Category: Online Community

Executive Summary

The two weeks of actively participate in an online community of practice that deals with sharing different ideas on education across the globe was an awesome experience. The online community, edGlobal: Sharing Education Ideas around the World, is very dynamic. The URL of the site is www.edweb.net/edglobal. The site has a following of more than 300 members. Membership is free upon creating an online account on the site. The site is ideal for an education instructor on teachers interested in understanding different methods of teaching and materials that are necessary to make the education environment lively and healthy. The site is user friendly, very interactive, and allows for open discussions that are collaborative in terms of learning opportunities. I participated in the online forum through personal blogs on instruction methods, education support materials, and strategies for effective teaching of the Arabic language in an elementary class. I also made observations and posted comments on blogs of other members. Generally, my level of engagement can be described as active and participation on the site, edGlobal: Sharing Education Ideas Around the World, was instrumental in understanding proactive learner engagement.

Introduction

Group interaction encompasses interaction among group members in the process of sharing knowledge. Group interaction has its dynamics as each member is expected to contribute to the overall learning objective. Thus, this reflective paper provides an overview of group activities, learning experiences, and group collaboration dynamics in undertaking the group online discussion forum. Specifically, the paper reviews an online community blog called the edGlobal: Sharing Education Ideas Around the World in terms of personal participation, experience, functionality, and lessons learned.

edGlobal: Sharing Education Ideas Around the World

Brief description of the site

The site, edGlobal: Sharing Education Ideas Around the World, is an online learning blog for education professionals interested in learning flexible education initiatives through the exchange of teaching ideas across the globe. The URL of the site is www.edweb.net/edglobal. The online community consists of government officials, administrators, and officials interested in understanding different education concepts and their application in the learning environment (Bernard, Abrami, Lou, Borokhovski, Wade, Wozney, Wallet, Fiset, & Huang, 2004).

The rationale for selecting the site

I selected the site since it has a global following beside a series of good ideas on education. For instance, the members have posted a lot of information on teaching practice, approach, and materials that support open learning. Since I am an Arabic language teacher, I found the site very useful in sharing and grasping new concepts in the classroom environment.

Evaluation of the CoP

Usability

The site is very easy to use since it has a self-explanatory manual for interested members of want to join the forum. Upon creating an account, a user can easily create blogs and post them since the upload and editing buttons as very easy to use. Also, the CoP has the option of uploading different materials as attachments or references for a single blog. Any user who is computer literate would find the site simple since it is modified to accommodate multiple activities on a single page (Allen, 2005). Members’ exposure to the format of online sharing does encourage them to strive to gain a basic user’s proficiency in the field of informational technologies since the site has interesting features.

Interactivity/Sociability

The CoP facilitates the creation of a community among members through encouraging online sharing of education initiatives among parties interested in the topic of global education. The site has a free membership tag and a lot of materials that any targeted member would find interesting. Besides, the CoP has several meaningful collaborative learning opportunities such as direct participation in upcoming events, commenting on different blogs, and making suggestions on each topic or blog posted by a member (Bernard et al. 2004).

Participation and engagement with the CoP

Social presence

I established a social presence in the education blog through the creation of a profile that introduces me as an experienced Arabic language teacher with an interest in sharing education initiatives. After the creation of the profile, I employed the profile booster tool in the site to increase my visibility and identify members with the same interests. This was followed by the creation of a mini group through the invitation of other members to join in my discussion forum (Allen, 2005). After three days of active membership, I was able to track the performance of my posts using the viewership tracker tool. In the end, I managed to create a distinctive presence as an equal contributor to different materials posted on the CoP. Most of the participants had avatar names and real names. The avatar name is meant to enable other users to easily recall resent members who have participated in their blogs.

New member engagement

As a new member, I have deeply involved in building the presence of my profile through invitation and posting of a series of documents, links, and attachments. My nature of participation as a new member was posting a series of short responses and suggestions on blogs of existing members. The first paper I uploaded was on teaching basic Arabic language in an elementary class environment. This was followed by a document outlining a lesson plan that incorporates videos and pictures in teaching. The first response I post was a suggestion to a blog on teaching tools that guarantee good results. I suggested the incorporation of a video available online as part of that blog. I also offered to participate virtually in one of the events that a member sent invitations to the community. I asked for ideas among the community members on the best approach that I may use to teach basic Arabic language under the open forum section. In the two weeks of participation, I was active in providing support for other colleagues through making suggestions on their posts. I was also able to post four documents that attracted several stars and comments. I noticed that a member of the community created a link to my post of teaching the Arabic language as one of her references. The below screenshots summarize my participation.

Details of specific participation

In the CoP, I intend to address the concerns of language teachers in the classroom since in encoding and decoding information, it is critical to balance the concepts and appropriateness of the education strategies. The first post I did was on a lesson plan for teaching the Arabic language in the elementary classroom environment. The lesson was intended to promote audio, visual and interactive learning. Therefore, I critically endeavored to balance the feedback with the goals of the lesson as a remedy towards inclusiveness and active participation (Allen, 2005).

The second post was on factors influencing early childhood learning. The post was meant to describe the process of early childhood learning and relate the same to my interest in teaching the Arabic language. Among the factors, I identified include community services such as support for parenting, housing qualities, community safety and security, unemployment, social crimes, and a general feeling of trust among the residents’ influence children’s growth and development. These coupled with different cultures, parenting styles, beliefs, values, and different perspectives of children influence the development and early childhood development. Understanding these facets puts early childhood development into perspective, thus improving the chances of successful development (Ramage, Bean, & Johnson, 2006).

