Online Communities
Concerning the online community, this paper will elaborate the discussion on the history of online communities, which include the history and development, type of online communities, and examples of social networking strategy and website features especially facebook in developing their online communities.
History of Online Communities
Past
Origins and Development
The internet was primarily used for correspondence and programming. The concept moved rapidly into the social realm, into networking and making new associates or friends. This is the seed of online communities. One of the first online communities was called The Well, created in 1984, which is a site for people to exchange stories and perspectives. There was also Newsgroup, which was a place for business people to share news and updates. These websites were very simply managed, without advanced features and facilities like the one we know now (Cassidsy, 2007).
Today however, we have the modern social networking web design, which makes it possible for everyone to design their own environment within the internet to interact with friends. Online communities have also developed in the extent that most people would not predict so. Online social networking companies like MySpace, Facebook and Yahoo groups have made billions by providing people with creative means of communication in the internet.
Types of Online Communities
Online community or better known as the virtual community is a social network of individuals interacting through specific media, in order to achieve specific goals. The interaction may cross-geographical and political boundaries and the goals may vary. It can be for business-specific targets or simply leisure activities. The term was born along with the birth of the World Wide Web. It is first come to public from a book Virtual Community, by Howard Rheingold, 1993.
Figure1 Common types of online community
Online community is developed due to the similar concerns, preferences and needs. In order to maintain the traffic to their site, usually, the site managers will provide many features such as quiz to ensure that their customers return and make business. Other features include encouraging the user-friendly medium, virtual classrooms, and online discussion among restricted peers (Boyd and Ellison, 2010).
As the concerns, preferences, and needs are diverse among users, the online community itself develop into several sub groups including the social networking, grassroots communities, and customer communities, to name a few. Figure 1 displays the three general types of online communities in online domain.
Effects
In addition to the development of social networking, online communities have been used frequently as business tools. It is common way doing business and online trading companies like Ebay, Earthweb and Xoom have experienced phenomenal growth due to this new trend. Some tried to separate the use of internet between websites that are used for social interactions and websites that are used for business interactions. These efforts have failed notably because any online network today can be used interchangeably as social networking tools as well as business tools.
Present
Development of social networking case of facebook
Current applications that continue dragging many users are social network websites. They include the Friendster ( HYPERLINK httpwww.friendster.com www.friendster.com), My Space ( HYPERLINK httpwww.myspace.com www.myspace.com), Twitter ( HYPERLINK httpwww.twitter.com www.twitter.com) and the continually growing Facebook ( HYPERLINK httpwww.facebook.com www.facebook.com). These applications refer to the online communities where people can share information with their counterparts in timely manner.
Social networking is one example of online communities that grows in the internet domain. This community refers to community that is created in the virtual world in which their members can share anything and do any membership rituals such as posting messages for all members or restricted members, share personal information including figure where it becomes one way to communicate with other people in real life, and many others.
Mark Zuckerberg discovered Facebook in 2004, using an initial investment of US 500,000. In later days, partners chip-in millions more, even though in the fiscal year 2005 the company reported a net loss of 3.63 million. Facebook was originally a software-networking website dedicated and restricted only for Harvard College students. The website receives enormous attention from college students and only one month since its introduction, half of the Harvard college students were registered onto the social networking website. The website then expanded to Stanford, Columbia, Yale and various other Universities in the United States (Philips, 2007).
In the end of 2005, more than 2,000 colleges and 25,000 high schools in the United States, Canada and United Kingdom had networks registered on Facebook. In the later part of 2006, Facebook became open to the public. After the website has been opened to the public, its number grew even further to include offices and companies around the world.
Strategy
There are several different perspectives regarding the causes of Facebooks strategic methods. Most of them however, agreed that Facebooks success was based on the simplest and most effective marketing tool, which is word-of-mouth. Taking advantage of the social nature of human beings, it is appropriate for Facebook to focus its business marketing strategy simply by getting people to talk to other people about their products and services. Others however, believed that Facebooks success is built from its unique offering of services and from a series of fortunate or supportive events. This popularity put social networking like Facebook to be the second most used online communities after hobby-oriented online communities as shown in the figure 2.
Website Features
Several attributes of Facebook from the analysts point of view refer to the platforms and applications
Powerful platforms
Facebooks platform has three important components, which are identity platform, community platform and application platform. The identity platform underlines the fact that Facebook have rich metadata and they have massive intelligence on users. Users can even see detailed metadata regarding friends connected to them. Other forums and blogs do not provide such detailed amount of users data.
Various applications media embedded and event management
Those are some of the most interesting features Facebook has offered to its consumers. These attributes generate significant progress for the company. For instance, in less than one month, the application sections exploded from hundreds to thousands. Within the system, audio, video and live streaming video are available. The richness of media embedded is one of the value creators of Facebooks services. The affinity groups within Facebook can also organize and promote events from Facebook (Delaney, 2006)
Future Directions
General Tendencies
Online surveys have been carried out regarding online communities. The survey performed in 2004 revealed that 82 of the respondents believed that participation in online communities is still rapidly growing. This means that using existing technologies, people are attracted to the phenomenon of social networking. Still, many people are not touched by the phenomenon and thus the number of participants will continue to increase. On the other hand, the growth of technologies for online communities continues to grow. This means that the potentials to attract more members are still vastly growing. In addition, survey has also revealed that retention of community participants is not a significant problem (Cassidy, 2006).
