social networking is Virtual Communities

Virtual Communities

Abstract

This article is to discuss the claim that new forms of computer mediated social networking sites have created virtual communities. Author analysed two specific examples – Facebook.com and Myspace.com to elaborate discussion. The article will include the analysis of the notion and the value of virtual community and followed by the features of social networking site by take a close look into two famous and successful social networking sites – Facebook.com and Myspace.com. The article will get conclusion by comparison the values and features between SNS and virtual community to identify the relationship between them. The privacy issue also been mentioned in the article.

Introduction

Updated information from Alexa.com – a information website calculate the web traffic metrics also count the ranking of popular website in the whole world shows that the facebook.com has achieved the second popular ranking website worldwide followed Google.com. In additional, many similar website such as windows live.com, Blogger.com, twitter.com, myspace.com etc. get the higher ranking on the list. It indicates the success of social networking sites and those social network sites has been a crucial part of our today’s virtual community. The aim of the essay is to discuss the claim of new forms of computer mediated social networking sites have created virtual communities by analysis two famous successful social networking sites, facebook.com and myspace.com.

A virtual community is a group of people that primarily interact via communication media such as newsletters, telephone, email, internet social network service or instant messages rather than face to face, for social, professional, educational or other purposes. There are many types of virtual community are varies on internet world. They may include applications such as instant message, email, chat room as well as internet site such as blogs, social networking sites, photo and video sharing sites YouTube.com, and virtual realit environments or online game environments such as Second Life. (Boneva, Quinn, Kraut, Kiesler, & Shklovski, 2006; Gross, 2004) Most of those websites and functions are taking advantage the newly technology – Web 2.0.

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Web 2.0 and Virtual Community

We are in the midst of a digital revolution that is giving way to a “new information environment” (Bimber, 2003). The most important technology which may stimulate the development of virtual community is Web 2.0, As recently described by Pew, The advent of Web 2.0 – the ability of people to use a range of information and communication technology as a platform to express themselves online and participate in the commons of cyberspace – is often heralded as the next phase of the information society. (Pew, 2007, p.ii) It is the key technology to create a muti-user environment which is the centre to the idea of cyberspace. Although web 1.0 can hold some of online community in early stage like chatting room, they just focused on bringing people together to have a talk or chat while web 2.0 encourage more interactive between group of people with muti-functional tools. Web 2.0 has been defined as ‘a group of technologies which have become deeply associated with the term: blogs, wikis, podcasts, RSS feeds, etc., which facilitate a more socially connected Web where everyone is able to add to and edit the information space’ (Anderson, 2007). Christy M.K. Cheung and Matthew K.O. Lee (2009) stated that the proliferation of web 2.0 technologies made people easier to get involved in information exchange, and it made internet more interactive, customized, social and media intensive. The availability of create and publish online content is one of the most important feature of Web 2.0. It offers social spaces where people can share common interests and exchange information as they want. The feature made online environment create a virtual community.

By take a view into traditional community we can find there are some common features between real and virtual community. In biological terms, a community is a group of interacting organisms sharing an environment, internet offer this common space for internet user. In sociology, the concept of community has caused infinite debate, and sociologists are yet to reach agreement on a definition of the term. Traditionally a “community” has been defined as a group of interacting people living in a common location. Daniel Memmi argued, “though sage varies somewhat, it appears that in the most usual sense, a community refers to a particular kind of social group, defined by strong personal links” the dance community in Brunel University, the member of the community has been assemble together by their common interests and build strong personal link with each other by participate in the community activities. Sometimes the situations are the same with some online community like some fandom blog or online community. Members share their common interests with strong personal relationships. The real communities won’t be large since it is hard for member to know each other and build relationship with each other well in a huge community. Usually traditional community required face to face communication within members as they can share their information together and maintain relationship with others. Virtual Community is new type of community which keeps the main features of traditional community but some characteristics are different.

1. Location & time flexibility

There is no need for virtual community to assemble their members to come to a physical common location or place at same period of time together. ‘The World Wilde Web’ is the place for everyone in every virtual community. People from all over the world can join in any of virtual community and participate in the activities anytime they want. This feature is benefit from the characteristic of network society. Manuel Castells (1996: 445) introduces the concept of ‘timeless time’ which is a famous concept about time & space in the modern network society. He argued the network society endeavors to create a ‘forever universe’ in which the limits of time are pushed further and further back. Take youtube.com as an example, the website has cooperated with many cell phone maker companies to embed the function of upload video to youtube.com from the mobile phone directly, which means people can take a video clip by the mobile phone camera and publish on youtube.com immediately from anywhere they are.

