Virtual Communities

From "Communities in Cyberspace"

“Several writers have expressed fears that high involvement in virtual community
will move people away from involvement in real-life communities, that are
sustained by face-to-face, telephone and postal contact. [...] Such fears are
misstated in several ways. For one thing, they treat community as a zero-sum
game, assuming that if people spend more time interacting online they will spend
less time interacting in “real life”. Second, such accounts demonstrate the
strength and importance of online ties, and not their weakness. As we have seen
in the previous section, strong, intimate ties can be maintained online as well
as face-to-face.” (p.181)

While strong ties can be maintained online, when does your network become too big to sustain those strong ties without losing your face-to-face strong ties. In the end, when you a problem, would you rather know that someone out there is thinking about you, trying to help you, or have someone near, a close friend for whom it's easier to support you.

When do you spend too much time online, spreading your time over a lot of people, maintaining the weak ties, and the occasional strong one, while, in a way, neglecting those ties that are closest to you.

Out of personal experience I know that once you start 'facebooking' it can easily become a sort of addiction. Trying to see what people are up to, checking everything out, hoping for new messages from your friends. While it is a great way to stay in contact with those you can't meet every so often, or even less than that, it's a timesink.

Additionally, with the rise of 'applications', little pieces of software users can use, coming from third parties, increases the interactivity within the online communities. There are many new ways to keep in contact with people you know, besided text messaging .. ranging from book and movie recommendations, to superpokes, horoscopes etc...

Applications

Related to the previous post an additional thought has sprung up: how does the rise of applications on Facebook influence the amount of time spent/lost on the site? There are so many things that can be incorporated in your profile that it can be doubted that a visitor of your profile will look at all of it. So is it a way of showing yourself to the world, or a confirmation of yourself for yourself? Almost all these applications have the ability to send messages to the news feeds of other people. So where can the line be drawn between letting people know what you did, or are up to, and in a way 'spamming' yourself, broadcasting yourself to other people. One to many ...

Quote

"The popular mythos tells us that network are powerful, global, fast,and
inexpensive. It’s the place to meet friends and carry on business.There, you'll
find entertainment, expertise, and education. In short,it's important to be
online. It ain't necessarily so. Our networks canbe frustrating, expensive,
unreliable connections that get in the way of useful work. It is an overpromoted,
hollow world, devoid of warmth andhuman kindness." pg233

= Quote sent to me by Gavin.

It's interesting to think about the fact in how far social networking takes time away from day to day social activities. Sure, you stay in contact with people you barely see and you know what they are up to. But by spending time online you have to spread your available time over a lot more people. Does day to day social activity suffer from this?

This can lead to interesting questions for the questionnaire:

- How many times do you check your account?
- How long do you usually stay on these sites? (this questions is better answered by consulting internet activity tracking companies - need to be looked into)

Facebook Tools

- Groups

A characteristic of being a member of a community is the feeling of belonging, to be part of a greater whole. In Facebook this is created by the use of groups. People can join many groups who they feel they should, or can, be part of. These can be situated around education, work, interests, groups of friends, travels etc... Each of these groups have their own 'wall' and small forum where members can post and talk to each other.

My personal experience is that this function is underused. It started my first research question about "why do people leave/join these groups so fast". From what I've seen most of the groups function as tags which are visible in the users profile. These groups can be joined and left again very fast and the amount of actual interaction going on there is minimal.

It shows that a lot of the interaction, besides checking profiles and sending short messages, still happens offline.

- Events

People can organize events and use their friends list to create invites. These events are based on real-life events. They are a link between the online world and it's network capabilities and the offline strengthening of bounds through interactions. The event site will feature a list of people attending or not, giving more information to possible participants.

- Photos / videos

Each user can upload pictures and videos to his or her profile. These can then be tagged, which creates a link to the profile of those persons in the picture. By notifications the persons will be notified of it and the pictures will show up on their profile. There is no more need to go harvesting pictures from other people's computer (if you're happy enough with the lower quality and size). Compromising pictures can be untagged by the person who's in the picture.

- Notes

Notes function as a blog option. People can write in their notes and publish them so other people can read them. It shares the basic functionality of a blog.

- Poke

Users can poke each other. Basically it's a way to say 'hi' and let them know you're thinking of them. You can relate this to giving a miscall using mobile phones: in certain cultures it means the same as the poke.

- Private messaging

Users can send each other private messages which will appear in the recipients profile's inbox. It shares the same functionality as email, except that it actively links the profile of the sender to the message.

Communities

By reading about communities I realise that Facebook in itself is not a community. It's basic function is providing the users with the tools to create and maintain their own custom, ever changing, communities. These books are not recent though, and they talk about older forms of internet activities: newsgroups, forums etc. Recent evolutions, of which Facebook is part of, incorporate a lot more information about the identity of each individual user. While years ago you might have been talking to a mere nickname, now you talk to a 'real' person, of which you can see a lot of information.

From personal experience I think that these online social networking sites try to combine the online and face-to-face relationships to another level. All the people in my own friends list I actually know, and have met troughout time. For me it's a way to keep in contact with those people that are not close to me in terms of geography. In the last couple of years, by studying abroad, I have met a lot of different people from all over the world. The fact that we have added each other as friends on Facebook has made it easier for me to keep contact with them. At the same time the system provides me with updates if my friends add pictures, comments, change their profile etc ... so I'm constantly up to date with the current affairs.

One drawback I see so far is that it requires time to update your profile. So I only know a lot of those people who regularly update their information and share that information with the rest of the people they know. It's the user who has to update his profile for the system to spread out.

Relationships can be divided in being weak ties, and being strong ties. Social software like Facebook makes it easier to collect the weak ties, and keep them in your friends list, and also keep updating the strong ties, making it harder for them to disappear.