The third post was on the flexibility of the teaching environment. Notably, the inclusion of bright colors in the learning process is apparent to have attracted the attention of young learners. The level of student engagement was interactive. Free interaction created a suitable learner-centered environment during the 45 minutes lesson. The first instructional variable was the introductory focus which entailed attracting the attention of students. The second variable was linking the topic to the students’ lives. Among the notable comments, I posted online on a similar topic discussed by another member was that a teacher must use visual aids in the delivery of the contents to ensure that theory is supported by the practical learning experience. The décor of the classroom must also be appealing to the level of the learners, especially with bright colors since young learners find it comfortable to study in a warm environment (Ramage, Bean, & Johnson, 2006).

The students must also be taught to be responsible through the concept of rotation of roles among the learners. In the last comment I posted in a discussion appropriate delivery method in a dynamic classroom environment, I argued that a teacher’s delivery of the rules should include the use of personal freedom and control (Allen, 2005). For instance, the learners should be told what they should be able to do and how it should be done. Although students are not involved much in the rulemaking, they must be made to feel that their safety and success is in their hands to ensure that the learning process is healthy (Ramage, Bean, & Johnson, 2006). I also posted several comments in response to initiatives proposed by other members of the community. This is summarized in the screenshot below.

Evaluation of participation

Evaluating the level of engagement

I was very active in the online community discussions across the two weeks. Each day, I posted a comment or response to numerous articles published by other members. I also initiated a discussion with three different articles dwelling on teaching methods that can be applied in the elementary classroom environment. By the end of the period of participation in the online community, I was able to post twenty contributions to the CoP. Despite being a relatively new member, I received several private emails from other members who wanted my input in their posts. Besides, I received an invitation to four discussion boards that are managed by the administrators. As indicated in the online community policy, invitations to such discussion boards are only sent to the most active and resourceful members.

Factors that facilitated or inhibited participation

No factor inhibited my participation since the site was very easy. Several factors facilitated my participation. To begin with, sharing the same education views with other members was a motivating factor towards posting a series of articles on the site. Besides, the CoP was user friendly in terms of the buttons for posting, editing, and performing other duties while participating in the online education community (Knowles, Holton, & Swanson, 2005). The administrators of the online community have optimized the search engine for different documents within the site. Search engine optimization was achieved through installing ‘plugins’ that possess extra features such as page navigation and thumbnail within the website. Specifically, this system consists of a multi-tab page that serves different areas and services to members by a click of a button (Allen, 2005). Besides, optimizing the link referral has the potential of making the users edit and customize the posts at will without having to constant the administrators. The site has also been tailored to include a unique cookie that is transferable to members who join different discussion groups (Ramage, Bean, & Johnson, 2006). The unique cookie for the website is transferred to all primary and secondary visitors of this site hence broadening the spread information among members. These features make the site user friendly and ideal for holding online forums (Knowles, Holton, & Swanson, 2005).

Actions of members that contributed to social presence

More than four members recommended some video and document links to vital materials that may form part of the visual educational initiative. As a result, the links were very instrumental in enhancing my social presence since they formed the basis of my articles and respond to posts by other members.

Overall evaluation practical uses and value addition of the CoP

I observed that the cognitive perspective influences contribution from each member of the group unequivocally for learning at the individual level while the cultural perspective, on the other hand, focuses on learning on a collective level. However, I learned that the basic problem that arises from the application of group engagement is the fact that it is not possible to see cognition occurring in a group of different individuals doing the same activity. Group collaboration dynamics are influenced by several factors such as motivation, promotion, and structured feedback system that an assignment requires. Participation in the site, edGlobal: Sharing Education Ideas Around the World, has been instrumental in boosting personal confidence and widening my scope in terms of education initiatives that I can apply in teaching the Arabic language in an elementary classroom environment.

Conclusion

The two weeks’ experience a member of the online educational sharing community site, edGlobal: Sharing Education Ideas Around the World, was very educational. The experience was an eye-opener on the most appropriate teaching initiatives that are ideal in the elementary classroom environment. The initiatives I learned include the use of visual objects, proactive participation, audio materials, and the creation of a healthy and warm learning environment.

References

Allen, J. (2005). Seizing the Opportunity: the Quality and Extent of Online Education in the United States, 2002 and 2003. Needham, MA: Sloan.

Bernard, R., Abrami, P., Lou, P., Borokhovski, E., Wade, A., Wozney, L., Wallet, P., Fiset, M., & Huang, B. (2004). How does distance education compare with classroom Instruction? A meta-analysis of the empirical literature. Review of Educational Research. 74(3), 379-439.

Knowles, M., Holton, E., & Swanson, R. (2005). The adult learner (6^th ed.). New York, NY: Elsevier.

Ramage, J., Bean, J., & Johnson, J. (2006). Writing Arguments: a Rhetoric with Readings, London, UK: Longman.

