Participation in forms of community Shapes The Web 2.0

26/04/2010 ChrisK 17 comments

The Web was a decade ago a place which was similar to television. The Possibility to participate was limited to professional web designer or other professionals of corporate organisations. The rise of Web 2.0 was characterised by the increasing numbers of sites and platforms who offer average people the possibility to participate. People are not only able to participate but also to be a part of a community. Starting with bulletin boards, platforms like blogs and later YouTube,Facebook, Wikipedia, Delicious and many more followed and gave people the chance to participate and consume what other most of the time private user produced.While the feeling of togetherness and community is important, it shapes the way we can use the Web 2.0 today. Participation in forms of community shapes the Web 2.0.

Communities can be defined in many ways, citing Kovisto (2003) “There are many definitions for online communities. According to Preece an online community consists of people who interact socially as they strive to satisfy their own needs to perform special roles. They also have a shared purpose, an interest or need, information exchange, or service that provides a reason for community.“ While mentioning different forms of communities here, every community has different goals and every of the member has different goals. That the needs of both sides the people who participate and the people who search for data and want to consume get satisfied is important in the community of the web 2.0.

The communities available in the Web can be defined as virtual communities. Early forms of community platforms in the Web were, for example, bulletin boards. Even they were not as sophisticated as the Web 2.0 platforms today they were at least able to connect people and mediate text. These connection of people formed a community by letting people communicate with each other for a certain topic or they gave people social support. On the one side the people who wanted to know something and on the other side people who want to contribute and answer these questions. These early platforms were already used to solve problems and questions.(Ridings & Gefen,2004) Looking on the example of Rheingold „ In the summer of 1986, my then-two-year-old daughter picked up a tick. There was this blood-bloated thing sucking on our baby‘s scalp, and we weren‘t quite sure how to go about getting it off. My Wife, Judy called the paediatrician. It was elven o‘clock in the evening. I logged onto the WELL. I got my answer online within minutes form a a fellow with the improbable but genuine name of Flash Gordon, M.D. I had removed the tick by the time Judy got the callback from the paediatrician‘s office. (Rheingold, 1995) The power of people getting together on a platform made it possible to answer the question faster with the help of this self coordinated and self organised platform than the traditional corporate organisation.

Further, looking on these virtual communities and the impact on the Web 2.0. Aguiton &Cardon (2007) citing Rheingold “Web development always contains the community ideal. But the community -whatever it is before or through the digital exchanges between individuals -is usually considered as both voluntary and organised cooperation.“ It seems that the feeling of community which can be defined as a human feeling or need is now externalised in the into the Web 2.0 and its user-friendly platforms. According to Shirky (2008) people take the time for this participation out of the time the used to watched TV. According further to him , user participate for the feeling of community and especially they do it because they do it for love. Love can be defined here as the passion for a certain kind of thing for example somebody has a high knowledge of a certain form of car brand. Somebody else want to get certain details and he can help him out. The way he helped him out of a common interest does not have any economic background and fits into the scheme of community.

While these forms of virtual communities were still very undefined and broad, the rise of certain web platforms also defined certain forms of communities like Bloggers. Blogs were one of the first platforms during the rise of the Web 2.0 who supported the communities. While one could argue that a blog is not a form of community but without community they often do not get continued and they often do not make sense. Blogs are made by people and most of the time for other and maybe often unknown people to read. “Recent researcher have shown that when a blog has no comment, the blogger often stops producing new content on a regular basis. That shows how important the community is even the case of a common blog.“ (Aguition & Cardon, 2007) That shows that a blog is just effective when used as a tool for communication and not as a one way medium. Comments of people who read blog entries and people who link back to their own blogs build a kind of community which keep other people going and motivated in writing their blog.

Another part of the Web 2.0 where participation and community gets even more important is YouTube. The developers of YouTube uploaded just a few videos by themselves. The platform needs users who upload videos, rate, comment or even reply to it. Looking on the economic power of these communities of users the high number of participating users, is the reason why Google bought YouTube just a few years after is was launched. (Burgess & Green, 2009) Looking further on an example for the production of these communities. YouTubes community produced more content of videos in length of 60 months than the ABC did in the last 60 years. Counting 9232 hours per day it is much more than anybody could watch. 88% of the content uploaded on YouTube is new and original. Compared to the average TV channel this is even more original and new content. Still, YouTube is doing this without producers but with a strong community.(Wesch, 2008)

Also, the platform Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia which relies 100 percent of its users. Even Wikipedia is controversial as many people argue that it can be vandalised to easily, some journals like the Nature ( 2005) report even a similar reliability compared to the „Encyclopaedia Britannica“. The power of the accuracy does come not only form the people contributing to Wikipedia on their own but the people who are a part of the wikipedia community.

