I have been exploring on-line communities and one that interests me is Facebook. The website is www.facebook.com
Facebook's mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. Millions of people use Facebook everyday to keep up with friends upload an unlimited number of photos, share links and videos, and learn more about the people they meet.
This community is based on interaction with others. Every member has their own page, where they can add photos, videos, update people on what they are doing and comment on friends pages. Along with this they can join fan groups and clubs as well as take quizzes and even play online poker. With all of these of these items to play around with Facebook truly is a social networking site.
The sorts of topics being discussed on face book involve what has happening in their lives, social events, activities, what they are going to do in the weekend, where they are going etc, it’s basically a big gossip community . People are constantly updating their profile as their life events change or occur and conversations between friends can last for week and weeks. Then when other friends come online users are able to chat instantly.
The ethical issues that may arise within the use of face book includes;
-users giving out too much personal information and the threat of sexual predators.
-data theft, or viruses that can get
-people can view peoples profile when they don’t want to and potentially stalk people
-identity theft, by people logging in to others accounts.
-creation of fake identity and profiles which result in people become mislead.
-Other people can put photos and videos of you and tag your name without your permission or knowledge
There are many benefits this online community has over traditional notions of community which include;
-provide large amounts of information very quickly
-provides connections over great distances, and able to communicate with people with similar interests
- allow for silent observation prior to participation
-individuals are able to have equal voice
-fast speed of information sharing
- able to monitor and regulate users
There are still aspects that online communities lack in relation to traditional communities which include;
- lack of face to face communication
- there is potential for misuse and often delusions and reliance on virtual communities
- limited to the communication tools within the online community.
- not always valid information being shared
- only people with computers and internet are able to join the communities.
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