NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Virtual community

A virtual community, e-community or online community is a group of people that primarily interact via communication media such as letters, telephone, email or Usenet rather than face to face. If the mechanism is a computer network, it is called an online community. Virtual and online communities have also become a supplemental form of communication between people who know each other primarily in real life. Many means are used in social software separately or in combination, including text-based chatrooms and forums that use voice, video text or avatars. Significant socio-technical change may have resulted from the proliferation of such Internet-based social networks.^[1] In sociology, a group is usually defined as a collection of humans or animals, who share certain characteristics, interact with one another, accept expectations and obligations as members of the group, and share a common identity. ... This article is about letter, a written message from one party to another. ... For other uses, see Telephone (disambiguation). ... E-mail, or email, is short for electronic mail and is a method of composing, sending, and receiving messages over electronic communication systems. ... Usenet (USEr NETwork) is a global, decentralized, distributed Internet discussion system that evolved from a general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name. ... Computer networks may be classified according to the network layer at which they operate according to some basic reference models that are considered to be standards in the industry such as the seven layer OSI reference model and the four layer Internet Protocol Suite model. ... It has been suggested that History of social software be merged into this article or section. ... See Avatar (disambiguation) for other meanings. ... Not to be confused with social network services such as MySpace, etc. ...

The agglomeration of all online communities is sometimes called the metaverse. The term metaverse comes from Neal Stephensonâ€™s 1992 novel Snow Crash, and is now widely used to describe the vision behind current work on fully immersive 3D virtual spaces. ...

Overview

The idea that media could generate a community is a new idea. In the 17th-century, scholars associated with the Royal Society of London formed a community through the exchange of letters.^[2] Community without propinquity, coined by urban planner Melvin Webber in 1963 and "community liberated," analyzed by Barry Wellman in 1979 began the modern era of thinking about non-local community.^[3] As well, Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities described how different technologies, such as national newspapers, contributed to the development of national and regional consciousness among early nation-states. ^[4] As a means of recording the passage of time, the 17th century was that century which lasted from 1601-1700 in the Gregorian calendar. ... For other uses, see Royal Society (disambiguation). ... Melvin M Webber (1921-2006) was an urban designer and theorist associated for most of his career with the University of California at Berkeley but whose work was internationally important. ... Year 1963 (MCMLXIII) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Also: 1979 by Smashing Pumpkins. ... The Imagined Community is a concept coined by Benedict Anderson which states that a nation is socially constructed and ultimately imagined by the people who perceive themselves as part of that group. ...

The term "community", when used to describe virtual communities, is contentious in some circles. The traditional definition of a community is of a geographically circumscribed entity (neighborhoods, villages, etc). Virtual communities, of course, are usually dispersed geographically, and therefore are not communities under the original definition. However, if one considers communities to simply possess boundaries of some sort between their members and non-members, then a virtual community is certainly a community. The idea of neatly bounded communities is also being critiqued, since communities are fluid just as much as they are static, with members joining and leaving and even being part of different communities simultaneously.^[5]

The term virtual community is attributed to the book of the same title by Howard Rheingold, published in 1993. The book discussed his adventures on The WELL and onward into a range of computer-mediated communication and social groups. The technologies included Usenet, MUDs (Multi-User Dungeon) and their derivatives MUSHes and MOOs, IRC (Internet Relay Chat), chat rooms and electronic mailing lists; the World Wide Web as we know it today was not yet used by many people. Rheingold pointed out the potential benefits for personal psychological well-being, as well as for society at large, of belonging to such a group. Howard Rheingold at the Ars Electronica in 2004 Howard Rheingold (born July 7, 1947) is a leading thinker and writer on the cultural, social and political implications of modern communications media such as the Internet, mobile telephony and virtual communities (a term he is credited with inventing). ... Year 1993 (MCMXCIII) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display full 1993 Gregorian calendar). ... Look up well in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Usenet (USEr NETwork) is a global, decentralized, distributed Internet discussion system that evolved from a general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name. ... This article is about a type of online computer game. ... The login screen from M*U*S*H, the centre of development for PennMUSH. A MUSH (sometimes said to be an abbreviation for Multi-User Shared Hack, Habitat, Holodeck, or Hallucination, though these are backronyms) is a text-based online social medium to which multiple users are connected at the... Look up moo in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... â€œIRCâ€ redirects here. ... A chat room or chatroom is a term used primarily by mass media to describe any form of synchronous conferencing, occasionally even asynchronous conferencing. ... An electronic mailing list, a type of Internet forum, is a special usage of e-mail that allows for widespread distribution of information to many Internet users. ... WWWs historical logo designed by Robert Cailliau The World Wide Web (commonly shortened to the Web) is a system of interlinked, hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. ...

