QotW7: Tweet-er!

Would you Consider Twitter an Online Community?

An online community is one that comprises of a group of people that communicate or interact via the Internet. Different communities advocate different levels of participation. According to Amy Jo Kim, there are 2 different kinds of online communities - the traditional structure online communities, and the more individual-centric, bottom-up sort of interaction (Wikipedia, 2007).

The traditional structure online communites include online discussion boards and chat rooms. Participation in these mediums are more difficult than they seem, as they require mechanisms like gift-giving and reciprocity to establish reputation. For individual-centric, bottom-up sort of interaction like blogging, participation could entail something as simple as leaving comments or tags on someone's blog.

What is great about an online community is that it is able to connect people "without regard to race, creed, gender or geography." (Wellman & Guila, 1996) Even though an online community can transcend beyond the physical and geographical location of a person, there must also be at least one common factor to bind people of a community together. In the case of Twitter, all of us joined as it was part of our assignment ;) That's what binds us, at least in the Twitter community!

Thus, to answer the question - Is Twitter an Online Community? Definitely! Twitter is an online form of social networking that is more popular in the US and UK, but barely known here in Singapore! Well, thanks to this blog assignment, all of us got to experience what it was like interacting with each other through this hybrid of a tag box and a chat room, and it proved to be quite additctive and interesting!

Well then, why is it an Online Community? An online community is one that comprises of a group of people who interact via the Internet. Yes, without a doubt, we can do that with Twitter! However, in a way, I believe that Twitter is a fusion of both types of Online Community. It is a traditional structure online community simply because it operates like a chat room where you and your friends can interact with each other via your live updates. However, it is also an individual-centric, bottom-up sort of interaction because you can import Twitter as a widget onto your own blog, and your blog readers will get to know your live updates even if they do not have a Twitter account, or do not know what Twitter is. They can then respond to the live updates (from your Twitter) on your blog via your comments or your tagboard!

Undoubtedly, Twitter is an online community, and I hope that I have substantiated my argument sufficiently to prove that it is :)


References

Butler, B., Sproull, L., Kiesler, S. & Kraut, R. (2002). "Community Effort in Online Groups: Who Does the Work and Why?" Retrieved March 14, 2007 from http://pascal.case.unibz.it/retrieve/3248/butler.pdf

Fernback, J. & Thompson, B. (1995). "Virtual Communities: Abort, Retry, Failure?" Retrieved March 13, 2007 from http://www.rheingold.com/texts/techpolitix/VCcivil.html

Wellman, B. & Gulia, M. (1996). "Net Surfers Don't Ride Alone: Virtual Communities as Communities." Retrieved March 13, 2007 from http://www.acm.org/%7Eccp/references/wellman/wellman.html

Wikipedia (2007). Virtual Community. Retrieved March 15, 2007 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_communities