The community of Wikipedia does not only produce many articles themselves but also have people who watch that the aim of the community( in this case the content) does not get vandalised by others. The power of people who collaborate together for a certain purpose keeps Wikipedia and acceptable source for private use. (Aguiton & Cardon, 2007)

Still, these user generated content is not always new. Often these communities produce certain metadata about models produced by cultural industries. One example of metadata produced by YouTube individuals for the YouTube community are mashups. These mashups of individuals are often highly professional mix ups of different music videos. Next to mashups are covers of famous songs are very common and even other videos of YouTube videos get copied of modified.(Burgess & Green, 2009)

Equal to corporate organisations these communities have rules but they differ by making their own rules and norms. Often nearly everybody who seriously wants to participate is able to participate. That is one key point what makes these communities so accessible and powerful.The most common connection between the member of the community is a weak tie relationship. (Ganely & Lampe,2009)

The try to explain the rise of digital self-production by citing Aguition & Cardon here (2007)„ Sociological explanations for the rise of digital self-production must be found in the dynamic of individualisation in contemporary societies: the increase of cultural capital, the desire for uniqueness and visibility…“ (Aguition & Cardon, 2007,pp.53) The desire to be important in an society which gets more and more individualised and the feeling of belonging to a community is important to understand these motivation to participate. Even these platforms themselves often have an economic background, the active user desires social capital instead of economic capital.

Also, participation can be even found on economic platforms in the Web 2.0. Major economic platforms like Amazon have the feature of commenting and rating products. The „community“ of people who bought something writes serious articles of the products they bought at Amazon. It is significant that maybe just a few user contribute to this community but a high number of consumers who intend to buy rely on this statements and the metadata about the products. These community have a blackboard structure where they do not interact with each other but they publish information of their experience of the „product“ accessible for other consumers. (Aguiton & Cardon, 2007)

Further, Community features are found on other economic platforms as well. EBay has two bigger community groups looking on private users. The one group who wants to sell certain things of their own belonging and the other group wants to buy certain things cheap and convenient. The people of the „buyer community“ can give a feedback about the seller. They may not profit out of their own feedback given but they may profit out of the feedback of others.(Baron, 2002)

Looking on another form of community, Facebook started as a site with a limited access for a certain community. Mark Zuckerberg just provided access for students of the Harvard University where he was a student as well. The numbers of users and of the Facebook community just grew exponentially after letting everybody being part of the Facebook community. That is one of the key reasons for the power of this Web 2.0 community relationship: Everybody can participate. (Thompson, 2008)

While looking on community including social networking as well, we can see that offline communities and especially strong tie relationships get maintained in such social network sites in the web 2.0 today. This social phenomena of community and being always connected to the strong tie and weak tie communities through sites like Facebook is another new phenomena of community which is important for the Web 2.0 as we know it. Social Networking sites were supposed to be the biggest growing market in the Internet so the feeling of being connected to a social community online are important for the new economy of the social Web 2.0. (Ostrow, 2009)

Also, these participation is unconstrained by time or space. They can be used and they can be responded to asynchronous. For example the social micro blogging site Twitter allows people to post short and maybe often meaningless seaming messages but each of these posts can be a piece of the puzzle of the everyday life of our friend who is connected with us and to whom we could respond to asynchronous. No matter if it is “friend“ of the offline world or the online world. The whole community of Twitter users are searchable by putting in keywords or tags.(Java et al., 2007)

Further, different to the early computer games many of the most successful commercial games are played online in a community Network of gamers. These Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games or Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games ( MMORPG) could not exist without a community of people who would play the same game. One of the most famous games is called „World of Warcraft“. Not only communities but sub-communities like guilds are essential for the game and the must fight together to get further in this game. The cooperation which is a key part of the game to get forward and fight against other communities. These games are a part of the Web 2.0 as it exists today. Player need to get together to fight together because the game would not function without the collective power of community. (Koivisto, 2003)

Finally, the web offers many places for people to contribute or participate. These contribution can be in different ways but the community ideal is important. People who produce or contribute are important as well as people who watch or demand information. So this contribution is a two way street. The communities are able to participate in a coordinated order and they are able to influence the order of the Web 2.0. A lot of content available in the Web 2.0 is user generated content, created by different communities. The members of these virtual communities do not only watch or contribute to the web 2.0 but they also add certain forms of metadata like reviews for example in the case of Amazon. Metadata like comments are are also an important for the Web 2.0 as it exists today. Concluding that most of the Web 2.0 data is produced by a large crowd of users working together in forms of communities.

References

Aguition, C. & Dominique C. (2007) The Strength of Weak Cooperation: an Attempt to Understand the Meaning of Web 2.0 Communications & Strategies, no. 65

Baron, D. (2002) Private Ordering on the Internet: The EBay Community of Traders . Stanford University.

