{"id":258,"date":"2019-04-28T12:48:38","date_gmt":"2019-04-28T04:48:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/networkconference.netstudies.org\/2019Open\/?p=258"},"modified":"2019-04-29T11:30:08","modified_gmt":"2019-04-29T03:30:08","slug":"facebook-expands-the-use-of-online-communities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/networkconference.netstudies.org\/2019Open\/2019\/04\/28\/facebook-expands-the-use-of-online-communities\/","title":{"rendered":"Facebook expands the use of online communities"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Abstract<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This paper\nlooks at the development of Facebook as a Web 2.0 platform that has enabled the\nexpansion of online communities and delivered on the vision of the World Wide\nWeb developed by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989. The paper not only defines the\nmeaning of communities and how that has changed over the decades with the\ngrowth of technology but defines the meaning of online communities as used in Facebook.\nIt will also examine the relationship between the Internet, the World Wide Web\nand the FacebookWeb2.0 platform to provide individuals access to online\ncommunities and allow them to be able to produce and publish their content to\nthe Internet without the need for being code experts. The conclusion is that online\ncommunities\u2019 growth has expanded with Facebook service on the back of the Internet\ntechnology and the development of the World Wide Web.<\/em>
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Facebook is a well-known social networking\nservice available around the world and boasts 1.52Bn daily users (Facebook, 2019) and 2.2Bn members (Statista, 2019) with the slogan \u201cStay\nconnected with people around the world \u2013 anywhere, anytime\u201d it has become an\nintegral part of everyday life for many of its members. The concept of a\nFacebook service starts back with development of the World Wide Web domain in\n1989 (Romano, 2019). While there are\nmany negative aspects of Facebook today in the headlines with issues such as privacy\nof data, fake news, content management this paper does not intend to address\nthese as it will concentrate on how a service such as Facebook was inevitable\nas Internet technology evolved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This paper will show the development\nof Facebook as an enabler of online communities and will emphasize that as a\nservice it has developed in line with changing societal definitions of\ncommunities from the 1960s through to the 2000s and the evolution of technologies\nof the internet from the 1990s. In 1989 the world wide web was designed to meet\nthe needs of online collaboration for communities of users and a service such\nas Facebook was inevitable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Facebook provides a Web 2.0 platform\nenabling the strong growth of online communities based on the World Wide Web conceived\nin 1989 and facilitated by the reach of Internet technologies.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is a Facebook community?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Facebook has grown by providing a Web2.0\nservice that members join as individual\u2019s and then connect with other users such\nas friends and family to form a community and also join other online communities\nwhere likeminded members can share their thoughts and experiences. So, what is\nan online community and why does Facebook facilitate it? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The term community has a large and varied\nnumber of definitions and many theorists have their own point of view. A\ndefinition of community offered by. Aresnberg (Aresnberg,\n1965) identify the elements of a community as an environment of social form\nand patterner behavior only. Sanders (Sanders,\n1996) added a fourth element being a place to live, a spatial unit, a\nway of life and a social system. While these definitions are from the 1960s there\nis an evolution of the term community through the 70s as society changes Effrat\n(Effrat, 1974) views a community as distinct\nresidential groups. In the 1980\u2019 the Hillery\u2019s (Hillary, 1982) definition expands to include social\ninteraction, common ties and physical colocation, this last point shows that\nthey still based the views on community by the technologies available to\neveryone at the time. The Internet was not in everyone\u2019s hands worldwide but as\nthe technology expanded to the individual the definitions of community expanded\nas well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Baym (Baym, 1995)\nin the 1990s used the term virtual community describing communities that were\nmediated through electronic communication technologies such as mobile phones,\ntext messaging and emails others such as Rheingold (Rheingold, 1993) viewed virtual\ncommunities as purely online through multiuser domains, Internet Relay Chat and\nUsenet. Either way the term virtual community referred to users being linked\ntogether to share information, ideas, feelings and desires (Calhourn, 2002). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the definition of community\nchanged across the decades Katz (Katz, 2004)\nbrought together the definition of community types and the theorist\u2019s\ninformation to develop a 4 quadrant analysis of community definitions. These 4 quadrants\nare Traditional Community, Social Network, Pseudo Community and Imagined\nCommunity. Facebook can be viewed as being able to meet the requirements for\neach of these types. The Traditional Community aka the physical community is\nrepresented by residential areas and villages. Jacobs (Jacobs, 1961) goes as far as saying that only\nphysicality can produce the group to focus on each other and exclude outsiders.\nThe traditional community concept, while pushing back against the virtual\ncommunity concept, is still provided for by Facebook especially in that the individual\nmember and can join a number of community types with members that are in the\nsame location or not such as family and friends can be within the same local or\nin distant locations area but still use Facebook to communicate with each other.\nA Social Network community is the closest to what a virtual community is often\nthought of being. Wellman (Welmman, 2001) introduces the concept of networked\nindividualism where each person can voluntarily pick their own community rather\nthan being forced into a specific community. A Social Network community is not\nlocalized and fits into a larger social structure. Facebook is designed around\nthe Social Network community type by allowing individual members to connect\nwith each other regardless of geographic boundaries this was the basis of the World\nWide Web where individuals could connect and communicate with each other no\nmatter where they were located. A Pseudocommunity is a type viewed as a\ntraditional community but with no geographic boundaries Rheingold (Rheingold, 1993) held that the\nimportant concepts about a community transcend the geographic boundaries of a\nlocality. An Imagined Community is one that shares the attributes of a virtual\ncommunity but still links to a spatial location. Suttles (Suttles, 1972) suggest that the local community face\nto face nature creates a community of sentiment based on not allowing outsiders\nto be part of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No matter what the community type\nis a Facebook member can be part of it anywhere and anytime as described by Rheingold\n(Rheingold, 1993). This is made possible by the advances\nin Internet technologies and the development of the World Wide Web on the\nInternet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Internet, the World Wide Web and Facebook communities.