Scenario Rationale

The scenario selected for the given project focuses on Parker Online Community College (POCC) and the upcoming online education of adult students. The mentioned scenario was chosen due to my career goals, personal experience, and research results. In particular, it is evident that the future of education will be inextricably linked to online learning as a result of globalization processes and the ever-changing social, economic, and cultural environment (Kallison, 2017). In order to accomplish my career goals, I need to comprehend the mechanisms of online orientation programs to be able to assist the students in their preparation to enter colleges. As for my personal experience, having successfully completed several online courses, I understood that orientation programs that are also known as transition programs are rather useful for those students who have never been engaged in online learning. Since the courses I have taken allowed the students to communicate with each other, I was able to observe their feedbacks that included such points as difficulties with accessing some course issues or a lack of proper writing skills. Considering the challenges enumerated by the students of the given scenario, including time management, technology and writing skills, and the connection with other students, it is essential to provide them with the opportunity to prepare to study by offering a properly-designed orientation program.

Review of Articles and Two Methods

The growing body of evidence illustrates the increased attention to transition programs for adult learners. The pilot study by Kallison (2017) examined the effects of postsecondary transition programs, which offered the preparation in writing, reading, mathematics, and college knowledge within a short-term yet intensive period. According to the results, 18 of 20 assessments revealed positive changes, even though many students did not achieve college readiness benchmarks (Kallison, 2017). The above study demonstrates the value and the potential of transition programs, which need to be elaborated and implemented to help adult students.

As part of a rather significant effort to assist with entering a college, one may consider the research by McDonough (2014), in which the author explored Knowles’ approach to adult learning through blended courses. The paramount argument formulated by the above scholar refers to the fact that adults tend to be more engaged in studying while they feel special and have the opportunity to contribute to the program to some extent. In this regard, motivation acts as the key tool to engage them. As emphasized by McDonough (2014), such motivators as obtaining new friends, acquiring new knowledge, certification, personal development, and maintaining skills may be utilized by program creators. In its turn, the study by Karmelita (2017) also contributes to the identified theme by presenting fundamental elements of transition programs designed specifically for adult learners. It is stated that the establishment of effective relationships and aligning student experience with curriculum are the key elements. At the same time, remediation, technology, support, and genuine college experience are noted as the integral components of adult learning transition programs (Karmelita, 2017). The results revealed by the author seem to be relevant and justified by credible arguments and clear explanations.

In order to engage internal or external stakeholders in supporting the orientation program, it is appropriate to use stakeholder management and team collaboration methods. The first method will focus on creating a collaborative team creation by preparing tools to tailor communication, develop time management, and ensure technical access of every student to the program (Kerzner, 2013). In terms of the latter, custom online databases and a forum for discussions will be prepared to allow students to reveal their thoughts, feelings, and assumptions regarding the program.

Needs Analysis

References

Kallison, J. M. (2017). The effects of an intensive postsecondary transition program on college readiness for adult learners. Adult Education Quarterly, 67(4), 302-321.

Karmelita, C. (2017). Fundamental elements of transition program design. Adult Learning, 28(4), 157-166.

Kerzner, H. (2013). Project management: A systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling (11th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

McDonough, D. (2014). Providing deep learning through active engagement of adult learners in blended courses. Learning in Higher Education, 10(1), 9-16.

McLean, S., & Vermeylen, L. (2014). Transitions and pathways: Self-help reading and informal adult learning. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 33(2), 125-140.

There are so many interesting topics to investigate, and each topic requires its approaches and research. I want to present a kind of research that will be interesting to students and adults and will touch upon the issues, which turn out to be burning nowadays. I am going to analyze the influence of online communities on people of different ages. So, the purpose of this study is to comprehend why people may spend so much time online and use different online communities to communicate and find out interesting and useful information and can easily forget about all those real-life routines, which have been so much significant for them not long time ago. It will be a research purpose I set up for my study. Nowadays, there are lots of forms of online communities, and people have different levels of intimacy within any of them (Farkas, 2007, p. 88).

Another purpose of my study is to evaluate the reasons why people prefer online communication to real-life communication that may help to improve people’s real-life communication and promote the vast majority of people not to forget how wonderful reality may be. Many people have already concluded that they can do much more things online and achieve better results in many spheres of life (Lazar, 2002); however, they forget that their life is not all about computers. Fresh air, blue sky, and feelings – this is what makes this life complete. So, the practical purpose of my study is to gather as many opinions as possible and analyze what holds so many students in front of their computers.

Online communities take an important place in many people’s lives: some people cannot imagine a day without checking their mail and communicating with distant friends, and some people may even become angry if another person does not answer his/her e-mail within a short period. Mostly, online communication has some kind of purpose, so persuasion plays a significant role even here (Janoschka, 2004). And persuasion may cause unpredictable reactions and emotions. With time, people become advanced enough to express their emotions. Even a simple ’emoticon’ may present much information (Rule, 2002). If a person does not know how to react to this or that icon, the results may be unpredictable as well. People write, ask questions, comment on others’ messages to achieve certain purposes. However, the chosen ways maybe not be comprehended by another user. This is why online communication may considerably influence the human physical condition and even self-evaluation. To my mind, the focus of my study is how exactly online communication and communities affect people’s lives, and why people cannot even notice that their passion for computers may become a kind of sick. So, now, I can define passion for computers as one more human obsession that may lead to serious problems in near future.

The locus of my study will be identified taking into consideration the above-mentioned focus. So, the locus may be different types of communication between people online, people’s reactions during the exchange of letters, and decisions, made as to the result of online communication. To conduct good research, it is necessary to consider both research and practical purposes, underline once again the focus and locus of the study, and then start thinking about the best ways to get the answers.