Burgess, J. & Green, J.(2009) YouTube-Digital Media and Society Series. United States: Polity Press

Ganley, D. & Lampe C. (2009) The ties that bind Social network principle in online communities. Decison Support Systems 47

Java, A., Song G.,Finin T. & Tseng B. (2007) Why we twitter: understanding microblogging usage and communities International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining

Koivisto, E. (2003) Supporting Communitites in Massivley Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games by Game Design. Finland: Nokia Research Center.

Ostrow, A. (2009) The Fastet Growing Social Sites. Retrieved on the 8 th April 2010from http://mashable.com/2009/04/20/the-fastest-growing-social-sites/

Rheingold H. (1995) The Virtual Community.

Ridings C & Gefen D. (2005), Virtual Community Attraction: Why People Hang Out Online.

Shriky, C. (2008)Here Comes Everybody” – Organizing Without Organizations

Retrieved on the 24 th April 2010http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J80PE1h9OuA

Thompson, C. (2008). Brave New World of Digital Intimacy. Retrieved October 5th, 2009, from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/magazine/07awareness-t.html?_r=1.

Wesch, M. (2008). An Anthropological Guide to YouTube. Retrieved April 06th, 2010, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPAO-lZ4_hU&feature=channel.

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Comments

Written by Chris K about 2 years ago.

No, that is okay Nat! Nice to help you out!
Written by Chris K about 2 years ago.

Hi Emily,

Interesting exerpt from Anthony, D., Smith, S. & Williamson, T. (2007)! Thank you for supporting my paper!

Chris
Written by Chris K about 2 years ago.

Thank you for your comment Keith.

Sure, we may not say that Community shape the Web 2.0 entirely alone but it is at least a huge an important factor of the character of the Web 2.0. When we say children are shaped by their parents or by their teacher they are never shaped by just one factor but things like parents or teacher can be have a huge impact just like friends could have or other impacts like socio-economic factors, the area where they grow up etc.

Chris
Written by Nat about 2 years ago.

Chris K,
Congratulations on the quote, I think it’s a winner. In my humble opinion it is the type of quote to be quoted, so I’ll keep a mark of the reference just in case. :0
Hope you don’t mind.
Written by Emily about 2 years ago.

I wholeheartedly agree that participation (and the resulting sense of community) are integral to the way Web 2.0 works. Without the community of people uploading content, commenting on other people’s content, and otherwise communicating with each other, the value of many websites would be lost. The potential for interaction is often a strong incentive for participation ¹.

You’ve said that “The power of the accuracy does come not only form the people contributing to Wikipedia on their own but the people who are a part of the wikipedia community”. In regards to that comment, I remember reading an interesting study ² that analysed data about the types of people who contribute to Wikipedia. It revealed that while the “Good Samaritans” who were not signed up for Wikipedia often contributed one, high-quality edit, the accuracy of content was mainly the product of registered members of the Wikipedia community, who took the time to continually contribute content and edit existing content. I think that this example demonstrates how valuable community is to Web 2.0, as you’ve showed in your paper.

¹ Wikipedia. (2010). User-generated content: Motivations and Incentives. Retrieved May 15, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User-generated_content#Motivation_and_incentives

² Anthony, D., Smith, S. & Williamson, T. (2007). The Quality of Open Source Production: Zealots and Good Samaritans in the Case of Wikipedia. Dartmouth. Retrieved May 15, 2010, from http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/reports/TR2007-606.pdf
Written by keith Law about 2 years ago.

“Participation in forms of community shapes the Web 2.0.”

Perhaps we could say that Web 2.0 facilities allow communities to operate at a greatly increased efficiency. We could also say that Web 2.0 shapes the way communites operate. I’m not sure that community shapes web 2.0. A little bit of the egg and chicken argument.

An interesting paper.
Written by Chris K about 2 years ago.

Hi Nat,

The quote is actually from myself.

I think that communities have a huge influence of the Web 2.0 and also the Web 2.0 ( with all the communities included) influences offline communities. The border between online and offline communities sometimes even blurs when it comes to communities who are established offline and maintained online.
Written by Nat about 2 years ago.

ChrisK
“The rise of Web 2.0 was characterised by the increasing numbers of sites and platforms who offer average people the possibility to participate.” This is the simpliest and best quote I have found to explain web 2.0 where did you get it? or did it just come to you?

Your paper provided quite a few examples to support this from a wide range of web 2.0 sections including gamming, ebay (interesting choice) and blogs. Overall I thought it was and did have to read carefully to understand the point you were making. I believe that it was web 2.0 functionality is dependant on online communities and vice versa.
Written by Chris K about 2 years ago.

Hi Josh,

By “shaping” I mean that communities are an important key feature. Of course there are many other things shaping the Web 2.0 but as in many cases there are many factors shaping things. Like we are shaped by our parents but also by our friends…life experience work etc.

