QotW7: Twit thy Wit
What is an online community?
An online community or virtual community is a group of people that may or may not primarily or initially communicate or interact via the Internet. Online communities have also become a supplemental form of communication between people who know each other in real life. The dawn of the "information age" found groups communicating electronically rather than face to face. (“Virtual Community”, 2007). It can be used loosely for a variety of social groups interacting via the Internet. Yet, there need not be a strong bond among the members, as virtual communities form when people carry on public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships (Rheingold, 2000). However, as noted by Wellman & Gulia (1996), communities do not have to be solidary groups of densely-knit neighbors but could also exist as social networks of kin, friends, and workmates who do not necessarily live in the same neighborhoods. Hence, communities can be formed even without physical space. Some examples of online communities include Friendster, WhoLivesNearYou, My Space, Facebook and Twitter being the latest edition.
Communication is Key…
What makes Twitter work like an online community is that it allows you to connect and communicate with many others at once. Unlike instant messaging, where you will never get to know everyone all at once, Twitter allows you to know what others are doing at a glance and to respond to comments in a broadcast manner. As noted by Fernback & Thompson (1995), the structural process that is associated with community is communication, as it is needed to organize social relations. Thus, in order to communicate with the rest of the community of Twitter, the user must start adding friends in order to have a social aggregation. This works for almost all social networks, as you need to seek people to communicate with. However, how close one will become to another user online depends on how much information is transmitted and shared using the white box that says, “What are you doing?” In addition, the strength of the bonding process in Twitter is determined by how well one can interpret human emotions through the text as relationships are formed with other users through words, which will act as a form of a dialogue for 2 or more users. Thus, unlike a forum with many threads, this has only 1 main talking point for users to express what they are thinking, what they did (or at doing) at that point in time.
Input(Communication + People) = Output(Community)
After joining Twitter and figuring out how it works, Twitter has proven to be an interesting idea where you tell people or your friends what you are doing at that point in time. In my opinion, Twitter works like a shout out box, where you can say anything you want and others can read and respond to what you say. Twitter is also similar to a forum as messages are updated live every 2 minutes and it works in a broadcast manner - You get to read what everyone in your list says and you get to respond to whoever you want. This also means that your friends are able to see what you say to others. Hence, Twitter is to a large extent an online community as one can share or broadcast ideas and keep in touch with others quickly.
Twee Wend!
The nature of Twitter is a virtue community that allows surface relationships to form provided that people carry on public discussions long enough with sufficient human feeling, albeit not facing the person directly. It can be considered a community even though it poses only 1 question as people can branch out telling others about their different daily activities and making it a market place of ideas.
Fernback, J., & Thompson, B. (May 1995). Virtual Communities: Abort, Retry, Failure? Retrieved March 14, 2007, from
http://www.rheingold.com/texts/techpolitix/VCcivil.html
Rheingold, H. (2000). The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. London: MIT Press.
Virtual community. (2007, March 15). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved March 16, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Virtual_community&oldid=115277136
Wellman, B., & Gulia, M. (1996). Virtual Communities as Communities. Retrieved March 15, 2007, from http://www.acm.org/%7Eccp/references/wellman/wellman
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