
cheillalala @mandycola: i tried but i failed :( about 13 hours ago from web in reply to mandycola
In conclusion, following my experience with Twitter, I felt that it would probably be an outstanding example of an online community. To summarize it, we as students were able to update others about our whereabouts (ie: which class we were in), similar interest or topic (ie: questions to be raised in class or how boring certain classes were) and even communicate with others who were not physically close to us. With this in mind, although critics have argued that the advancement of technology has rendered our ability to be human. It has in fact brought us closer together.
“The term virtual community is more indicative of an assemblage of people being "virtually" a community than being a real community.” (Fernback, Thompson, 1995)
References:
Fernback, J, & Thompson, B (1995). Virtual Communities:Abort, Retry, Failure?. Retrieved March 15, 2007, from http://www.rheingold.com/texts/techpolitix/VCcivil.html.
Wellman, B, & Gulia, M (1996). Net Surfers Don't Ride Alone:Virtual Communities as Communities. Retrieved March 15, 2007, from http://www.acm.org/%7Eccp/references/wellman/wellman.html.
Virtual Community. (2007). Virtual Community. In Wikipedia [Web]. Retrieved March, 15,2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_communities
Twitter. (2007). Twitter. In Wikipedia [Web]. Retrieved March,15,2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter
Ever since the founding of the Internet, people have taken a shift in communicating with one another primarily in the ‘real’ world to communicating with one another via the virtual world. Since the 1980s, there have been a steady incline in ways which help foster such a relationship. From the email, to present day online community sites such as Friendster and MySpace. Internet users have overcome geographical and time boundaries which have always obstructed face-to face interactions.
Besides such basic advantages, online communities provide other advantages such as greater control over timing and content of self-disclosure, organized by shared interest instead of place, higher level of willingness to help and also helps foster contact with others who are different. (Wellman, Gulia, 1996)
However, with respect to online community sites, the key most important advantage would be that Internet users no matter how distant they are from one another are grouped together according to interest. For example a car enthusiast from America would be able to share his knowledge and ideas with another car enthusiast from across the globe. With the development of online forums, people who share similar interests may trade ideas and comments with others outside of
their usual community. In a way, this can be seen as an example of the global village which was often discussed by Marshall McLuhan.For this blog entry, the class was required to sign up for Twitter, an online community site which allows its members to inform each other about what they are doing and their thoughts. (Twitter, 2007) Members who have added one another to their profiles are then able to constantly update their entries via SMS or through instant messaging.
I feel that Twitter can be considered an online community in fact I believe that it can be likened to a combination between two other forms of online communities. One of blogging and the other is that of Instant Messaging. Reason behind this would be similar to that of blogging, Twitter enabled me to share my thoughts with others and receive comments from them. However unlike blogging, the recipients of my updates and thoughts were limited to only people whom I had added on my “friends” list. After receiving updates on myself which I had posted, those who chose to comment on anything which I had mentioned could just reply with the pace of Instant Messaging. Because of this speed, a few of my course mates including myself were astonished at the speed in which Mr. Kevin Lim replied to our conversations, making it seem as if we were all within the same room when we were all spread out in different areas.
Besides an example such as this, Mr. Kevin Lim pointed out that we could actually use Twitter in order to post and discuss questions with regards to his class during class time. Alas another characteristic of an online community where by people connect with one another because of similar interest can be seen.
An example of Twitter members lending a helping hand
cheillalala @mandycola: how can you do it? teach meeee.... :) about 13 hours ago from web in reply to mandycola
mandycola @cheillalala: click on "Badges" at the top, then copy and paste the html code into your blog template. about 13 hours ago from web in reply to cheillalala
cheillalala @mandycola: i tried but i failed :( about 13 hours ago from web in reply to mandycola
In conclusion, following my experience with Twitter, I felt that it would probably be an outstanding example of an online community. To summarize it, we as students were able to update others about our whereabouts (ie: which class we were in), similar interest or topic (ie: questions to be raised in class or how boring certain classes were) and even communicate with others who were not physically close to us. With this in mind, although critics have argued that the advancement of technology has rendered our ability to be human. It has in fact brought us closer together.
“The term virtual community is more indicative of an assemblage of people being "virtually" a community than being a real community.” (Fernback, Thompson, 1995)
References:
Fernback, J, & Thompson, B (1995). Virtual Communities:Abort, Retry, Failure?. Retrieved March 15, 2007, from http://www.rheingold.com/texts/techpolitix/VCcivil.html.
Wellman, B, & Gulia, M (1996). Net Surfers Don't Ride Alone:Virtual Communities as Communities. Retrieved March 15, 2007, from http://www.acm.org/%7Eccp/references/wellman/wellman.html.
Virtual Community. (2007). Virtual Community. In Wikipedia [Web]. Retrieved March, 15,2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_communities
Twitter. (2007). Twitter. In Wikipedia [Web]. Retrieved March,15,2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter
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