In general, communicating online means some kind of communication that happens between people, who cannot see each other in the exact period. However, the examples of the use of communicating online demonstrate that its usage may have quite different meanings: “I like communicating online with my friends” or “Communicating online with my colleges provides me with an opportunity to save time”. Each example has one thing in common – a person under consideration does not have a chance to talk face to face with another person, this is why communicating online turns out to be a good decision. However, this communication may be on different levels: professional or some close relation. Interpersonal communication is a “well-established area, complete with a base of knowledge, theories, and research” (Wood, 2009, xi). When people are communicating online to solve some problems or because of business affairs, they have to be impartial, strict and do not use any emotionally colored words or signs. When people, who have close relations or do not have any business affairs with each other, are communicating online, they may use any style of communication. In this case, communication may be free; but still, certain measures have to be minded in order not to offend another person and make him/her take wrong actions. From first sight, such a simple thing as communicating online may cause no difficulties and no misunderstanding. However, if we look closer and closer, it will become clear that people have to follow certain rules and remember about communication ethics to be a proper part of this world because communication ethics must be “more than a hollow skeleton of worldwide code and rhetorical declarations” (Wilkins & Christians, 2008, p. 66). This is why communicating online will be always interesting and useful to research.

Reference List

1. Farkas, M. G. (2007). Social Software in Libraries: Building Collaboration, Communication, and Community Online. Medford, NJ: Information Today, Inc.
2. Janoschka, A. (2004). Web Advertising: New Forms of Communication on the Internet. Pragmatics & Beyond New Series. 131, p. ix-227.
3. Lazar, J. (2002). Managing IT/Community Partnerships in the 21^st Century. Richmond, US: Idea Group Inc (IGI).
4. Rule, C. (2002). Online Dispute Resolution for Business: B2B, E-Commerce, Consumer, Employment, Insurance, and Other Commercial Conflicts. New York: John Wiley and Sons.
5. Wilkins, L. & Christians, C. C. (2008). The Handbook of Mass Media Ethics. Taylor & Francis.
6. Wood, J. (2009). Interpersonal Communication: Everyday Encounters. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning, 2009.

Introduction and the community chosen

Human beings are social beings, who interact to learn new ideas and skills. Socialization is a lifelong experience that is necessary for survival (Buton, 2009). Traditionally, people interacted informally through face-to-face talks, and by playing games to know each other. In addition, social forums provided an opportunity to share information. However, the last two decades witnessed the emergence of socialization through virtual communities; people reduced face-to-face contacts and they increased virtual friends. According to Dasgupta, “a virtual community, is a group (sociology) whose members are connected using information technology, typically the internet” (2006). Members of a virtual community are connected by the need to belong and share a common interest. This research paper follows and analyses Big Brother Africa Star Game online chat room (bigbrotherafrica.com). Big Brother Africa Star Game is a reality show aired in 42 African countries by M-net, a South African television network. The reality show is produced by Endemol, which owns the Big Brother franchise (Hiramoto, 2012). Its chat room is open to viewers and anyone who visit the Big Brother Africa Star Game website. Members of the online chat room join freely without providing any personal information, and most do not use their real names. The purpose of the chat room is to discuss the behavior of contestants besides voting to retain and evict participants. It is a real-time chat room, where members instantly view comments as soon as they enter them. Membership is drawn from the 42 African countries where the show airs; it is not restrictive because anyone who accesses the website can join and participate.

The characteristics of the community

The community has unique characteristics and behavior; it is like an individual with characteristics and behaviors particular to him/her. First, the group does not measure individual or behavioral characteristics. Traditional, virtual sites use behavioral characteristics to manage accounts. The information provided by individuals when they sign in identifies individual accounts. Formal community sites require one to provide personal information like the date of birth and email address. The information is used as a basis for identifying members and checking antisocial behaviors. Behavioral techniques used to identify individuals in virtual sites include signing features, keystroke patterns, voice, and gait (Camarinha–Matos, Paraskaskis, and Afsarmanesh, 2009). Big Brother Africa Star Game online chat room is a voluntary, virtual community with random entry and exit. The site does not have procedural systems to regulate and vet membership; that is the reason why members have names like Volcano, Tsunami, Easy, and Yuvvonben523 (M-net, 2012). The language is informal similar to the one used in a text message; for example, “thank you” is ‘thank us. The group is highly empowered because one can change names at will and it lacks shared leadership enabling some members to use abusive language.

The second characteristic of the Big Brother Africa Star Game online chat room is it has no hierarchy among members. Other social, virtual providers have a mechanism of establishing hierarchies; the number of posts and friends determines hierarchy. In the case of Big Brother Africa, all members are equal, and members are differentiated by the names they use and the comments they make. Successful chat rooms have high social capital, lacks structure, have high trust and members share a common goal (Camarinha-Matos, Paraskakis, and Afsarmanesh, 2009).

Unlike formal chat rooms, Big Brother Africa Star Game online chat room is highly informal; as a result, it has weak task significance but a strong task identity. Formal work groups have useful job designs, which defined tasks and enrich jobs (DuBrin, 2012). Big Brother chat room does not have job relevance to members; the only glue holding them together is their addiction to the real game. They, therefore, have no interdependent tasks but are dependent on each other to share information.