Rheingold’s Virtual Community could be compared with Mark Granovetter’s ground-breaking "strength of weak ties" article published twenty years earlier in the American Journal of Sociology. Rheingold translated, practiced and published Granovetter’s conjectures about strong and weak ties in the online world. His comment on the first page even illustrates the social networks in the virtual society: “My seven year old daughter knows that her father congregates with a family of invisible friends who seem to gather in his computer. Sometimes he talks to them, even if nobody else can see them. And she knows that these invisible friends sometimes show up in the flesh, materializing from the next block or the other side of the world.” (page 1). Indeed, in his revised version of Virtual Community, Rheingold goes so far to say that had he read Barry Wellman's work earlier, he would have called his book "online social networks". American Journal of Sociology (AJS) is one of the most important scientific journals in the field of sociology and the first U.S. scholarly journal in its field. ... Barry Wellman directs NetLab as a professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto. ... Not to be confused with social network services such as MySpace, etc. ...

A virtual community still does not have a universal definition. Rheingold’s definition contains the terms “social aggregation and personal relationships” (pp3). Lipnack & Stamps (1997) and Mowshowitz (1997) point out how virtual communities can work across space, time and organizational boundaries; Lipnack & Stamps (1997) mention a common purpose; and Lee, Eom, Jung and Kim (2004) introduce "desocialization" which means that there is less frequent interaction with humans in traditional settings, eg. an increase in virtual socialization. Calhoun (1991) presents a dystopia argument, asserting the impersonality of virtual networks. He argues that IT has a negative influence on offline interaction between individuals because virtual life takes over our lives. He believes that it also creates different personalities in people which can cause frictions in offline and online communities and groups and in personal contacts. However, more than a decade of research has not supported Calhoun's arguments. (Wellman & Haythornthwaite, 2002). A dystopia (or alternatively cacotopia) is a fictional society, usually portrayed as existing in a future time, when the conditions of life are extremely bad due to deprivation, oppression, or terror. ...

A virtual community is a social network with a common interest, idea, task or goal that interact in a virtual society across time, geographical and organizational boundaries and is able to develop personal relationships. Not to be confused with social network services such as MySpace, etc. ...

Different virtual communities have different levels of interaction and participation among their members. This ranges from adding comments or tags to a blog or message board post to competing against other people in online video games such as MMORPGs. Not unlike traditional social groups or clubs, virtual communities often divide into cliques or even separate to form new communities. Author Amy Jo Kim points out a potential difference between traditional structured online communities (message boards, chat rooms, etc), and more individual-centric, bottom-up social tools (blogs, instant messaging buddy lists), and suggests the latter are gaining in popularity. An image from World of Warcraft, one of the largest commercial MMORPGs as of 2004, based on active subscriptions. ... Amy Jo Kim is an American author and researcher on the subject of online communities. ...

Today, virtual community or online community is used for a variety of social groups interacting via the Internet. It does not necessarily mean that there is a strong bond among the members, although Rheingold mentions that virtual communities form "when people carry on public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships" [1]. An email distribution list may have hundreds of members and the communication which takes place may be merely informational (questions and answers are posted), but members may remain relative strangers and the membership turnover rate could be high. This is in line with the liberal use of the term community. A community is a social group of organisms sharing an environment, normally with shared interests. ...

Virtual communities may synthesize Web 2.0 technologies with the community, and therefore have been described as Community 2.0, although strong community bonds have been forged online since the early days of USENET. Virtual communities depend upon social interaction and exchange between users online. This emphasizes the reciprocity element of the unwritten social contract between community members. Web 2.0 is essentially characterized by virtual communities such as Flickr, Facebook, and Del.icio.us. A similar trend is starting to emerge within businesses where online or virtual communities are taking hold. These communities can be organizational, regional or topical depending on the business. From a technical perspective, software tools abound to create and nurture these communities including Yahoo Groups, Google Groups, and Microsoft Sharepoint. Web 2. ... Usenet (USEr NETwork) is a global, decentralized, distributed Internet discussion system that evolved from a general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name. ... This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... John Lockes writings on the Social Contract were particularly influential among the American Founding Fathers. ... Flickr is a photo sharing website and web services suite, and an online community platform, which is generally considered an early example of a Web 2. ... Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto, CA Facebook is a social networking website that allows people to communicate with their friends and exchange information. ... The website del. ... Yahoo! Groups Yahoo! Groups is an electronic mailing list service provided by Yahoo!. Over the years, Yahoo! bought several other mailing list providers, including the popular eGroups, and combined them with Yahoo! Clubs into one system. ... Google Groups is a free groups and mailing list service from Google. ... The term SharePoint can refer to any of three pairs of Microsoft software products which were released in the same timeframe: In 2001: SharePoint Team Services (STS) which ran on Windows 2000 Server and was in effect Windows SharePoint Services version 1. ...

