THE PSYCHOLOGY OF
VIRTUAL ONLINE COMMUNITIES
Some Online Resources on Virtual Communities
The following links were given in the instruction for this report. They involved a great amount of information related on virtual communities.
1. http://rdz.stjohns.edu/~storm/
2.
http://www.behavior.net/mhn/bolforum/message/32
3. http://www.shassan.com/
4. http://www.grohol.com/
5. http://www.netaxs.com/~jamesiii/papers.htm
1. http://www.princetonol.com/groups/
The Princeton Online Community Groups provides a lot of links to different kinds of online community. They have listed them in different categories so that you can search by groups. They have over 180 organizations listed. I recommend this web site not because it is a online community, but there are also online forums, classifies, and other kinds of information that you can read on.
2. http://209.196.59.92/visitor.cgi?region_id=5
Another online community that I would like to introduce is Tennessee Singles Net. I think this is a great place for the singles to go because they got online chatrooms, social groups, and bulletin boards for you to post up what you want to say. The biggest surprise is that they have member contests which include cash, special profile recognition, tickets to concerts and movies. The disadvantage of this website is that they require a membership fee, and the fee is not at all cheap. This page was established for 4 years already, so I think that there are certain amount of people in this community.
This is a very old community which is mainly a chatroom. It has been lasted for about 3 or 4 years already. Most of the people that are here are mainly teenagers. I think it is a very good place to meet new friends.
4. http://www.amazoncity.com/cafe/
This one was drawn from one of the
generation, I think this website is great for the female to travel along.
They have a lot of involved interesting topics.
What Are Virtual Online Communities?
Virtual communities are groups of people interacting with each other using the internet as the channel for communication. There are a variety of purposes for virtual communities including addressing business needs, support groups, and bringing people together to communicate on a topic of mutual interest. It is just another way to express and share their feeling with one another. They involved chatrooms, bulletin boards, newsgroup, etc.
Different virtual communities have different purposes. There are communities for women, research, entertainment, etc. They all have different groups of people to interact with. But they have the same goals that people share their feeling and ideas on the cyberspace. I order for virtual communities to be sucessful, they need individuals to come back time after time again to moderate discussion.
I think anyone can build a virtual community, just like everyone can post a message on the bulletin board. Thegreat thing about the internet is that the response is always fast and instant. All you need is the time, resources and creativity to start one. Then you need people to come and use it, and the people have to come back time after time to continue their discussion. Without the people you cannot have a community.
BUILDER.COM'S 10 TIPS FOR BUILDING EFFECTIVE ONLINE GATHERING PLACES
Tip
1: test the water
Tip
2: make it a party
Tip
3: have 'em waiting at the door
Tip
4: use your entire site to seed discussions
Tip
5: recruit help
Tip
6: set and enforce rules
Tip
7: remember it's their community, too
Tip
8: project personality
Tip
9: grow carefully
Tip
10: be a skillful moderator
How do virtual communities work? How do they spread? How many types are there?
Virtual communities work by allowing people a way
to vent and communicate freely with those people who share the
same ideas and hobbies. A community will work only
if people are responding within each group, it is pretty much like a society
must have people to run along. The way virtual communities spread
is mostly by word. We type our discussion and post it on the net.
We can also get immediate response through online chatrooms. It is
also done by typed words. Other kinds like newsgroups are also typed
messages. There are many kinds of virtual communities such as chatrooms,
newsgroups, bulletin boards, etc. They are also divided into different
categories for various kinds of people. People can post messages
on these boards and others could reply and you could vies the thread of
the conversation.
Case history of Virtual Communities
Acer game zone is a virtual community that was created by the Acer computer company. This virtual community have about 290,000 worldwide members right now, but I expect there should be more to come in the near future. The reason that I didn't suggest this website to the US users is because this page is orginally developed in Taiwan and the language used is Chinese. There aren't enough translation. This virtual community always maintain a certain amount of people to login into their server and interact with each other. By the time I check this site, there are 1078 people in this community. They are either playing games with people online, chatting with each other online, etc. They also provide online forums. The best part of this website is that you don't have to pay a dollar in order to be a community member.
It is such a great way to be involved
in virtual communities. We can get a lot of ideas and advices from
others. I liked to chat to different kinds of people, and participate
in different topics. I will communicate through virtual community
only when I have spare time. Virtual communities expand the range
of human communication. The use of anonymity has made people
more confidence to communicate on net. Virtual communities also provides
all kinds of opportunities for the people to know each others throughout
the world. Some years ago, people are limited to interact with their
own region. With the use of virtual communities, people can now have
immediate responses with different culture of people. People can
also get various kinds of responses from people in different parts of the
world. It also serves as an entertainment to the public. Some
people like to socialized with people. Virtual community have given
them a good area to socialize in after their work. On the computer
you can still be open and seek interaction that you would not otherwise
seek in the street. People are open to discuss topics on whatever they
like. I think that there will be greater use of the internet to find
people and interact because of this change in
society.
Lori
Rapoza did a report on attaining cyberspace citizenship. It is
like a research study of her own. She uses points in her report to
grade her abilities as she learned to use the net. In the beginning she
has confidence of her abilities in using the net, she did not know that
what is ahead was a great deal to work on. As soon as the technical
stuff came down to her, she was turned away and scared by it. Towards
the end of the semester she was a lot more confident and was able to complete
her assignments a lot faster. I think that Lori did a great job and
I would not be able to tell that she had a hard time with the
internet by looking at her final products.
Chie Ginama on Acquiring Cyberspace Citizenship First, she goes over her ratings for the experience of the class during the different weeks. She starts with it being a pleasant experience but as she continues, it becomes more stressful. She ends up being fairly satisfied with her time spent doing classwork over the internet. She also looks at reports of prior generations. She tried to find ways to relate to the humor of their experiences and state what she likes and dislikes. Then, she does the same with those in her own generation. I think she did a good job in analyzing.
I was able to learn a lot about online virtual communities.
There is a lot of things that you can do with these kinds of virtual communities.
The main purpose is to let different kinds of people interact with each
other through the cyberspace. I think that it has created a lot of
opportunity for the people who is alone and lack of self confidence in
the reality world. Virtual communities really help them to be socialized
with the public.