Community is nearly everywhere in the Web 2.0 and the number of sites who add community features increased in the last time. That is what I can say by my own research. Even sites like eBay have a community topic.

Further, World of Warcraft often does not only allow people to be in a virtual community but also there meetings of people playing world of warcraft (alone- in front of their own pc) but together in a big hall as huge community of like minded people. These conventions are very popular in Europe.
Cheers
Written by Joshua Atlee about 2 years ago.

Hi Chris,

Nice paper Just regarding blogging sites I understand totally that blogging is like a personal diary but when people use it as a diary and people are meant to comment and they don’t get any responses then the blogging stops, I have always thought blogs work this way and they do. Also your heading of your paper says “Participation in forms of community Shapes The Web 2.0″ Are you saying the online community is what shapes Web 2.0? I think Community and sharing information is a key feature of what Web 2.0 brings but it doesn’t have anything to do with shaping it.

When talking about MMORPG’s and saying World of Warcraft wouldn’t exist without people helping each other, What about the players that join the game and only play as quests, Story mode? This doesn’t stop the game from doing it’s job does it? Not everyone in games like World of Warcraft play in groups unless they are tackling very difficult missions, People still like to do it alone as this game has millions of players world wide.

If I were to tie this back to my paper and you are saying Online communities are what shapes Web 2.0 then you could also be saying that gamers mentally and physically addicted to these games have something to do with the shaping of Web 2.0?
Written by Chris K about 2 years ago.

As my topic is more concerend with communities overall and not with certain individuals who stand out in their SNS community I have no direct answer to this. I still think that something highly regarded and demanded from the community would let somebody be outstanding.
Written by Chris K about 2 years ago.

I do not think that this is more interesting than real communities but rather an externailzed form of a community where the time and space is not important as in real life communities.
Written by FransiscaMS about 2 years ago.

Hi its a good explanations, for you how many online communities you have join so far? do you think its more interesting rather than real communities?
Written by alan_beazley about 2 years ago.

‘Sociological explanations for the rise of digital self-production must be found in the dynamic of individualisation in contemporary societies: the increase of cultural capital, the desire for uniqueness and visibility…“ (Aguition & Cardon, 2007,pp.53)’

Do you think Chris that the rise of the digital self is a contradiction, people striving for individuality and cultural capital within conventional social networking services such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, yet they are just one of millions? With so much content being generated within the digital world what would it take for somebody to actually stand out in their SNS community?
Written by Michael N about 2 years ago.

Thanks Chris, yes I felt Cardon & Agution are right, but I think we move between both those roles depending on the site and the choices we make on interacting in Virtual Communities and Social Networks. Interesting too I had forgotten Time had named YOU as the person of the year because of Web 2.0 – amazing!
Written by Chris K about 2 years ago.

Thank you very much for your feedback Michael.

I think that participation is one of the key aspects why the Web 2.0 is so succesful.

The New York times person of the in 2006 was “YOU” in regards to the Web 2.0 and the possibility to participate in different forms. ( Grossman, 2006)

Further, this paper wants to acknowledge that the community ideal is important for the users motivation to participate.
I think it is important that community exists so that the participatory action and culture gets and stays motivated.

Without the “community ideal” ( giving and taking members) a lot of the content would not be available and the Web 2.0 would not make so much sense anymore.

Looking on your citation of Cardon & Agution(2007) they characterize the two kinds of members who are important for a community quite well.

Grossman L. (2006). Time’s Person of the Year: YOU. Retrieved 29 April 2010 from: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
Written by Michael N about 2 years ago.

You have stated, at this point in internet history, a comprehensive list and explanation of the platforms. I also think it was good you made a short assessment on some of them. All of them, according to your paper, do shape participation in communities. Obviously the features would be the first thing to do so, all of them constrain the user by the software features. But still it was good to give a summary and critique of much of what has gone on.

I liked you finding the paper by Cardon and Aguiton. I want to quote something that might be useful for further consideration:

“Academic debates on internet uses have shaped two very opposite representations of the internet user. The first has been conceived as a utilitarian agent mainly concerned with maximising its own personal interest (searching information, buying and selling for a better
price, promoting its competencies and gaining reputation). The second has been defined as an altruist individual motivated by collective action, volunteering, community belonging, public interest and knowledge sharing”. (Cardon and Aguiton, 2007, p 52).

I think their assessment with that statement is true. In virtual communities both individuals exist but perhaps less likely offline, we may be like both of them depending on the type of community.

I’m glad you found that paper I recommend reading it is is free from this URL as a PDF:

http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/4581/

Cardon, D. & Aguiton, C. (2007). The Strength of Weak Cooperation:an Attempt to Understand the Meaning of Web 2.0. International Journal of Digital Economics 65 (2007): pp. 51-65.

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