The ability to interact with like-minded individuals instantaneously from anywhere on the globe has considerable benefits, but virtual communities have bred some fear and criticism. Virtual communities can serve as dangerous hunting grounds for online criminals, such as identity thieves and stalkers, with children particularly at risk. Others fear that spending too much time in virtual communities may have negative repercussions on real-world interaction (see Internet addiction disorder). Identity theft is a term first appearing in U.S. literature in the 1990s, leading to the drafting of the Identity Theft and Assumption Deterrence Act. ... Look up Stalker in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Internet addiction disorder (IAD) is a theorized disorder originally made as a satirical hoax[1] by Ivan Goldberg, M.D., in 1995. ...

The explosive diffusion of the Internet since the mid-1990s has also fostered the proliferation of virtual communities. The nature of those communities is diverse, and the benefits that Rheingold envisioned are not necessarily realized, or pursued, by many. At the same time, it is rather commonplace to see anecdotes of someone in need of special help or in search of a community benefiting from the use of the Internet.

Membership life cycle for virtual communities

A membership life cycle for online communities was proposed by Amy Jo Kim (2000). It states that members of virtual communities begin their life in a community as visitors, or lurkers. After breaking through a barrier, people become novices and participate in community life. After contributing for a sustained period of time they become regulars. If they break through another barrier they become leaders, and once they have contributed to the community for some time they become elders. This life cycle can be applied to many virtual communities, most obviously to bulletin boards, but also to blogs and wiki-based communities like Wikipedia. In Internet culture, a lurker is a person who reads discussions on a message board, newsgroup, chatroom, file sharing or other interactive system, but rarely participates. ... A bulletin board system or BBS is a computer system running software that allows users to dial into the system over a phone line and, using a terminal program, perform functions such as downloading software and data, uploading data, reading news, and exchanging messages with other users. ... It has been suggested that Online diary be merged into this article or section. ... Look up Wiki in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Wikipedia (IPA: , or ( ) is a multilingual, web-based, free content encyclopedia project, operated by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization. ...

Legitimate peripheral participation

Lave and Wengers' theories on situated cognition can illustrate the cycle of how users become incorporated into virtual communities using the principles of legitimate peripheral participation. They define five types of trajectories amongst a learning community:

The following shows the correlation between the learning trajectories and Web 2.0 community participation.

Learning trajectory — online community participation

Peripheral (Lurker) – Observing the community and viewing content. Does not add to the community content or discussion The user occasionally goes onto YouTube.com to check out a video that someone has directed them to.

Inbound (Newbie) – Just beginning to engage the community. Starts to provide content. Tentatively interacts in a few discussions The user comments on other user’s videos. Potentially posts a video of their own.

Insider (Regular) – Consistently adds to the community discussion and content. Interacts with other users. Regularly posts videos. Either videos they have found or made themselves. Makes a concerted effort to comment and rate other user’s videos.

Boundary (Moderator/ Expert) – Recognized as a veteran participant. Connects with regulars to make higher concepts ideas. Community grants their opinion greater consideration. The user has become recognized as a contributor to watch. Possibly their videos are podcasts commenting on the state of YouTube and its community. The user would not consider watching another user’s videos without commenting on them. Will often correct a user in behavior the community considers inappropriate. Will reference other user’s videos in their comments as a way to cross link content.

Outbound (Legacy) – Leaves the community for a variety of reasons. Interests have changed. Community has moved in a direction that doesn’t agree with. Lack of time. User got a new job that takes up too much time to maintain a constant presence in the community. That and the YouTube culture seems to be drifting to a corporate commercial endorsement model rather than a social, grassroots platform that it once was.

