Seven Types of Web Communities

Recently, a friend of mind wrote an interesting post on Gather.com called Facebook and Gather Are Not Direct Competitors.  In it, he explains how Gather and Facebook are two different types of web community sites aimed at two different purposes.  This interested me, because I never really thought of it.

I decided that it might be useful to start a dialogue concerning the types of web communities that are out there, and what they target.  I’m not sure that I can always tie a type of community with a specific application, but I’ll try my best.

So, below is my list of seven web communities:

Familial

As stated above, web communities may actually be based on real communities, made up of friends and family.  FaceBook and MySpace are the biggies for this.  Twitter was based on the idea that friends and family could get real-time updates about each other.  It has turned into something altogether different, of course.

Shared Interest

These are communities of people that often don’t know each other personally, but share a common interest that they discuss.  This is a common use for Gather.  Also, there is a good site for discussing books called Shelfari.

Collaborative Creation

This is a community that collaboratively creates things using the web as an online platform.  The major examples of this are wikis like Wikipedia.

Professional

These are communities of professionals that which to develop and maintain their professional network.  LinkedIn is the most common of these.

Economic

These are communites of people that buy and sell goods and services.  Craigslist and eBay are the most common versions of these.

Media and Link Sharing

These are communities of people sharing things that they have found or produced.  YouTube is an example of this for media.  Delicious is an example of this for links.  Twitter is another strong example of this.

Romantic

These are the types of communities used to find “that special someone”.  These are often not free.  The only one that comes to mind is eHarmony.

The online communities we belong to help us nurture the different aspects of our personal and social lives.  Humans have so many aspects to them that I’m sure that the above is not an exhaustive list.  I would like to hear about other types that could be added to the above.  If you can think of one, please drop me a comment.

I also want to add the disclaimer that some of the applications above, like Facebook, actually facilitate more than one of the types of communities above.  I mentioned it for what I use it the most for.  Sorry for my lack of objectivity. 

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The Many Faces of Twitter

So, recently I decided to get back into the collaborative web 2.0 thing.  And, I started with Twitter.  This ended up being the perfect door into the collaborative web.

First of all, I should mention that I’m interested in the collaborative web because I’m interested in people and their genius.  And, I’m interested in thinking about new ways for them to work together to realize their genius.

Twitter is a type of application known as a micro-blogging application.  Micro-blogging is exactly what it sounds like.  It is blogging involving tiny 140 character blog entries.  These blog entries, in Twitter, are called Tweets.  You find people to follow, and you see their tweets.  They follow you and they see your tweets…simple.  Incidentally, the 140 character limit is based on texting limits.  You can both tweet and get tweets via texting on your mobile phone.

When I first read about Twitter I excused it as useless.  I figured it was more “noise” contributing to the signal-to-noise ratio of the interactive web…enter human genius.  ANY TIME you forget to take into account the effects of human creativity and genius, you will be wrong.  And, I was wrong.

Twitter ended up becoming almost every type of application.  It ended up with many faces…fueled by the human minds.  Below are some of them:

1. Blogging – For when you can communicate something meaningful in 140 characters.
2. RSS Feeds – Most Twitterer’s links to their latest blog entries…I do.
3. Social Bookmarking – Most Twitterer’s share their favorite links…again, I do.
4. Social Networking – I, for instance, like to follow software developers, web designers, and people interested in the Semantic Web.  To be honest, though, if you are a human and you follow me, I will follow you.  I’m interested in all sorts of minds…not just those like my own.
5. Professional Networking – I’ve read about job offers via Twitter.
6. Chatting – You can send tweets that are replies to other tweets.
7. Advertisement - Some tweet to peddles their goods and services.  Here is a good example.
8. Community Building – Groups of like minded people that share similar aims in life or reside in the same geographical location will follow each other in a manner similar to groups in MySpace or Facebook.
9. Online Collaboration – You can leverage the knowledge and creativity of your Twitter community.
10. Interactive TV – Julie Banderas from Fox News Channel reads tweets on the air and even has voting to decide whether or not take take commercial breaks.

Let me know if you have other uses of Twitter.  This interests me a lot.  I’m on twitter as @purecognition.  Better yet, send me a comment.  I don’t get many of those.

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