2. Scales

Usually, successfully virtual communities have huge number of members such as facebook.com, the statistics from official website (statistic.facebook.com 2010) shows that they have more than 300million active users and 50% of active users log on to in any given day. And another statistic shows average user has 130 friends on the site. This feature is different from traditional community since the size of realistic community can’t be such huge. People in traditional community need to build relationship with other members and also need to keep in touch with them. It is impossible to achieve that with large number of people while it seems not compulsory for the member in some of virtual community.

3. Strong personal link or Impersonal link

As I mentioned before, traditional virtual community is based on strong personal link. However some types of virtual communities are based on more functional link like youtube.com or ebay.com. Memmi (2006) suggests that virtual community is often large, and show casual, impersonal relationships. People join in those communities for seeking some kind of value and profit. Member of ebay.com can buy or sell their product on this platform and member of youtube.com can get the latest news and update information about what they may interested in. Those types of communities are no difference with our real modern society. The motivations joining those virtual communities may be there are more convenience, more valuable and more democracy on this platform. Most importantly, they are going to exchange their information on internet. Knowledge and information are, in general, a valuable currency or social resource in virtual communities (Binik, Cantor, Ochs, & Meana, 1997; Hiltz & Wellman, 1997; Rheingold, 1993a; Sproull & Faraj, 1997). http://www.fixya.com/ is a virtual community which encourage their member to help other member in IT fix problem. Member of Fixya can either ask question about IT problem or help other member to solve their problem. Member of that website doesn’t even know who help and support you, that is those link are not strong personal link, The other way round, virtual community like facebook.com and online game are based on strong personal link and different like Memmi’s idea about impersonal nature about virtual community. As the high ranking of those social networking sites become more and more popular, SNS has became one of most important part in virtual community that is personal strong relationship maintains in huge part of today’s virtual community. U.M. Dholakia, R.P. Bagozzi and L.K. Pearo (2004: 224) stated 5 types of value offering by virtual community in the table of ‘the values of using a virtual community:

Purposive value

Just like article have mentioned above, information exchange, by information exchange online, people who has no information or knowledge in specific area can get the knowledge they need from the virtual community also they can share their information with other member to accomplish this virtual community.

Self-discovery

People who join in the virtual community may obtain access to social resources and facilitate the attainment of their own future goal; in addition, they may form clearly define and elaborate on their own preference based on interaction with others. (U.M. Dholakia, R.P. Bagozzi and L.K. Pearo 2004: 224)

Entertainment value

Facilitates like online game such as MMORPG or virtual world game like second life become a platform and offer chance for people to play and relaxing in it. Also many SNS websites have the same function with online game. ‘it is the value draw from fun and relaxation through playing otherwise interacting with others’ (U.M. Dholakia, R.P. Bagozzi and L.K. Pearo 2004: 224)

Social enhancement

This value is supported by most social networking sites. Most of them allow user and member to create a profile for themselves such as their interests, favorite book, and graduate university or whether you like to dating with strangers etc. The personal relevance information may help members gaining acceptance and approval of other members and enhanced their network social status in those virtual communities.

Maintain interpersonal relationship

We are in the modern Gesellschaft-type society. German sociologists such as To¨nnies, Simmel, and Weber have proposed a fundamental distinction between traditional community (Gemeinschaft in German) and modern society (German Gesellschaft). (Tonnies 1963; Weber 1956; Simmel 1989) in modern Gesellschaft-type society, links are much more impersonal, temporary and functional (as is typical in city life). In larger modern associations, function and social roles replace personal relations as the basis of social status. The increasing size of these organizations makes it impossible anyway to know all other group members on a personal basis, and social functioning is guided by rules, regulations and contracts, rather than by traditional custom and personal obligations. Individual members may well belong to several groups and group identity is much weaker. (Daniel Memmi, 2006) Under this social structure, the emerging of loneliness is unavoidable. That’s why people are keen on express themselves and keep contact with their friend on facebook.com or play a virtual online game such as MMORPG. Join in this type of virtual communities can provide additional benefits beyond that of information exchange – The feeling of being together and being a member of a group and being part of a group, spending time together, companionship, socializing, and networking discussing the same topic with other people no matter how far the distance between members each other. Most people join in social networking sites to seek this kind of value support by virtual community. The article will analyse today’s social networking sites in following parts.