Increasing participation in virtual communities

Several motivations lead people to contribute to virtual communities. Various online media (i.e. Wikis, Blogs, Chat rooms, Internet forums, Electronic mailing lists) are becoming ever greater knowledge-sharing resources. Many of these communities are highly cooperative and establish their own unique culture. They also involve significant time from contributors with no monetary gain. Some key examples of online knowledge sharing infrastructures include the following: A Wiki or wiki (pronounced wicky, weekee, or veekee; see pronunciation section below) is a website (or other hypertext document collection) that allows users to add content, as on an Internet forum, but also allows anyone to edit the content. ... It has been suggested that Online diary be merged into this article or section. ... A chat room is an online forum where people can chat online (talk by broadcasting messages to people on the same forum in real time). ... An Internet forum, also known as a message board or discussion board, is a web application that provides for online discussions, and is the modern descendant of the bulletin board systems and existing Usenet news systems that were widespread in the 1980s and 1990s. ... Electronic mailing lists are a special usage of email that allows for widespread distribution of information to many Internet users. ... A community is a social group of organisms sharing an environment, normally with shared interests. ... For other uses, see Culture (disambiguation). ...

Several researchers have investigated motivation in virtual communities. Studies show that over the long term users gain a greater insight into the material that is being discussed and a sense of connection to the world at large. Usenet (USEr NETwork) is a global, decentralized, distributed Internet discussion system that evolved from a general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name. ... Look up well in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... For other uses, see AOL (disambiguation). ... The AOL Community Leader Program or AOL CLP was the official name for the large group of volunteers who moderated chat rooms, message boards, and download libraries. ... Slashdot, often abbreviated as /.[1], is a science, science fiction, and technology-related news website owned by SourceForge, Inc. ... Wikipedia (IPA: , or ( ) is a multilingual, web-based, free content encyclopedia project, operated by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization. ...

Kollock's framework

Peter Kollock (1999) researched motivations for contributing to online communities. In "The Economies of Online Cooperation: Gifts and Public Goods in Cyberspace", he outlines three motivations (Kollock:227) that do not rely on altruistic behavior on the part of the contributor:

There is another motivation, implicit in the above, which Mark Smith mentions in his 1992 thesis: Voices from the WELL: The Logic of the Virtual Commons:

Sense of community (or psychological sense of community) is a concept in social psychology (or more narrowly, in community psychology), which focuses on the experience of community rather than its structure, formation, setting, or other features. ... The scope of social psychological research. ...

Anticipated reciprocity

A person is motivated to contribute valuable information to the group in the expectation that one will receive useful help and information in return. Indeed, there is evidence that active participants in online communities get more responses faster to questions than unknown participants (Kollock 178).

Increased recognition

Recognition is important to online contributors such that, in general, individuals want recognition for their contributions. Some have called this Egoboo. Kollock outlines the importance of reputation online: “Rheingold (1993) in his discussion of the WELL (an early online community) lists the desire for prestige as one of the key motivations of individuals’ contributions to the group. To the extent this is the concern of an individual, contributions will likely be increased to the degree that the contribution is visible to the community as a whole and to the extent there is some recognition of the person’s contributions. … the powerful effects of seemingly trivial markers of recognition (e.g. being designated as an “official helper”) has been commented on in a number of online communities…” As Thought Process During the process of thinking, recognition occurs when some event, process, pattern, or object recurs. ... Egoboo is the rush received from public recognition of a free contribution, possibly derived from ego boost. The term is used to describe the motivational incentive for programmer participation within the open source movement and for volunteer participation in science fiction fandom. ...

One of the key ingredients of encouraging a reputation is to allow contributors to be known or not to be anonymous. The following example, from Meyers (1989) study of the computer underground illustrates the power of reputation. When involved in illegal activities, computer hackers must protect their personal identities with pseudonyms. If hackers use the same nicknames repeatedly, this can help the authorities to trace them. Nevertheless, hackers are reluctant to change their pseudonyms regularly because the status associated with a particular nickname would be lost.

Profiles and reputation are clearly evident in online communities today. Amazon.com is a case in point, as all contributors are allowed to create profiles about themselves and as their contributions are measured by the community, their reputation increases. Myspace.com encourages elaborate profiles for members where they can share all kinds of information about themselves including what music they like, their heroes, etc. In addition to this, many communities give incentives for contributing. For example, many forums award you points for posting. Members can spend these points in a virtual store. eBay is an example of an online community where reputation is very important because it is used to measure the trustworthiness of someone you potentially will do business with. With eBay, you have the opportunity to rate your experience with someone and they, likewise, can rate you. This has an effect on the reputation score. Amazon. ... MySpace is a social networking website offering an interactive, user-submitted network of friends, personal profiles, blogs, groups, photos, music, and videos. ... This article is about the online auction center. ...

