Friday, March 16, 2007

QotW7: Shall we twit?


As the Internet flourish, it’s capability of allowing many-to-many communications also increases. The WELL, which was built upon the idea of a new kind of community whereby members are able to meet in everyday space, as real communities always have, while inhabiting a new environment, is where the online community movement was born (The WELL, 2001). What started of as the brain child of visionary software engineer, Larry Brilliant, and originator of The Whole Earth Catalog, Stewart Brand, ended up being the start off point for many other online communities. Today, communities of various sizes and sorts are present on the Internet.

According to Fernback and Thompson (1995), the concept of community commonly refers to a set of social relationships that operate within specified boundaries or locale. An online community consists of a group of people that may or may not primarily or initially communicate or interact via the Internet (“Virtual communities”, 2007). Apart from that, different virtual communities have different levels of interaction and participation among their members. According to a survey done by Horrigan (2001), it was found that almost 90 million Americans have participated in online communities. This shows that online communities have found its way into our lives.

By being a member of an online community, it allows one to have the ability to interact with other like-minded individuals across the globe. For instance, at petlovers.com, pets enthusiasts are able to share their information with one another. Besides that, they are also able to post and share their pet’s photos with fellow members. With the use of online communities, it is no longer impossible or difficult to ask distant acquaintances and strangers for advice and information (Wellman & Gulia, 1996).

As part of this week’s blog requirement, the class was told to join and explore Twitter. And ultimately, decide if Twitter can be considered as an online community or not. As told, I signed up for it and started setting up my profile. Friends are then being invited to join this site or added in to build up the social network. From there, members are able to update their friends with what they are doing as well as what are their thoughts. This service is almost instant. Other than that, like Friendster, Twitter allows members to personalize the background of their homepage.

After being part of Twitter for two days, I personally believe that it can be considered as an online community. The basic fact that it allows me to interact with fellow members online and form bonds with them, shows that it is an online community. In addition, it also allows users to send messages via phone or instant messaging. (“Twitter”, 2007) Users are then given the option of receiving messages in more than one way. Due to Twitter’s ability of letting one post their thought online for their friends to view and even reply to, it sort of resembles a blog. Probably, the only differences between the two is that blogs has no limitation of characters while Twitter has a 140 character limitation for each entry.

When compared to huge online communities such as MySpace and Friendster, Twitter may seem small due to its limited features, but this does not mean that it cannot be considered as an online community. In fact, Twitter’s capability for immediate response makes it stand out from other online communities. In my opinion, I feel that in time to come, Twitter will evolve into an even better online community with more features.

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, April). 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, March 15). In: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved March 15, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Virtual_community&oldid=115123017

Twitter. (2007, March 14). In: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved March 15, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Twitter&oldid=115023086

WELL. (2007, February 15). In: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved March 15, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=WELL&oldid=108258486

The WELL. (2001). “Learn About The WELL”. Retrieved March 15, 2007, from http://www.well.com/aboutwell.html

Horrigan, J. B. (2001, October 31). Online Communities: Networks that nurture long-distance relationships and local ties. Retrieved March 15, 2007, from http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Communities_Report.pdf

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