2-5-07, Week 5

Online Communities. – Business Models

My experience with online communities has been, interesting at best. I won’t go into that, well because people may actually read this thing. Let’s just say, I’ve learned a lot of interesting people and think these communities are very useful for specific things, especially for things people in their day to day communities are not accepting of. (a teenage mom for example might get a lot of information she needs, but isn’t willing to talk about with peers)

I think business uses however, are way better than personal ones. When we had the speaker come talk about biznik or newsvine, these seemed like two great uses of online communities. They were linking people of similar hobbies/jobs/wants and allowing them to learn from each other and coordinate together. To me, this seems like a much better model than friendster or myspace. The later two seem more like they are taking up time from other valuable pursuits, not adding and expanding knowledge, understanding, and sharing of information.

I do disagree with Wellman, Haase, Witte, and Hampton. I actually think that the Internet decreases social capital, at least meaningful capital. I’m not sure that all the time I spend online and have meaningful communities is worth even half of what I would have if I spent that time with someone in person.

Supposedly with online social networks, I’ll meet new people, have a bigger social network, and be more social. I’m not sure it matters much, if I’m social I will be online as much as in person, if I’m not, I won’t be either place. But then I don’t like computers, at least not for personal things! For business networking, that’s great!