Online communities allow people to connect and share information in various ways. Twitter allows sharing of 140-character messages and pictures with a network of followers, providing a way to get news and current events in real-time. Facebook started as a way for college students to share experiences but became a worldwide phenomenon connecting friends near and far. Personal blogs allow individuals to share diaries and media like images or videos with readers who can interact through comments. Research shows online identities and relationships formed through these communities have become important parts of peoples' lives.

1. What is an online community?

2. Twitter
140 characters or pictures that you share with a
network of friends. You can follow just about
anyone, celebrities and even politicians.

3. Everyone from

4. To…
Has a twitter!

5. What’s so great about it?
• Bradley’s research Twitter shows that news
and current events can be sourced literally as
they happening via twitter (2008).
• Beers explains that this leads to a ‘deeper and
more interactive’ relationship with important
issues (2006:110).

6. Facebook
• A website originally created to share the American
college experience has been a worldwide success.
We can connect with friends and people from all
different spans of our lived, not matter how far
away!

7. What’s the appeal?
• Boyd also states that though ‘only the lives of the rich
and famous were deemed important enough to share’
the Internet has changed this forever (22).
• Papacharissi dubbed Facebook a ‘glasshouse’.
This thing we think is so private actually holds onto
your information. He also explains that
our online identity is created through the websites we
participate on.
• The online identities are constantly becoming a more
important part of what makes us who we are.

8. Facebook
Gross and
Acquitsti’s work
shows that those
who we have as our
friends online might
not
be the same as the
people we call our
friends
In real life.

9. How time on Facebook is spent
• Pempek, Yermolayeva, and Calvert stated that:
• “students use Facebook approximately 30 min
throughout the day as part of their daily routine.
Students communicated on Facebook using a
one-to-many style, in which they were the
creators disseminating content to their friends.
Even so, they spent more time observing content
on Facebook than actually posting content.” (1)

10. Personal Blogging
• Then there’s the vast variety of personal blogs,
online diaries that can be shared with the
whole world. There are many different
mediums including image heavy blogs like
Tumblr and Video blogs on Youtube. Readers
can interact with the author via comments.

12. Blogging
• Guadagno, Okdie and Eno explain:
‘those women who are high in neuroticism
are more likely to be bloggers’ (2007)
• Yang-Jangl’s findings bring up the idea that
instead of isolating people, blogging and
online communities are finding new ways to
bring people together (2008).

14. Why share it with the world?
• ‘It seems that the benefits of using blogs as an
interpersonal communication channel outweigh the
perceived costs of abdicating ownership or control of
one’s personal information.’ (Stefanone and Yang-
Jang 2008)

15. So there you have it!
• There we have it, a look into the world of
online communities, and why they are so
important!
So what are you waiting for? Get in board!