Social networking sites

Danah M. Boyd and Nicole B. Ellison (2007) defined social networking sites as ‘web-based services that allow individuals to construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system; articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection and view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system. ‘Mike Thelwall (2008) argued very similar that social network websites are web servers that allow internet user to register for being a member of that website. The members can communicate with selected other people while they request being a friend with them by showing their own profile, the personal profile usually being created in advance – the same time register as a member. Members may edit their profile by uploading new picture, video clips or other relevant information. Only people who confirm the request by others for being a friend can gain the right to access to the full profile of your friend online. Most SNS offering many applications for members such as online instant message, blogging, photo sharing facility, online game apps etc. Theses applications enhanced the interaction with members. Actually members seem to using social networking site as a tool for maintaining previous relationship and meet strangers on internet. (Jennefer Hart, Ridlely, Faaisal Taher, Corina Sas, Alan Dix 2008) Many pervious scholarships identified that the concept of ‘friendship’ is the key to analyse the social network sites. Those sites are also benefited the strength of weak ties

Weak ties and Strong ties

The term of Weak ties raised by M. Ganovetter(1973). He suggested that there are two types of relationship between peoples – ‘weak ties and strong ties’. Weak ties are different from strong ties while the weak ties relationship usually being maintained between people from different background. Williams, D. (2006) mentioned that ‘weaker ties tend to be to those people less like the first person, they lead to more people in different life situations and thus to a broader set of information and opportunities.’ Social network sites are encouraging people to obtain those weak ties relationship all over the world. By join the SNS like Myspaces.com and Twitter.com, people can make new friend online and they may feel they been connect with the world and can know what happening outside. Weak ties relationship also can let people to know different perceptions towards current hot event from different background. When most social network focused on establishing weak ties relationship between members, Facebook also put much attention on building strong ties relationships. Facebook is encouraging people access to their offline friend rather than strangers on internet. Those friends may come from the same background such as university classmate. People with strong ties relation may be very close friend which may share important information. Members of Facebook.com may keep in touch with their offline friends on internet. The following part of the article will analyse the characteristics of social networking sites by compare two famous SNS – Facebook.com & Myspaces.com

Background information about Facebook.com & Myspaces.com

Facebook.com first introduced on Feb 2004 in USA. Jane Lewis and Anne West (2009) suggested that at the beginning of this website is for Harvard students only. Several months later, the website became also available for students in Stanford, Columbia and Yale. Gradually Facebook.com was reached most university in America for student to reach each other and find their friend on it. The website has been introduced in UK in Oct 2005. With the development of Facebook.com, this more traditional university student only online community became a social networking site which opens to everyone who has a valid email address in 2006. More than half of facebook.com users were non-universities students anymore in 2007 (Facebook.com, 2007b).

Myspace.com is also born in USA. The origin of myspace.com was a leading online storage and sharing site called YourZ.com until 2002 (YOLANDA VILLATE 2002). From 2002-2004, Myspace.com existed as a brand associated with YourZ.com, had made the transition from a virtual storage site to a social networking site. Nowadays myspace.com has become 5th most visited in USA and 23rd most visited website in UK. Different from Facebook.com, Myspace.com enhanced the relationship between members which from different background and never met before. Myspace.com also emphasis the fandom issue for members who is the fan of some celebrities. It becomes one of the most reasons for being success in world wide.

Online and offline friendship

As mentioned before, the concept of friendship is very important for social networking sites. It does being considered by both facebook.com and myspace.com. Pointed out by Mike Thelwall (2008) social network friendship has been explored most systematically. In terms of Facebook.com, facebook.com still as its favorite of student based social network site. In 2007’s research taken by Golder, Wilkinson, and Huberman, they states that most communication on facebook.com take place between students at same college or used to be in a same college that is their relationship or friendship has already been established. Jennefer Hart, Charlene Ridley, Fasial Taher, Corina Sas, Alan Dix (2008) argued that there is a particular aspect of Faceboook.com makes it distinctly with others social network sites is the trend of enhanced offline relationship with online relationship. Facebook.com members are using website to maintain relationships with their offline friends. They can also search their pervious friend in college even in high school. At that time, facebook.com becomes a ‘social search engine’. Many people are interested in what happened on their old friend and been access to them without the barrier of distance. McCartjy and Wright suggested that facebook.com members being more intensified wit offline relationships rather than meet new people. Myspace.com is different from Facebook.com; ‘it seems that there is a class divide, at least in the U.S., between education-oriented Facebook.com users and predominantly non college-educated MySpace users.’ (Boyd, 2007) Myspace.com is mainly focus on building weak ties relationship between members. It can be found obviously when register a new account. People who want to being a member of myspace.com need to chose what type of relationship they are looking for such as dating, serious relationship or friend etc. in addition, myspace.com encourage bands to join in the music.myspace.com while other members can register as a member of those bands or musicians. It made possible for members who are the fan of those musicians and bands to track their recent situation and activity. Moreover being a ‘friend’ with idols or celebrities is really attractive for members of myspace.com. Although myspace.com is a weak ties friendship social network sites, the result from recent research about friendship in myspace.com conduct by Thelwall (2008) shows more and more people brings their offline relationship to myspace.com like facebook.com. Also many celebrities has been registered on facebook.com which enable members of faceboo.com to following their speech and activities, that is those SNS has become more and more comprehensive rather than focus on one direction.

