Virtual Communities and Social Networking Systems

Virtual communities vary greatly in function and purpose. However, they each entail interaction through an online medium bringing their members together through common interests or situations. One such virtual community is that of news blogging where members of the public sign up to news forums and comment on content of specific news broadcasts (See News.com's official Blog). They comment on the substance of reports whilst discussing with and responding to fellow boggers. This form of blogging is often seen as the direct expression of news audiences providing feedback on which the mainstream media can take on board and make use of (Bruns and Jacobs, 2006).

Other forms of virtual communities are in place primarily as social tools such as MySpace, where individuals give themselves a virtual identity with which they interact with others, sharing files and photos, leaving messages and interacting with new people. This is in essence is a ‘friends’ network, whereby people make form relationships as well as meet people who share similar interests. Aditionally, the expansion and popularity of virtual gaming communities such as Second Life allow for similar interactions between users. Virtual communities and the subsequent online relationships that follow are however blurring the line between real and virtual life.

According to Foth (2006), there are a number of differences that need to be taken into account when building social networking systems for place-based communities as opposed to geographically dispersed communities. As such, Foth has identified that place-based and geographically dispersed communities differ quite significantly. Geographically dispersed online communities are groups of web users who share a common goal, purpose, interest or support need (Foth 2006).  The presence of these unifies the group and motivates users to continually interact. Here the system designers need not focus on why users should interact, but rather how, as a basis of meaningful interaction already exists. This is central to place-based communities, where users live close enough to each other to met up if they wish, but have the immediate common ground of location rather than anything else. The difficulty which must then be taken into account when building social networking systems founded on geographic proximity is fostering interaction not directly related to place but rather interest. Individuals within a place-based environment generally only truly experience meaningful interaction when they find that they share interests, histories, hobbies or jobs etc (Foth, 2006). Without an influential social networking system these meaningful interactions are based on chance rather than intention as roles other than that of neighbour are not obvious in neighbourhoods as they are in geographically dispersed communities.

References

Bruns, A. and J. Jacobs, 2006. Uses of Blogs. New York: Peter Lang.

Foth, M. (2006). Inner-City Neighborhoods: Facilitating Social Networking. QLD: IEEE Computer Society.