Thursday, March 15, 2007

QotW7: Twit Twit: An Online Community



"A Twitting Success"


When everyone was logged on to "Twitter" instead of paying attention to our Communication 300 class on Thursday, I knew that "Twitter" was an instant hit with the class. Almost every student was so excited about adding new friends into our community, to the point that I encountered problems when logging into the page!

According to my lecturer, Mr Kevin Lim, "Twitter" is one of the latest online communities that have been introduced in the United States.Though "Twitter" might still be a little unfamiliar to some Singaporeans, we must not fail to realize the emergence of an online community is not a new fad in Singapore or in any country around the world.

In this age of vast internet usage, computer-mediated communication (CMC) has dominated our everyday lives. According to the Online Services, online services has grown to more than 40% from 1993 to 1994 and they have reportedly more than 6.3 million subscribers. (Online Services, 1995) There is also an estimated 25 million CMC users worldwide. (Calem, 1992) An online community is a very popular avenue where people can gather, communicate and make friends with people of similar interests. According to Rhinegold (1993), a virtual or online community is defined by "social aggregations that emerge from the internet when enough people carry on public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace."

The following examples show that "Twitter" is a classic example of an online community. After playing around with the program, I managed to add my friends into my community and we started to communicate with one another. Firstly, "Twitter" can be considered an online community because my classmates and I had a shared goal and interest that served as the primary reason for all of us to belong to a community. Secondly, we managed to engage in repeated and active participation between our friends and our conversations were often intense, including some shared activities between everybody in class. Lastly, we also had a shared context of social conventions, such as the use of a similar language and protocol. (Whittaker, Issac& O'Day, 1997, pg.137) Hence, all of the above characteristics support the claim that "Twitter" is an online community.

In conclusion, since it is often difficult to maintain relationships over long distances nowadays, and physical seperation has reduced the strength of a person's membership in a community, I am certain that the advantages of an online community will aid people in maintaining and strengthening friendships between one another. (Gergen, 1997; Jones, 1997; Rhinegold, 1993)

References:

On-line services continue to boom. (1995, January 14). Rocky Mountain News, p. 59A. Retrieved March, 15, 2o07 from http://www.rhinegold.com/texts/techpolitix/VCcvil.html

Gergwn, K. (1997). Social Saturation and the Populated Self. In G.E.H.C.L. Selfe (Ed.), Literacy, technology, and society: confronting the issues (pp.pp.12-36). Upper Saddle River: NJ: Prentice Hall. Retrieved March, 15, 2007 from http://www.ifsm.umbc.edu/~preece/paper/7%20Handbook%20v1.7Final.pdf

Whittaker, S., Issacs, E., & O'Day, V. (1997). Widening the net. Working report on the theory and practice of physical and network communities, SIGCHI Bulletin, 29(3), 27-30. Retrieved March 15, 2007 from http://www.ifsm.umbc.edu/~preece/paper/7%20Handbook%20v1.7Final.pdf