Reason and activities of people use social network sites

The article has mentioned above that friendship – maintain offline friendship or meet new friend on internet is the key reason people become member of social network sites. However what they do regularly on these SNS are not yet clearly. Research done by Kaveri Subrahmanyam, Stephanie M. Reich, Natalia Waechter, Guadalupe Espinoza (2008) gave us some suggestion about that.

The chart above shows that participants answered using social networking sites mainly for social reasons that involved people from their offline lives, the reason of keeping in touch with friends they do not see often ranked first (81%) followed by because all their friends had accounts (61%), keeping in touch with relatives and family (48%), and making plans with friends they see often (35%). As the trend mentioned above today’s Social networking site users in the samples are less frequently use social networking sites to look for new friendship online (29%). For most university students, the more popular social networking activities involved interacting with other known users rather than looking for new friends, new music, or finding groups to talk about specific issues. (Kaveri Subrahmanyam, Stephanie M. Reich, Natalia Waechter, Guadalupe Espinoza 2008)

This chart from the same research shows the activities of SNS member which they did most frequently on internet. the most common social networking activities that users did is reading/responding to notes/messages (77%) followed by reading comments/ posts on their profile page/wall (75%), browsing friends ‘pages/profiles/walls (66%), and writing comments on friends ‘pages/posting on other people’s walls/tagging photos (54%). They also put much time on search new friend, looked for profiles and edited/ updated their profile and status. The result also shows that member is more reluctant to create or join a new group. (Kaveri Subrahmanyam, Stephanie M. Reich, Natalia Waechter, Guadalupe Espinoza 2008) These data collect from research may help the article to identify in what extent whether social network sites have created virtual community by compare the value of virtual community and SNS member behavior. The two famous social network website – facebook.com and myspace.com will be discussed in the following part.

Value of virtual community and social network sites

The article discussed above which rose by Christy M.K. Cheung and Matthew K.O. Lee (2009) they pointed out R.P Bagozzi and U.M. Dholakia (2002)’s work about 5 different type of value people may gain from virtual community – purposive value, self discovery, entertainment value, social enhancement, and maintaining interpersonal relationship.

Purposive value

Although there is an application for Facebook.com called news feeds which allow members to share their recently to information about themselves. There is no other information members can get from the website or other member only if other member share their information with you. Myspace.com offering better purposive value compare with facebook.com. Members may link to musician and bands myspace.com account website to track their new released information or listen their new music or watch newly uploaded music video clips and most importantly all the music is free. Celebrities like USA president Obama also have the blog in myspace.com. Members may access to his recent announcement or speech on his blog. In some extent those information are purposive value, however still there are limitation on this type of value compare with other professional video or information sharing website such as youtube.com

Self-discovery value

Both facebook.com and myspace.com enable member to think more about recent hot issue by sharing their views on their blog. People may be influenced by other people by their comments or view towards specific event or issue. The twitter.com is the most powerful SNS in this field. When people open the twitter.com, there is even no need to register, people may search the topic they interested in and to see how people around world think about it. The home page of twitter.com also offers the hottest keyword for recommendations.

Entertainment value

Jennefer Hart, Chariene Ridley, Faisal Taher, Corina Sas, Alan Dix (2008) suggests that one of the most important reasons for both joining and engaging with SNS like facebook.com was the ‘social pleasure’. Social pleasure means that to have an enjoyable experience for using those social network sites. Facebook.com offers different facilities and applications for the members to interact with each other. Despite those common features, the ‘wall’ is really interesting idea which enable member’s friend writing or drawing a picture on their wall. In addition, facebook.com supports many online mini game apps which can be available for multiplayer like you and your friend. Most of those mini online games are quite interesting. Myspace.com share the same function with facebook.com in the part of online game apps, moreover, to build relationship with musician and band and watching music video can be fun for members of myspace.com. It indicates the data above that nearly 50% participants join in the social network sites for have fun and not be board.