Nevertheless, in addition to those positive developments of the online community phenomenon, researches have also revealed other realities. It is understood from the research that most organizations today cannot measure return on investment regarding online technologies. Surveys have also revealed that many people still do not understand the meaning of online communities. The overall conclusion remains that the online community phenomenon will continue to grow.
Growth per Technology
Because growth in social trends is caused by revolution in technology, researchers have attempted to measure the effect of each technology on social communities. These measurements are made within two aspect of the community, which are the customers community and the employee community. In the customer community, the oldest technologies, like discussion forums, email discussion lists and newsgroups are the technologies that showed significant declines. The largest growths is shown by team rooms weblogs and social networking. Other technologies that have showed significant progress and expected to continue to grow is instant messaging, text messaging, wireless mobile and web conferencing. RSS, Wiki and FOAF are expected to grow moderately (Bahney, 2006).
On the other hand, the employee communities revealed different tendencies then elaborated above. Respondents from the employee communities stated that they expect to consolidate among smaller sets of applications. Among the technologies that are expected to loose ground over the coming year are discussion forums, email discussion lists, chat, instant messaging, chat teleconferencing, web conferencing, newsgroup, text messaging and social networking. The largest growth is in wirelessmobile, RSS, expertise location wikis (Boyd, 2004).
Research has also revealed the prominence of certain Social Networking Websites like Friendster and Facebook. Friendster was launched in 2002. The anticipated feature is helping Friends-of-friends meet. This is different from most online dating services. However, as the website becomes popular, it encounters technical and social difficulties (Boyd, 2006b). The servers and databases were not sufficiently equipped to handle its rapid growth. The site jammed regularly and frustrating users.
After the fall of Friendster, Facebook rises and take over its popularity. It began in Harvard in 2004 as a local website only. In 2005, the site expanded through high school students and professionals networks. Unlike Friendster who receives numerous criticisms due to its ill-equipped servers and databases, Facebook was prepared well. The website has more features that made social interactions more fun. Until today, the prominence of Facebook still remain and manages to reach all level of community, both for leisure or business purposes, for individual or institutional needs (Barnes, 2009).
Comparison of References
In this section, we will compare three articles. Each describes the online communities from different perspectives and different period of discussion. The first article is from Boyd and Ellison (2007), which is published in Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication
httpjcmc.indiana.eduvol13issue1boyd.ellison.html. In this article, the authors put great concerns of elaborating the development of Social network Sites (SNSs) especially discussion the features of Social network Sites (SNSs) along with the proposed definition that best describe the definition of SNSs. In addition, the article also discusses the key changes and developments.
The second article is from Cassidy (2006), which title Me media How hanging out on the Internet became big business. This article is published The New Yorker. The objective of this article is to describe the background of Mark Zuckenberg, the invention of facebook. The article details the history of facebook, as Mark Zuckenberg is individual that has interest in software development by learning C programming language prior to the development of the famous social networking sites.
The third article is from Bahney (2006), title Dont talk to invisible strangers, which published in New York Times magazine (httpwww.nytimes.com20060309fashionthursdaystyles09parents.html). The objective of this article is to describe the recent impact of growing social networking sites (SNSs) to children. These concerns emerge as parents fear of the perils that social networking sites may have since many criminals use this social networking sites to influence children. Kidnapping, rape, and other personal injury often starts from the chatting or messaging through social networking. This condition urges the parents to inform their children not to talking to the invisible strangers. It includes features of Social network Sites (SNSs) along with the proposed definition that best describe the definition of SNSs. In addition, the article also discusses the key changes and developments.
Name of ArticleCredibilityAccurateReliabilityRelevanceDateSourceScopeSocial network sites Definition, history, and scholarshipCredible as it published in peer-reviewed journalAccurateThe article cross reference several other journalsRelevance to the discussion of social networking sites2007Journal of Computer-Mediated CommunicationFeatures, proposed definition, key changes, and developmentsMe media How hanging out on the Internet became big businessCredible as it cross-reference previous researchAccurate with limited objectsReliable for becoming the sources for further researchRelevance to the discussion of history of recent development of online communities2006The New YorkerHistory of the invention of facebook etcDont talk to invisible strangersCredible as it is published in leading magazinesMedium as it is not peer-reviewed articleQuite reliable Relevance to the discussion of perils of online communities to the children2006New York Times magazinePerils of social networking sitesonline communities
Conclusion
Concerning the online community, this paper has discussed history of online communities, which include the history and development, type of online communities, and examples of social networking strategy and website features especially facebook in developing their online communities. As the most growing application is social networking, this paper also put emphasis on the discussion of social networking sites.
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