Expression of individualism in the community

Virtual communities allow creativity and enable members to express themselves without the fear of being reprimanded. It enables members to express their individuality in ways they cannot in a physical setting. In Big Brother Africa online chat room, members express individuality in the following ways:

A majority of members remain anonymous by using pseudo names; members use a name like Justme and Noejoe (M-net, 2012). It is difficult to locate members because they use pseudo names and operate from personal computers in 42 countries. Members adopt a virtual identity different from their actual identity by using pseudo names (Peachey and Childs, 2011). Members express themselves freely without compromising relationships with work colleagues and family.

When members join the chat room, they lose uniqueness because the system lacks a hierarchical order. All members are equal irrespective of one physical position in life. In a physical social setting, individuals have unique, differentiated, and developed identities which they drop when they join virtual communities. They, therefore, use different personalities thus distinguishing their individuality.

In a virtual community, individuals lack inhibition and have diminished concern for self-presentation (Peachey and Childs, 2011). In Big Brother Africa’s online chat room, members lack courtesy and often use abusive and derogatory language. Because of the real-time nature of the chat room members are unafraid to say anything; the chat room displays conversation made within ten minutes.

The chat room is similar to the traditional real-life conversation in the following ways:

Communication is a factor of thought and custom; in the physical face-to-face social setup, people use communication to express thoughts and feelings. Members use online chat rooms to express what they think and feel. In addition, they express themselves according to learned traditions and norms.

Similarity and difference of the community with other communities

Both traditional and virtual communications differentiate individuals from one another. In traditional communication, an individual style of communication says a lot about an individual personality. In a virtual community, members have distinct ways of communication; by observing the chat room, different styles of communication emerge. Some individuals are rude while others are polite; some are clear, and others are vague.

Big Brother Africa chat room is different from traditional ‘real life’ communication in the following ways:

Chat room communication is impersonal and unfeeling while traditional communication has an element of human feelings. Chat room communication lacks emotion because elements of verbal communication such as tone and eye contact are lacking. It does not provide an opportunity to evaluate an individual against history, looks, and emotions. A big percentage of verbal communication is body language which is lacking in chat room communication. Oral communication allows a person to express himself/herself in the best way possible; chat room conversations are brief and often use poor grammar. It allows one to be rude something unacceptable in real-life communication.

In conclusion, chat room conversation allows people in different parts of the world to communicate conveniently besides allowing information to be shared as soon as it is available.

Reference

Big Brother Africa. Live Chat, 2012 .

Buton, E. (2009). Basic Sociology. Bloomington: Author House.

Camarinha-Matos, L., Paraskakis, I., and Afsarmanesh, H. Leveraging Knowledge for Innovation in Collaborative Networks: 10^th IFIP WG 5.5 Working Conference on Virtual Enterpreises, PRO-VE 2009 Proccedings. New York: Springer.

DasGupta, S. (2006). Encyclopedia of Virtual Communities and Technologies. Hershey: IDEA Group, Inc.

DuBrin, A. (2012). Essentials of Management. Mason: Cengage Learning.

Hiramoto, M. (2012). Media Intertextualities. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing.

Mnet-TV(South Africa). (2012). Big Brother Africa 2012 [Television Broadcast]. Big Brother Africa News. South Africa: Mnet-TV.

Peachey, A. and Childs, M. (2011). Reinventing Ourselves: Contemporary Concepts of Identity in Virtual Worlds. New York: Springer.

The article in question deals with the effect public policies may have on the development of online communities. Hercheui (2010) examined the opinions of members of three Brazilian virtual communities that focused on environmental issues. The author notes that members of these virtual communities had similar values concerning leadership. The communities were created as groups where all members take an active (and equal) part in the decision-making process.

However, in reality, these organizations had several members who made all the decisions including participation in the funding project and other projects. Participation in the program affected the participants’ views and the structure of the communities making them more centralized. The power of leaders was legitimized after the participation in projects funded by the government. The author stresses that leaders had existed before the funding was obtained, but members of online communities started having more favorable views on the leadership. People accepted that the community could not exist without leaders as some decisions had to be made quickly.

However, it is difficult and even impossible to make decisions quickly if they are discussed by all members of the community. Hercheui (2010) used qualitative methods to collect and analyze data. Several members of three digital communities were interviewed.

One of the major strengths of the article is its use of qualitative tools. The researcher identifies ideas on the leadership of members of some virtual communities. The researcher analyzes possible factors that influence these ideas. Some public policies (those involving funding) can shape the structure of virtual communities and their members’ ideas on leadership. The author provides direct quotes that help the reader to understand the participants’ views, emotions, and so on. The use of interviews ensures that detailed information on the matter is collected.

As for the weaknesses of the article, it lacks important data. First, the methodology used is not described clearly. The number of participants is not mentioned. At that, it is clear that this number is not significant, which makes it impossible to generalize the data provided. The results can apply to the three communities that were analyzed, and different opinions can exist within other virtual communities.

It is possible to note that the article can have several implications for society. For example, the findings show that although democratic values are promoted within digital communities, they are not followed in some important aspects. The communities that are often created as platforms for sharing ideas and making decisions collectively still have a group of leaders who make the majority of decisions. The most important implication for the society related to this finding is that members of virtual communities will start paying more attention to their leaders, as well as their responsibilities and rights.

