Q1. Discuss the impact of virtual community in the dynamics and structure of real life community.
What is virtual community? Many people have different understanding of virtual community, depending on their specific needs and the context in which they go to virtual community. The definition of virtual community is social aggregations that emerge that from the Net when enough people carry on those public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feelings, to form webs of personal relationship in cyberspace. A virtual community is a group of people who may or may not meet one another face to face, and who exchange words and ideas through the mediation of computer bulletin boards and networks.
The virtual community is a social network of individuals who interact through certain media and at the time crossing over geographical and political boundaries in order to achieve and pursue mutual interests of goals.
Virtual communities have internet message boards. Internet message boards bring people together to share their knowledge. Message boards also called discussion boards, bulletin boards, or forums. There are the place you can ask questions, get answers, and share you knowledge and experience. Another is online chat room, the development of online chat rooms allowed people to talk to whoever was online at the same time they were. This way, messages were sent and online users could immediately receive the messages. For example, MSN, YAHOO, and SKYPE. Next is Virtual worlds. Virtual worlds are the interactive in all virtual community forms. In this type of virtual community, people use their avatar connected with the people. Social networking service which is website or software platform that focuses on creating and maintaining relationships. For example, Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace are all virtual communities.
The impact of virtual communities is they have on information generation and transmission, and socialization. For example, today Twitter can to share, in real time, information, thought, links and so forth with the Web at-large and to able to communicate directly, privately, or publicly in a variety of domain. Users and operators attract by these forum because these forum is dynamics and interactive. These communities are offered many of their ability to support socialization and offer an identity for the participants. Most virtual communities share the characteristics, it is also important to recognize that virtual communities are not the same or similar kind or nature; they different significantly based on the domain, purpose and benefits.
Community members interact via digital media and sharing their knowledge. Related issues can be trust, network effects, transaction costs and the design of services as well as the generation of innovations. "Wisdom of Crowds", "Collective Intelligence" and "Crowdsourcing" is important new terms describing mechanisms around user-generated content in Virtual Communities and Social Networks. Although the increasing popularity of virtual communities and social networking, several questions relating to virtual communities and social networking is still remain and nobody can explore.
In conclusion, virtual community is different with the real life community. Even thought, virtual community is can be easier interact with others but users must be careful and what information they disclose about themselves to ensure they are not easily identifiable, for safety reasons.
(523 words)
