An online/virtual community encompasses the economic, political, social, and cultural dimensions of community. As defined by Rheingold’s (1993), virtual communities are "social aggregations that emerge from the [Internet] when enough people carry on those public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace.” (Fernback, 2007)
Virtual communities may resemble "real life" communities in the sense that support is available, often in specialized relationships. However, virtual communities also, differ from "real life" communities, in the basis upon which participants perceive their relationships to be intimate. People on the Net have a greater tendency to base their feelings of closeness on the basis of shared interests rather than on the basis of shared social characteristics such as gender and socioeconomic status. So they are probably relatively homogeneous in their interests and attitudes just as they are probably relatively heterogeneous in the participants' age, social class, ethnicity, life cycle stage and other aspects of their social backgrounds. The homogeneous interests of virtual community participants may be fostering relatively high levels of empathetic understanding and mutual support. (1996)
Thus, after discussing the characteristics of a virtual community and the reasons for people to look for friends online, I feel that Twitter qualifies for an upcoming and exceptional, online community. To join Twitter, one simply needs to fill the online form with personal details and information, like interests, hobbies etc. Doing so, I realized it was very basic and easy to follow the instructions needed, to set it up and start conversations by adding my classmates.
People in virtual communities, like Twitter, use words on screens to exchange pleasantries and argue, engage in intellectual discourse, conduct commerce, exchange knowledge, share emotional support, make plans, brainstorm, gossip, feud, fall in love, find friends and lose them, play games, flirt, create a little high art and a lot of idle talk. (Fernback, 2007)
Twitter, for instance, is for staying in touch and keeping up with friends no matter where you are or what you’re doing. For some friends you might want instant mobile updates—for others, you can just check the web. (Twitter, 2007) One can invite one’s friends to Twitter to keep in touch and for groups. The topics of conversation on such virtual communities can range from the political (feminist groups etc), technical (computer hardware and software groups), to the social (abuse recovery groups, singles groups) and recreational (book reviews, hobby groups, sexual fantasy groups). (1996) The use of anonymity and pseudonymity is common when one makes new friends or adds old ones on Twitter. These nicknames are used purely for privacy reasons.
I feel that, there are several things that make Twitter unique from other virtual communities. For instance, when you send in a mobile text (SMS), Twitter sends it out to your group of friends and posts it to your Twitter page. Also, if your friends do not have phone alerts turned on, they may check the message on your web page instead. Likewise, you receive your friend’s mobile updates on your phone. Another thing I found interesting, differing from other communities like Friendster was, Twitter’s live updates. “Updating live every two minutes or right now,” is what is mentioned as you open the Twitter page, which is very fascinating and it can result in instant conversations. (Twitter, 2007)
In conclusion, personally, I would just like to add, that Twitter is an excellent online community and I feel that with its unique features, it will surely overtake the other virtual communities in terms of popularity and frequent usage. However, one should be careful and should protect their personal information online as identity deception is growing steadily and caution is better than regret.
Reference:
Fernback, J., & Thompson, B. (n. d.). “Virtual Communities: Abort, Retry, Failure?” [On-line]. Retrieved March 15, 2007 from the World Wide Web: http://www.rheingold.com/texts/techpolitix/VCcivil.html
Wellman, B., & Gulia, M. (1996). “Net Surfers don’t ride alone” [On-line]. Retrieved March 15, 2007 from the World Wide Web: http://www.acm.org/%7Eccp/references/wellman/wellman.html
Twitter. (2007). [On-line]. Retrieved March 15, 2007 from the World Wide Web: http://twitter.com/faq
No comments:
Post a Comment