Governments will also understand that they can have a significant influence on the development of any virtual community shaping its agenda, structure, and so on. Members of these communities tolerate intrusion in their community’s operations when certain funding is provided. So, communities may start developing strategies to avoid any possible intrusions. The article includes some examples of the communities that achieved these goals. These groups did not change their structure significantly during and after the funding was provided. Finally, the article can be used as the starting point of a larger study. It can be beneficial to explore the views of members of more communities.

Reference List

Hercheui, MD 2010, ‘A study on how public policies affect legitimacy in virtual communities’, Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 7-21. Web.

A new type of communities is gaining momentum on the web and is reshaping online communication and collaboration patterns and the way how information is consumed and produced [Gros04, Kolb06]. Examples of such communities are MySpace, OpenBC, YouTube, numerous Weblogs and others. In literature different terms can be found to denote the emerging and growing new phenomenon: social software [Bäch06] or peer production [Scho05]. In the year 2005, Tim O’Reilly popularized the term Web 2.0 [O’Reil05]. While the first two terms can be applied also to earlier, already established forms of online communities (for an overview see [Stan02]), the term Web 2.0 is mostly applied to emphasize the differences of emerging communities compared to earlier forms of online communities, encompassing various perspectives – technology, attitude, philosophy.

Recently the mass media have picked up broadly the term Web 2.0 and the related phenomenon of emerging online communities (see [Schm06] [Rühl06] [Ohne06]). Social networking communities and web logs are most widely researched certain type of Web 2.0 communities.

Since 1927, the renowned Time magazine has published an annual issue that features a profile on the person that “for better or for worse, has done the most to influence the events of the year” (Time, 2002). In 2006, Time’s person of the year was “you” – a collectivity rather than an individual who communicates, contributes and collaborates in a completely new manner using a new generation of the Internet: the social networking communities.

By this means, the term social networking has eventually arrived in popular media and proved that it mattered. Today, with YouTube and MySpace, two of the five websites that attract the most user traffic on the Internet are labeled as social network sites. Both websites rely heavily on community building and user contribution. But in fact, social networking goes far beyond just a more socially interactive version of the web. It is a new way of thinking, a new perspective on the Internet and on software. Web 2.0 thrives on network effects. Databases get richer and applications get smarter the more people use them; websites start to interact with each other building the web as a platform.

As the definition of social networking is about a set of trends, it incorporates three important core patterns of new age online philosophy. These are user participation, openness, and network effects. Social networking not only exploits Web 2.0 techniques, but also its philosophical foundation. Social networking is about – Flickr, blogs, user participation, web services, wikis, tagging and syndication. All these new kind of web features apparently must have some common traits, which, in their entirety, determine the phrase social networking communities. This is where a lot of attempts to define social networking communities start. The definition of social networking communities is therefore only a starting point, because, in the end, it is the underlying patterns that are much more important than a definition.

Unlike the ambassadors of the so-called new economy in the late nineties, early genuine social network startups kept a rather low profile. However, the market situation for social network startups changed rapidly as big Internet companies and media conglomerates started to acquire social network companies for major sums. In the following I will present a list of some of the most prominent acquisitions of social network start-ups:

• In March 2005, Flickr was sold to Yahoo for an estimated $30 million (Bazeley, 2005; Flickr, 2005). This was the first major acquisition of a social network company.
• In July 2005, the media conglomerate News Corporation announced that it signed a definitive agreement to acquire Intermix Media, Inc., the owner of MySpace, for approximately $580 million in cash (News Corporation, 2005).
• In October 2006, the Internet’s leading search engine Google acquired the popular online video site YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock (La Monica, 2006b).
• In May 2007, CBS bought Last.fm, a social music website, for $280 million in an all-cash deal (Riley, 2007).

Since prospects for major acquisitions are quite good, social network start-ups have again become a target of venture capital funds. For example, in early 2006, a lot of social network companies were raising already $3 million a rounds. Now, after the YouTube acquisition, even $7 million a rounds are not uncommon (Arrington, 2007).

Social networking communities have thus gained an increasing impact on internet businesses and should therefore not be neglected from an academic perspective. New niches arise and existing models are highly affected by social networking communities. The objective of this paper is to describe the phenomenon of social networking communities and to provide a systematic overview of current and emerging niche models.

Whether there will be a second Internet bubble or not, in the long run, only companies with a solid business model and especially with working revenue model will survive and possibly prosper. To survive, social networking communities have to adopt Web 2.0 revenue models. In the following, I will present charts discussing of how social networking communities are using established Internet revenue models, eventually evolving into Web 2.0 patterns, techniques and philosophy.

Data Tables (Data Collected 2007).

As the chart shows, among these above-mentioned websites there are both high and low ranking websites. The registered user column shows what makes their ranking different from each other. However, from a business model perspective, not the resulting community but the service is of importance that has the potential to result into a community. In order to enable community-building, the services provided for social networking communities consist in general of three components:

• The main focus lies on content and services for collaborative creating, management, updating and sharing of content. The specific form of the services can vary depending on the type of content: text, links, videos or pictures.
• Services and automatically update procedures that evaluate each user input and create always a new common state of knowledge and content or as some authors explain it, mechanisms for creating after each input the newest stage of collective intelligence. Either as a side effect of their actions or through active participation, people add value to every web application they use. This could be by directly creating content, such as contributing to a survey or by linking websites, tagging content, recommending products or by commenting on a blog post. By the end of 2006, more than 500,000 users visited Digg every day, yet the company never spent any money on advertising. Setting network effects by default enables viral marketing, a best practice of harnessing collective intelligence. With an average of 65,000 videos uploaded per day, YouTube, a popular video sharing website, has successfully leveraged network effects for building up a hard-to-recreate, user generated database
• Trust building services as ratings, voting and similar, which are also the foundations for the collective intelligence services.