Sense of efficacy

Individuals may contribute valuable information because the act results in a sense of efficacy, that is, a sense that they have had some effect on this environment. There is well-developed research literature that has shown how important a sense of efficacy is (e.g. Bandura 1995), and making regular and high quality contributions to the group can help individuals believe that they have an impact on the group and support their own self-image as an efficacious person. Albert Bandura (born 4 20 1925 in Mundare, Canada), a Ball Licker, is best known for his work on nut sack and on self-efficacy. ...

Wikipedia is a good example of an online community that gives contributors a sense of efficacy. Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia which uses online software to enable anyone to create new articles and change any article in the encyclopedia. The changes you make are immediate, obvious, and available to the world.

Sense of community

People, in general, are fairly social beings and it is motivating to many people to receive direct responses to their contributions. Most online communities enable this by allowing people to reply back to contributions (i.e. many Blogs allow comments from readers, one can reply back to forum posts, etc). Again, using Amazon.com, other users can rate whether one's product review was helpful or not. Granted, there is some overlap between increasing reputation and gaining a sense of community. However, it seems safe to say that there are some overlapping areas between all four motivators. It has been suggested that Online diary be merged into this article or section. ...

Bishop's framework

A problem for providers of online communities is some of their members will not participate through posting messages. These members do not participate for a number of reasons, including that they believe they did not need to post and that they believe they are being helpful by not doing so. Other community members that have been participating for a long time, known as elders, regularly participate because they believe that their actions will have positive outcomes. Previous attempts to understand why community members participate or do not participate has suggested that individuals are needs-driven or goal driven. Maslow's Hierarchical needs theory has suggested that the reason lurkers do not participate is that 'lower needs' are not being met, or 'higher needs' are being met elsewhere and that the reason elders do participate is that they are meeting their 'higher needs'. Abraham Maslow (April 1, 1908 – June 8, 1970) was a psychologist. ...

Theories that suggest that individuals are needs-driven and so-called needs are met in the order of a hierarchy are not suitable for online communities. It is quite likely that community members will desire to do two things at the same time, something that needs-based theories do not take into account. Theories that suggest that individuals are goal-driven are more appropriate for online communities as users will develop and change goals based on their interactions in an online community. However, these theories are not entirely appropriate for explaining why some individuals desire to participate in an online community, but do not actually do so.

Virtual community pioneer Jonathan Bishop proposed an alternative framework for understanding such behaviours (see Bishop, 2007), which is based on the principles that individuals are driven to action by desires, these desires lead to plans that need to be consonant with their existing plans as well as their goals, values and beliefs, and how they carry out an action will depend on their interpretation of their environment. Some online community members, such as lurkers, believe that they do not need to post messages to online communities or believe that they are being helpful by not posting. Such beliefs prevent these individuals from carrying out their desires to be social and participate in the community. Bishop argues that online community providers should attempt to change these beliefs, even if it creates a degree of Cognitive dissonance with the individual's cognitions. The use of persuasive text is the main means by which an individual's beliefs can be challenged, though providing alternative information to the beliefs that the individual holds whilst not being consonant with an actor’s goals. Challenging these beliefs may lead to the individual increasing their participation in online communities through allowing them to act out their desires. Jonathan Bishop is a British researcher and political activist, based in Pontypridd in Wales. ... Cognitive dissonance is a psychological term which describes the uncomfortable tension that may result from having two conflicting thoughts at the same time, or from engaging in behavior that conflicts with ones beliefs. ...

Virtual community design

Below are some guidelines that can be of use when trying to design an online community or foster a better knowledge sharing environment in your organization:

Online community virtuous cycle

Most online communities grow slowly at first, due in part to the fact that the strength of motivation for contributing is usually proportional to the size of the community. As the size of the potential audience increases, so does the attraction of writing and contributing. This, coupled with the fact that organizational culture does not change overnight, means creators can expect slow progress at first with a new virtual community. As more people begin to participate, however, the aforementioned motivations will increase, creating a virtuous cycle in which more participation begets more participation. It can be likened to a network, whereby the network's value is directly proportional to the square of the number of users it has. Many online community members describe their participation as "addictive". Metcalfes law states that the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of users of the system (n2). ... The Bass diffusion model was developed by Frank Bass and describes the process how new products get adopted as an interaction between users and potential users. ...

