KCB201 Online Communities

Happy Together? ‘ All the Love Together’ by marie-ll under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0, http://flickr.com/photos/grrrl/96473317

http://www.facebook.com/applications/

Source: Farnham, S. (2008). The Facebook Application Ecosystem . O’Reilly.

Zeitgeist Flickr folksonomy: http://flickr.com/photos/tags/

http://www.couchsurfing.com/ ‘ Couch surfing’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTFOsXor0Q8

‘ Couchsurfing’ http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v =_6Rrao08bC4 ‘ Participate in Creating a Better World, One Couch at a Time’

‘ Hello, Is It Me You’re Looking For?’

Look for a host with similar interests.

Read their profile to see if you’re compatible.

Try to contact newer & less busy hosts to increase your chances.

If travelling with friends, make sure they have profiles.

Get verified!

‘ Slouch on the Couch’ by sparktography, CC BY-NC 2.0, http://flickr.com/photos/sparktography/65005867/ http:// wiki.couchsurfing.com / CouchSurfingWiki

Virtual Community

‘ Social aggregations that emerge from the Net when enough people carry on public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling , to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace ’ (Rheingold, 1994)

‘ Togetherness’ by Mexicanwave, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0, http://flickr.com/photos/mexicanwave/101273198/

Virtual Communities

Usenet

Blogs: LiveJournal, Xanga, Blogger

Comics: UserFriendly, Ctrl+Alt+Del, Piled Higher and Deeper

Internet Fora: The WELL (Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link), The Meta Network

IM: ICQ, AIM, Windows Live Messenger

MMORPGs: WoW, EverQuest, Guild Wars

MOOs: LamdaMOO

News: Slashdot, BoingBoing, CurrentTV, Digg

P2P: Napster, Limewire, SoulSeek, Morpheus, KaZaa

Social Networking: MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, Orkut

Virtual Worlds: Second Life, The Sims

Wikis: Wikipedia, PBWiki, WikiWikiWeb

Communis = Common, Public, Shared

‘ Sense of (Virtual) Community’:

Feelings of membership;

Feelings of influence;

Integration and fulfilment of needs;

Shared emotional connection.

(McMillan & Chavis, 1986; Blanchard & Markus, 2003)

Commons-Based Creativity

Yochai Benkler (2006) ‘Commons-Based Peer Production’:

Linux

Wikipedia: ‘free knowledge for free minds’

Flickr’s collaborative efforts

http://www.flickr.com/groups/remix explains its philosophy as follows:

'put simply: we are here to draw upon the freedom of the commons, the talent of our community, and the depth of our imaginations. and that is all very fun.’

http:// www.krazydad.com/squaredcircle /

Commons-Based Creativity

Rip, Mix, and Share

Open APIs: Mashups

1. ‘exhibition-ism’ by striatic, CC BY-SA 2.0, http://flickr.com/photos/striatic/41397778/ 2. ‘Striatic Remixed: Exhibition-ism II’ by Eric Rice, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0, http://flickr.com/photos/ericrice/42035639/ 3. ‘striatic in photoshop’ by zen, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, http://flickr.com/photos/zen/116641521/

A Swarm of Angels ‘ Remixing Cinema’ http://aswarmofangels.com/

Shared Space

Verkeersbordvrij (Monderman): Removing the Rules

‘ What are the technical tools and social structures that inspire people to act humanely online?’

Zittrain (2008, p. 126)

‘ Everybody is connected to everybody else, all data that can be shared will be shared: get used to it.’ Eben Moglen

‘ sharing is caring’ by imagesbyk2 Photography, CC BY-ND 2.0, http://www.flickr.com/photos/imagesbyk2/27263706/

Why Participate?

‘ Social psychology has found that people join groups in general for both feelings of affiliation and belonging as well as for information and aid in goal achievement .’ (Ridings & Gefen, 2004)

Self/other motivational framework (Hemetsberger, 2003)

advocacy, altruism, belonging, challenge, collaboration, competency, connection, control, egoism, egotism, emotional support, empathy, equity, fairness, hedonic value, identity, information, knowledge, moral obligation, power, reciprocity, reputation, self-efficacy, self-expression, skills, social significance, wisdom

Bonds of Trust

‘ Social capital’ :

Robert Putnam’s (1995)

Tuning In, Tuning Out:

‘ features of social life - networks, norms, trust - that enable participants to act together more effectively to pursue shared interests’

(2000) Bowling Alone

innovation & sharing

http://www.gapingvoid.com/virtual%20online%20community2.jpg

Wikipedia Fraud

‘ EssJay, a Wikipedia editor understood by the site and its users to be a tenured professor of religion at a private university with expertise in canon law, was in fact a 24 year old from Kentucky called Ryan Jordan with no higher educational qualifications to speak of.’

James Doran, Times Online ,

6 March 2007

Wilcox, http://www.theage.com.au/news/web/pms-staff-edited-wikipedia/2007/08/23/1187462443308.html?page=2

Wii’re Not Amused

Yahoo!’s ‘Brand Universe’ portal

Violation of Flickr/API TOS/

CC NC licences?

‘ Flickr off’ civil disobedience

Nintendo-endorsed? Branding?

Stewart Butterfield’s response:

‘ Even if it is legal, that doesn't mean it should be happening. If it's something that makes people who use Flickr feel taken advantage of or exploited, it is not something that should be done.’

http:// wii.yahoo.com / http://www.flickr.com/help/forum/32752/page3/

Flick rsoft ‘ Microsoft: Keep Your Evil Grubby Hands Off Flickr’ http://www.flickr.com/groups/microsoft-keep-your-evil-grubby-hands-off-our-flickr /

Switching Costs