VIRTUAL COMMUNITY
A virtual community is a community of people
sharing common interests, ideas, and feelings over the Internet or other
collaborative networks. A possible inventor of this term and one of its first
proponents was Howard Rheingold, who created one of the first major Internet
communities, called "The Well." In his book, The Virtual Community
, Rheingold defines virtual communities as social aggregations that emerge from
the Internet when enough people carry on public discussions long enough and
with sufficient human feeling to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace
TYPES OF VIRTUAL COMMUNITYMailing list
E-mail discussions within a group of subscribers
are the simplest and most familiar form of virtual community. Anyone who can
read and send e-mail can create a mailing list virtual community; although
there are more elaborate tools for administering large lists.
Newsgroups
A worldwide system of discussion groups, also
called Usenet, is the most abundant source of communities. Whatever the topic,
there is a newsgroup devoted to it. Like e-mail, you post a message to a
newsgroup and come back later to see if you’ve received an answer. Newsgroups
are simple to participate in (if you have a newsreader), but somewhat difficult
to administer.
Chats
Discussions that take place “live” (in real time)
in chat rooms are the quickest way to connect with people on the Internet. In
addition to traditional chat rooms, there are chat rooms in which you can move
through a graphical world and others in which you can build your own text-based
world.
Web-based discussion groups
Discussion groups linked to a specific Web site are
quickly becoming the standard for site-based virtual communities. Like e-mail
and newsgroups, you post a message to a discussion group and read the response
later. You can participate in Web-based discussion groups on any site that
hosts one, and build your own either by hosting it yourself or by using one of
the many free discussion group tools like World Crossing.
BENEFITS OF VIRTUAL COMMUNITY TO THE SOCIETY
They allow
people to meet and discuss topics in a convenient way. Virtual communities are
giving people the chance to interact in a way which will never take place
without the computer and the respective virtual community of choice. Not only does
the virtual community benefit the individual, it also benefits businesses. It
provides better service and streamlining in-house processes. Virtual
communities are able to provide to online colleagues for employees in an organization. They also deal with equipment or software packages. This is a
convenient and efficient way for companies to provide support for products and
for customers to communicate with the company. One example of a company which
does this is CompuServe. This helps businesses save money and members of the
professional organization can hold meetings for discussions without having to
step out of the office.
CONCLUSION
To conclude, the virtual
communities of the world has indeed helped people of all walks of life accept
that there is community through social media.
JOHN, Cafrene
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