Social enhancement

The result of the research shows majority of members of social network site keep adding profile and writing comments. It is a way for member to expressing themselves and also enhances their social status. ‘The aspect of representing oneself to other people in a social situation was a key feature within Facebook.com’ (Jennefer Hart, Chariene Ridley, Faisal Taher, Corina Sas, Alan Dix 2008) Sonia Livingston (2008) suggests similar that people on internet always devoted attention to the presentation of self. Creating and networking online content is becoming a crucial part of presenting one’s identity, lifestyle and social relations. Social network sites like facebook.com and myspace.com allows member to create their own profile to express themselves and share them with their friends. Facebook.com also offers different way for member to show them on the stage such as sharing photo and video with their friend. The process of sign up for being a member of myspace.com also proves that the personal profile may enhance their social status. Despite the basic personal information, myspace.com also request information more details such as Occupation, Ethnicity, seeking relationship choice from Dating, Serious Relationships, Friends, Network. In addition to the information link, following the Background & Lifestyle link gives more choices like Marital Status, Sexual Orientation, Religion, Children (attitudes towards whether to have a baby). Those complicated information may help better targeting by other people who are trying to find a specific type of people with clear aims. Members can be better identified by those complicated profiles. Jane Lewis and Anne West (2009) state that social network sites required members to construct profiles. they can have more to do with individual display and the presentation of self.

Maintain interpersonal relationship

Research data shows that the reason for people join in society networking sites such as Facebook.com is to stay in touch with those friends they can’t meet often. The reason matches the value of virtual community which indicated that people are more willing to keep in contact with others people. Nicole B. Ellison, Cliff Lampe, Charles Steinfield (2007) suggested that our generation become increased isolated because of the new technology of the days. People are getting busy and facing heavy stress from the society. It is more and more time-intensive for people to keep contact with their friend. Facebook.com may offer a opportunity to make new friends moreover to find old friends. It is not only helps people to reconnect with their old friend but also recalls the past memories. (Jennefer Hart, Chariene Ridley, Faisal Taher, Corina SAS, Alan Dix 2008) Facebook.com can give members suggestion about their potential friend by searching the common friend with existing friend. It is surprising to find out someone you know on the suggestion friend list. Updated myspace.com also has the similar function with facebook.com. The article has discussed that social network sites are bridging the relationship between online and offline.

It is not difficult to find out the relationship between social network sites and virtual communities. By analyse the value and feature of them, we may conclude that they shared majority of the value with the similar characteristics. This fact proves that social network sites create the part virtual community as some of the value SNS cannot support like technology and information exchange. Those parts of virtual community are being created by some website which hold more impersonal website like YouTube and Wikipedia.

Privacy issue of social network sites

Privacy issue has emerged regarding the use of virtual community and social network sites such as Facebook.com as a means of surveillance and data mining. It is important to mention this issue as many case studies can prove the threats towards user safety concer. Two MIT students were able to download over 70,000Facebook profiles from four schools (MIT, New York University, the University of Oklahoma, and Harvard University) using an automated shell script, as part of a research project on Facebook privacy published on December 14, 2005. The possibility of data mining remains open, as evidenced in May 2008, when the BBC technology program “Click” demonstrated that personal details of Facebook users and their friends could be stolen by submitting malicious applications. We are benefit from the new technology environment, however this technology also benefit those people who want to collecting personal information from the community. Acqiosti and Gross (2006) presented their idea about there is a disconnect between students’ desire to protect privacy and their behavior. The level of security may influences member of SNS whether to put real information on it such as facebook.com users expressed greater trust on Facebook rather than Myspace.com.

Conclusion

This article has analysed the relationship between virtual community and social network site. Firstly Virtual community has been identified as a new form of community based on internet technology which enables people to shared interests or goals for which electronic communication is a primary form of interaction. (Dennis, Pootheri, & Natarajan, 1998) It is different from traditional community such as there is no limitation on location, time and size of virtual community, also some of the virtual community based on functional link rather than personal link. Within site with strong personal link, the article discuss the social networking site, social networking site is web 2.0 based services which allow member of the sites create their own profile and communicate with friend they established relationship online. Facebook.com and Myspace.com being selected as two examples to analysis the characteristic of social network sites. Facebook.com established on strong ties relationship while Myspace.com encourage more weak ties relationship, that is meet new friend on internet from different background. However the recent trend that more and more members join in society is to maintain their offline relationship with their past friend or existing friend. The boundary of whether the relationship is weak ties or strong ties has been blurred. By review the existing research towards reason and motivation of people how use social networking site, the essay find out that most people join in the SNS for contacting their friend they don’t often get in touch with. Comparisons between the reasons for participate in SNS and value offered by virtual community has been conducted at the last part of the article. The result of comparison suggests the reason and value are very similar between SNS and virtual community that is the result proves the claim that social networking sites created the virtual community, at least a huge part of virtual community. The other impersona