The growth in community adoption is often forecast (that is, estimating the number of users in the community) by use of the Bass diffusion model, a mathematical formula originally conceived by Frank Bass to describe the process by which new products get adopted as an interaction between users and potential users. The Bass diffusion model was developed by Frank Bass and describes the process how new products get adopted as an interaction between users and potential users. ... Prof Dr. Frank M. Bass is a leading academic in the field of operations research, and is considered to be among the founders of Marketing science. ...

Benchmark virtual communities

Usenet (USEr NETwork) is a global, decentralized, distributed Internet discussion system that evolved from a general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name. ... â€œBBSâ€ redirects here. ... Look up well in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... For other uses, see Genie (disambiguation). ... The DRS flag includes a smiley emoticon (symbolizing computers) and a star (symbolizing the Lone Star State of Texas) where the group was founded in 1991 The Dead Runners Society (DRS) is a worldwide online running club. ... The Meta Network is an online community dedicated to learning and creative freedom. ... A Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) is a system that creates an environment designed to facilitate teachers in the management of educational courses for their students, especially a system using computer hardware and software, especially involving distance learning. ... Usenet (USEr NETwork) is a global, decentralized, distributed Internet discussion system that evolved from a general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... LiveJournal (often abbreviated LJ) is a virtual community where Internet users can keep a blog, journal, or diary. ... Xanga (IPA: [zÃ¦Å‹gÉ™]) is a website that hosts weblogs, photoblogs, and social networking profiles. ... MySpace is a social networking website offering an interactive, user-submitted network of friends, personal profiles, blogs, groups, photos, music, and videos. ... Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto, CA Facebook is a social networking website that allows people to communicate with their friends and exchange information. ... Blogger is a blog publishing system. ... Webcomics, also known as online comics and internet comics, are comics that are available to read on the Internet. ... For the concept in software engineering, see user-friendliness. ... Penny Arcade is a webcomic and blog written by Jerry Holkins and illustrated by Mike Krahulik. ... Sluggy Freelance is a popular, long-running webcomic written and drawn by Pete Abrams. ... This article is about Ctrl+Alt+Del, the webcomic. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Habitat was an early and technologically influentual online role-playing game developed by Lucasfilm Games and made available as a beta test in 1987 by Quantum Link, an online service for the Commodore 64 computer and the corporate progenitor to America Online. ... This article is about a virtual world. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Red Light Center (RLC) is a privately owned Massively Multi-User Reality (sm) site that was made available to the public early in 2006 by Utherverse, Inc. ... IMVU is a graphical instant messaging client with more than 1 million users. ... // Instant messaging (IM) is a form of real-time communication between two or more people based on typed text. ... ICQ is an instant messaging computer program, owned by Time Warners AOL subsidiary. ... â€œY!Mâ€ redirects here. ... For the old versions of this software called MSN Messenger, see MSN Messenger. ... AIM is a three-letter abbreviation with multiple meanings, as described below: AOL Instant Messenger A I M Management Group Inc. ... â€œIRCâ€ redirects here. ... IRC Abjects â€¢ AbleNET â€¢ AfterNET â€¢ Aitvaras â€¢ AusIRC â€¢ AustIRC â€¢ AustNet â€¢ Blitzed â€¢ BRASnet â€¢ DALnet â€¢ Delinked â€¢ DeltaAnime â€¢ EFnet â€¢ EsperNet â€¢ freenode â€¢ Gamma Force â€¢ GamesNET â€¢ GameSurge â€¢ IRCHighway â€¢ IRCnet â€¢ LinkNet â€¢ NetGamers â€¢ Open and Free Technology Community â€¢ QuakeNet Rizon â€¢ SlashNET â€¢ UKChatterbox â€¢ UniBG â€¢ Undernet â€¢ ZiRC EFnet or Eris Free network is a major IRC network, with over 70,000... An image from World of Warcraft, one of the largest commercial MMORPGs as of 2004, based on active subscriptions. ... EverQuest (or colloquially, EQ) is a 3D fantasy-themed massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) that was released on March 16, 1999. ... Final Fantasy XI ), also known as Final Fantasy XI: Online, is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game developed and published by Square (now Square Enix) as a part of the Final Fantasy video game series. ... RuneScape is a Java-based MMORPG operated by Jagex Ltd. ... World of Warcraft (commonly abbreviated as WoW) is a massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) developed by Blizzard Entertainment and is the fourth game in the Warcraft series, excluding expansion packs and the cancelled Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans. ... Silkroad Online (also known as SRO or Silk) is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) which was recently in beta testing, but went gold on February 21st and is free forever. ... Look up moo in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... LambdaMOO is an online community of the variety called a MOO. It is the oldest and most active MOO today, with just under 3000 regular members. ... MoSoSo, or mobile social software, is software -- generally on a mobile phone or on a laptop computer -- that facilitates social encounters, or mobile social networking by associating geographical location and time with ones own social network. ... For the 2004 film, see Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story. ... Meetro is a multi-network instant messenger with location-based services (LBS). ... This article is about a type of online computer game. ... The login screen from M*U*S*H, the centre of development for PennMUSH. A MUSH (sometimes said to be an abbreviation for Multi-User Shared Hack, Habitat, Holodeck, or Hallucination, though these are backronyms) is a text-based online social medium to which multiple users are connected at the... TinyMUD is the name both of a certain implementation of a Multi-User Dungeon server, and the first MUD run using that implementation. ... File sharing is the practice of making files available for other users to download over the Internet and smaller networks. ... Kazaa Media Desktop (once capitalized as KaZaA, but now usually left as Kazaa) is a peer-to-peer file sharing application using the FastTrack protocol. ... Morpheus is the name of a file sharing peer to peer client for Microsoft Windows, operated by the company StreamCast, that originally used the OpenNAP and P2P platform. ... Napster was a file sharing service that paved the way for decentralized P2P file-sharing programs such as Kazaa, Limewire, iMesh, Morpheus, and BearShare, which are now used for many of the same reasons and can download music, pictures, and other files. ... LimeWire is a peer-to-peer file sharing client for the Java Platform, which uses the Gnutella network to locate and share files. ... Look up Wiki in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Wikipedia (IPA: , or ( ) is a multilingual, web-based, free content encyclopedia project, operated by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization. ... WikiWikiWeb The WikiWikiWeb, or simply WikiWiki or Wiki (with a capital W), is the first ever wiki, written in Perl. ... MeatballWiki is a wiki dedicated to online communities, culture and hypermedia. ... Wetpaint is a wiki hosting service (or wiki farm) founded in October 2005. ... PeanutButterWiki or pbwiki is a commercial wiki farm run by David Weekly. ... WorldWideWeb was the worlds first web browser and WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) HTML editor. ... This article is about the online auction center. ... Yahoo! GeoCities is a free webhosting service founded by David Bohnett and John Rezner in late 1994 as Beverly Hills Internet. ... Slashdot, often abbreviated as /.[1], is a science, science fiction, and technology-related news website owned by SourceForge, Inc. ... Digg is a community-based popularity website with an emphasis on technology and science articles, recently expanding to a broader range of categories such as politics and entertainment. ... This article is about the online auction center. ... Amazon. ...