The services are offered furthermore in three different forms:

• Firstly, in form of a platforms or tools that can be used by users to initiate communities. They offer the means for users to express themselves by using the platform, to create new content or tools, and to find persons interested in the same content or (in principal) get noticed. This means that platforms provide tools that enable users to create, store, manage and share content. Examples of platforms or tools are the various blog or mobile blog platforms. Depending on the specific type of content that is supported by the platform we can distinguish two major groups: Services which facilitate navigation tasks are labeled as directory services, while services that empower users to create their own content are named “technology centric” services.
• Secondly, in form of online collaboration tools that are offered as online applications (in contrast to local application) or in form of workflows that map a process to an online environment. The objective of these services is to improve the process efficiency by making necessary information as agendas, to do lists and similar accessible from everywhere and through any device. These services offer functions for online collaboration (e.g. time schedule), management of online process flows (e.g. online brainstorming), or provide online applications (e.g. online text processing).
• Last but not least, community services. Communities unify users through a common objective. The common goal can be something like “finding new friends”, “finding relevant information” or simply “killing time”. Community platforms offer complex services for social creation of content of various kind.

The various kind of services offer different participation possibilities for users. While the group of services belonging to platform / tools and online collaboration have a clear and obvious communication flow, the community focused services utilize different combinations of communication methods and offer different ways of possible participation within the new community. The quality and the size of the community knowledge pool are depending on the number of active users and their participation intensity. In addition, the form of participation not only drives the culture of the community, but also the user acceptance and loyalty. The general principle for participation could be, that the easier the participation, the higher the probability of participation. On the other hand, the lower the entry barrier, the more likely is the occurrence of low quality content. From a user perspective, the decision is based on the perceived effort of participation and the expected benefit from participation.

Below are three case studies which show the potentiality of social networking and what features have enabled them to create their unique business value.

Flickr

Michael Arrington from Techcrunch (2005) named Flickr as one of the defining Web 2.0 applications. This photo sharing service was launched in early 2004 by Stewart Butterfield and his wife Caterina Fake. In March 2005, Flickr was acquired by Yahoo (Flickr, 2005). The mission of Flickr (2007a) is “to help people make their photos available to the people who matter to them” and “to enable new ways of organizing photos.” In September 2007, Flickr had 4.5 million registered users and around 230 million photos uploaded. About 900,000 new photos are uploaded by Flickr users every day (Arrington, 2006a).

Business Model

Flickr is one of the first companies which deliberately applied the ‘Free + premium’ subscription model. Users with a free account are allowed to upload 100MB worth of photos each calendar month. If free users find themselves hitting their monthly limit they can subscribe to a Flickr Pro account, which costs around $25 per year and allows unlimited photo uploads (Flickr, 2007b). In an interview with Richard Koman (2005), Stewart Butterfield of Flickr states that “we are doing fantastically with that [the premium subscriptions] so far; we are really happy with the results.”

As a pioneer in the field, Flickr is widely recognized for adopting many patterns and best practices of Web 2.0 to improve its business model. The most prominent are collective intelligence, the web as a platform, multi device strategies and rich user experiences.

Services

When Flickr started its service back in 2004, it was not the only website allowing users to upload their digital photos. But Flickr was the only service to allow tagging and sharing of photos with friends or the public. They abolished the traditional metaphor of photo albums and let users organize them ad hoc through collaborative filtering.

Since 82% off all photos on Flickr are public, the service has the critical mass to have a massive network effect (Koman, 2005). Hence, users are interacting in many different ways with each other through photography. This may be what makes the website sticky and has prompted many users to pay for a premium service.

Flickr offered an open API of its service right from the start. Stewart Butterfield states that “it’s really valuable for any new product or service to reach the hyper-geek audience, who are particularly influential. And for them, the open API is a sign of good faith, a sign that your photos and your data are not going to be locked up in Flickr.” (Koman, 2005). Today, more than 30 popular web applications use the API to create value-added services leveraging the large Flickr photo database (Flickr, 2007c). For example, the small application Retrievr allows users to draw a small sketch and then searches the Flickr database for matching photos.

The many mashups and services that base on the Flickr API spread the word of Flickr and represent good viral marketing for free.

Flickr is inherently designed for the use on mobile devices. Using the URL m.flickr.com, Flickr members can surf to the site using their mobile phone browser. Mobile uploads of photos can be performed by attaching images to a mobile e-mail (Flickr, 2007d).

Moreover, Flickr has recently announced a partnership with Nokia, a leading mobile phone manufacturer.

Currently, a mobile Flickr application comes preinstalled on every Nokia Nseries mobile phone, allowing people to upload, share and view photos (Flickr, 2007e). It can be assumed that – with the introduction of GPS enabled mobile phones – this software will be able to geotag uploaded photos automatically.

Rich User Experiences

As a genuine Web 2.0 application Flickr is well-known for creating a sophisticated user experience, which is designed to combine the best aspects of the desktop and the web. Making heavy use of Ajax for in-context editing of photos, tags, titles and comments, the service provides almost desktop-like interactivity. Flickr can be used very easy and intuitively, thus increasing the stickiness of the website and raising customer experience significantly.

Revver

Revver was founded by Steven Starr in 2004 and started its current service – Revver 1.0 – in September 2006. It is a viral video network where users can upload their videos and share them among the Internet. Revver’s mission is to “support the free and unlimited sharing of content online in an environment where the creator is rewarded for his/her work” (Revver, 2007).

Business Model

Revver is rather unusual for a Web 2.0 service: It was created with a revenue-generating business model, and developed with an advertiser’s point-of-view in mind (Bogatin, 2006). When users upload a video to the site, Revver attaches a brief, unobtrusive ad and a tracking technology to “Revverize” the video. The ad appears at the end of the video. Every time the ad gets clicked, Revver shares the resulting revenue with the user on a 50/50 basis. To increase the value of the network, Revver also rewards people for sharing videos – for example by embedding them into their blog – with 20% of the ad revenue (Revver, 2007). According to Oliver Luckett of Revver, the company monetizes videos at 75 cents to $1 per view. At least for some of Revver’s users, the business model seems to pay off: Fritz Grobe and Stephen Voltz, the producers of a Revver video called the “Diet Coke and Mentos Experiments” have earned more than $28,000 in shared advertising revenue (La Monica, 2006a).

Services

Revver pioneered the idea that users get paid for creating and contributing content to a website. Therefore users have a strong incentive to be active and to contribute on Revver, fostering collective intelligence. Network effects which magnify the value of user contributions are set by default: Users can also earn money by simply sharing videos. Above that, Revver provides a forum where users can discuss best practices of earning shared advertising revenue by uploading their videos.

Unlike many other video sharing websites such as YouTube, Revver attaches advertising directly to the main content. Consequently, the video data becomes the key asset and revenue source for Revver. The revenue sharing model must be seen in this context: By paying the user for contributing videos, Revver can directly scale its business. However, the user retains ownership of his videos.

The Revver API provides web developers a way to access the Revver system and database. All users have the ability to distribute and syndicate Revver videos and to earn some shared ad revenue for each ad click. An example of a mashup that uses the Revver API is Vidmeter.

Rich User Experiences

Revver videos are hosted in the flash video format (.flv), a rich media format which provides superior user experience and increases site stickiness.

Plazes

There are not many Web 2.0 start-ups based in Germany that go beyond just copy/paste innovation and create unique services targeted to a worldwide audience (cf. Hochmuth, 2007). Along with Mindmeister or SellaBand, Plazes is one of these rare examples. Plazes was founded in 2004 by Felix Petersen and Stefan Kellner and went online in early 2005. The author of this thesis was among the first employees of the start-up company. Plazes is a local based social community that connects people and their friends to places (called “plazes”) where they spend their time. In January 2007, Plazes raised 2.7 million Euro in an A venture round and had around 40,000 active users (Plazes, 2007).

Business Model

The business model of Plazes, which is not entirely defined yet, will be based upon three revenue pillars:

• Transaction based mobile services (Plazes SMS)
• Contextual Advertising
• Affiliate Marketing

In the following I will concentrate on the affiliate marketing revenue model. Real life places with Wi-Fi access are called “plazes” and are defined by Plazes users. Every plaze has its own homepage where users can check-in as current or future visitors. Plaze pages also come in different categories such as hotels, airports, restaurants, bars, homes, etc. For each category, Plazes will associate with a certain targeted affiliate program. For example, hotel plazes will incorporate an affiliate hotel reservation tool. By generating reservation leads, Plazes can earn up to 50% of the whole transaction revenue performed by its users (IAN, 2007).

Services

Although implementing many communication and collaboration features from the very beginning, the friction from requiring users to download some desktop software (the “plazer”) clearly slowed user growth, a prerequisite for a successful affiliate and advertising strategy. Hence in late May 2007, Plazes changed the way it handles location and now the client software is no longer required to set location. Instead, users can simply set their plaze via a suggestion mechanism (based upon the grown database of locations). Above that, users can also say what they are up to. This is a strategy which should improve communication between users and which reminds of the Web 2.0 site Twitter.

Without any doubt, data is the key asset of Plazes. Every time a user accesses a Wi-Fi, the plazer, a small desktop client, queries the hardware address of the router and verifies the Plazes database for a match. If the hardware address is new to Plazes, the user is kindly asked to name and pinpoint the new plaze. Thanks to this process, Plazes now owns earth’s biggest directory of locally verified Wi-Fi access points. This user-generated database is hard to imitate and gives Plazes a competitive advantage when it comes to local targeted advertising and affiliate programs.

Plazes is an exemplar for multi device strategies: The service counts explicitly on the assumption that users are increasingly mobile and using laptop computers and mobile phones to access the Internet. Plazes can be used through text messages (Plazes SMS), through a GPRS Client (Plazes Mobile) or whenever accessing a Wi-Fi network with a mobile client.

Therefore, Plazes services are ubiquitous and so are their affiliate partnerships. For example, Plazes will offer its users car rental possibilities right when they check-in at an airport plaze.

Rich User Experiences

Plazes is making heavy use of Ajax and rich media templates all over its website. For example, the new plaze suggestion mechanism is very intuitive and reduces many hurdles of user adoption.

Web-based application therefore no longer means sacrificing some quality of user experience. In a world of social networking communities we can finally see the power of data-rich, collaborative, networked online applications. However, finally, websites providing greater services and improved user experience will rank top.