Additional virtual community listings

Discussion boards

The DRS flag includes a smiley emoticon (symbolizing computers) and a star (symbolizing the Lone Star State of Texas) where the group was founded in 1991 The Dead Runners Society (DRS) is a worldwide online running club. ... GameFAQs is a website that hosts FAQs and walkthroughs for video games. ... Offtopic redirects here. ... Something Awful, often abbreviated to SA, is a comedy website and forum housing a wide variety of content, including feature articles, digitally edited pictures, and humorous media reviews. ... Screenshot Fark. ... â€œDQNâ€ redirects here. ... Front page of Guardian Unlimited Guardian Unlimited is a British website owned by the Guardian Media Group. ... The official logo of the Zombie Squad organization. ... For other uses, see IGN (disambiguation). ... TOTSE (IPA: , commonly mispronounced as IPA: and IPA: ) is a San Francisco Bay Area website and former BBS. The name is an acronym for Temple of the Screaming Electron. // TOTSE was started by Jeff Hunter (a founding member of NIRVANAnet)[specify] in 1989 as a dial-up BBS originally named...

Social networking

Art communities

GOOGLE is a popular website based in Toronto, Ontario that posts humorous and artistic member-submitted digital media. ... deviantART is an international online artistic community. ... The Elfwood Logo. ... Newgrounds is a website headquartered in Glenside, Pennsylvania, USA and created in 1995 that primarily hosts Adobe Flash animated films and games. ...

Product-Oriented Online Communities

Some companies sponsor online discussion groups to facilitate online networking and consumer discourse. Many are not true communities, because there is no commitment or interpersonal connectivity. However, some do inspire such community, especially when developed by aficionados who are independent of the sponsoring company. One set of such communities is the

MUD, MUSH, MOO

GemStone IV is the current title of a text-based (MUD) realtime online role-playing game produced by Simutronics. ... ifMUD is a MUD associated with the rec. ...

Ethnicity-based communities

Fillos de Galicia is a web portal which focuses on Galician culture and diaspora. ... The current logo of mitbbs. ...

Other types

Bianca. ... The website del. ... VMIX is a free video sharing and online community dedicated to the creation and sharing of video clips and slideshows. ... // GameTZ.com logo. ... The CouchSurfing Project is a free international Internet-based hospitality service. ... An unofficial Hospitality Club logo represents two people with arms over each others shoulders in friendship and waving for you to join them in the shape of the letters HC. It was designed in 2004 by Canadian Glenn Gobuyan in a style reminiscent of cave paintings to illustrate that... Meetup. ... Meetro is a multi-network instant messenger with location-based services (LBS). ... Stumbling redirects here. ... YTMND, an initialism for Youre The Man Now Dog, is an online community centered around the creation of hosted web pages (known within the community as YTMNDs) featuring a juxtaposition of a single image or a simple slideshow, which may be animated and/or tiled along with optional large... A collaborative blog is a type of weblog which publishes posts written by multiple users. ... TakingITGlobal. ...

Virtual community pioneers and experts

Danah Boyd at the Web 2. ... Jonathan Bishop is a British researcher and political activist, based in Pontypridd in Wales. ... Julian Dibbell is a technology journalist with a particular interest in social systems within online communities. ... Vanessa DiMauro (b. ... F. Randall Randy Farmer is a respected pioneer in creating online communities. ... Amy Jo Kim is an American author and researcher on the subject of online communities. ... Jenny Preece is the dean of the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland, as of 2006. ... Theodor Holm Nelson is an American sociologist, philosopher, and pioneer of information technology. ... Professor Sheizaf Rafaeli (×©×™×–×£ ×¨×¤××œ×™), Israel (B.A., Haifa University, M.A. Ohio State University, M.A., Ph. ... Howard Rheingold at the Ars Electronica in 2004 Howard Rheingold (born July 7, 1947) is a leading thinker and writer on the cultural, social and political implications of modern communications media such as the Internet, mobile telephony and virtual communities (a term he is credited with inventing). ... Philip Rosedale at the Web 2. ... Sherry Turkle (born 1948) is a clinical psychologist and a professor of Science, Technology and Society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. ... Barry Wellman directs NetLab as a professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto. ... Nick Yee is the author of: Befriending Ogres and Wood Elves Will a Gay Gene Get Us Anywhere? Catching The Phoenix: The Social Construction of Homosexuality See: homosexuality, gay sex Homosexuality is a choice Everquest, MUD ...

Contents

Overview

Membership life cycle for virtual communities

Legitimate peripheral participation

Learning trajectory — online community participation

Increasing participation in virtual communities

Kollock's framework

Anticipated reciprocity

Increased recognition

Sense of efficacy

Sense of community

Bishop's framework

Virtual community design

Online community virtuous cycle

Benchmark virtual communities

Additional virtual community listings

Discussion boards

Social networking

Art communities

Product-Oriented Online Communities

MUD, MUSH, MOO

Ethnicity-based communities

Other types

Virtual community pioneers and experts

See also

Notes

Further reading

References and external links

Contents

Overview GA_googleFillSlot("encyclopedia_square");

Membership life cycle for virtual communities

Legitimate peripheral participation

Learning trajectory — online community participation

Increasing participation in virtual communities

Kollock's framework

Anticipated reciprocity

Increased recognition

Sense of efficacy

Sense of community

Bishop's framework

Virtual community design

Online community virtuous cycle

Benchmark virtual communities

Additional virtual community listings

Discussion boards

Social networking

Art communities

Product-Oriented Online Communities

MUD, MUSH, MOO

Ethnicity-based communities

Other types

Virtual community pioneers and experts

See also

Notes

Further reading

References and external links

Overview