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Internet Society paper (Leiner, 1997) describes the\nevolution of the Internet from its technical beginnings in the 1960s, with the\ndevelopment of computers through the 1970s, with internet protocols developed by\nCerf (Cerf, 1974)\nto standardize communications and the first email utility that allowed users to\ncommunicate with one another. Cerf (Cerf, 1974)\nhad put forward the concept of distinct networks with no global control connecting\ndevices but having unique addressing for these devices. Leiner (Leiner, 1997) described how the internet\nis really collection of virtual communities and its success has been its\nattribute of \u201csatisfying basic community needs as well as utilizing the community\nin an effective way to push the infrastructure forward\u201d. Facebook provides\ntheir individual members with unique addresses as part of the global community and\nas the internet grows each device also has a unique address which expands the\nreach for Facebook membership growth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Facebook has been enabled by the\ndevelopments of the Internet and the World Wide Web. Researchers and\ntechnologist were, from the beginning, working as communities sharing ideas and\nconcepts to develop technology of the internet. The resources needed to work\nclosely but they were also geographically spread apart but working in close communication\nwith one another to create the Internet technology. In 1989 one of these community\nmembers Tim Berners-Lee (Berners-Lee, 1999) jotted down the idea for the world wide\nweb that sits on the internet technology but is the basis for everything we do\non the internet today and foreshadowed the Facebook service of individuals\nbeing connected to communities and being able to produce and publish their own content.\nHe proposed an information space on the Internet where documents and other web\nresources are stored and accessible to anyone by utilizing a special piece of software\ncalled a web browser. Most users of the internet would recognize that this is\nthe way we access information today by typing in a location name into a web\nbrowser and getting pages of information back to the device. Without the world\nwide web Facebook would not be possible and again we can see how Facebook is\nnot independent to the development of the world wide web and relies heavily on\nthe expansion the internet technology to grows its membership reach which in turn\ngrows its online communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Facebook as an online community facilitator.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

First Facebook serves any community\ntype definition in use today by providing individual members the ability to create\nand\/or connect to any community they want to and not be forced into any\ncommunities of convenience. Secondly as the Internet grows in its reach Facebook\nmembership grows and therefore online communities grow. Third all this has been\nbased on the is based on the original concepts of the World Wide Web proposed\nin 1989.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Facebook is described as a Web2.0\nservice but what is a Web2.0 service? Web1.0 provided documents on the internet\nthat was accessed by using a web browser and\/or a static web site, this type of\nweb site provided the links to specific documents that then may link to other documents\nin other words you would may need to follow a trail of links to get what you\noriginally wanted. These documents and web sites were usually created by people\nthat know how to write computer code and therefore were not easy for any user\nto be able to publish their own content although blogs were an early form of publishing\nuser based content they were still mainly a publish and read not comment\ndocument. Web2.0 is first used in 1999 by DiNucci (DiNucci, 1999) and then popularized by O\u2019Reilly (O’Reilly, 2005) the main difference\nof Web2.0 from Web1.0 is really about  users becoming their own producers and\npublishers of content and other users being able to make comments about the\ncontent, this user publish and comment was envisaged by the World Wide Web concept.\nFacebook is a Web2.0 platform that allows any member the ability to produce and\npublish their content and for other users to be able to make real time comments\nof the content all without the need to understand computer coding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Facebook platform was initially\ndeveloped in 2003 for a small select community to be able to dynamically\ninteract with a web site. Niels Brugger (Brugger, 2015) provides a history of Facebook from the\npoint of view of a user starting his journey. In 2004 the origin of Facebook started\nas a closed web site for an allocated community of Harvard students where each\nstudent could add and manage their own profiles, network with friends and share\nand comment on published content. In 2006 Facebook stopped being just an education-based\nservice and was opened to employees of some businesses where you could add your\nstatus, news feed and marketplace to your profile. In 2008 as the Internet\ntechnology expanded with mobility Facebook expanded from just a web-based\nservice to a mobile based service, Smith (Smith, 2019) summarizes that 43%\nof Facebook members are mobile users only, where you could upload your location\nwith pictures and videos allowing members to produce more and more content and\npublish it in real-time. Neils Brugger (Brugger, 2015) compares Facebook with the World Wide\nWeb as proposed by Tim Berners-Lee (Romano, 2019) in 1989 with the major differences\nbeing that Tim Berners-Lee did not want to commercialize the World Wide Web but\ninstead released the source code to everyone. On the other hand Facebook is a\nlarge technology firm with a market cap op $US546Bn (NASDAQ, 2019) and performs like a\nmini version of the World Wide Web where you can stay within Facebook and not\ngo to other software sources to recover information. The interesting point is\nthat Facebook is a technology firm and not a media company although this debate\nis hotly raging it is not part of this paper and Facebook will be regarded only\nas a technology firm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is some confusion about\nFacebook Groups, Pages and Communities a lot of it is caused by Facebook itself\ntrying to define a group a community page and a business page but the simple\nanswer is that Facebook has always provided online communities they have just\nbeen called groups Tiffany Black (Black, 2018)\ndefines a Facebook Group as a place where people can share their common\ninterests and express their opinions. Anyone can setup a group and anyone can\njoin up to 6,000 groups which was envisaged early in the development of the World\nWide Web and in the definition of Social Networking communities as previously\ndiscussed, where individual members have the choice to join a group\/community\nand publish\/comment content to the community. Facebook Pages is more about a\ncontrolled environment where the owner will post content for others to comment\non. Facebook groups exemplifies the concept of an online community with members\nable to join any group\/community and add their own content anytime via their individual\nprofile and that any other member can comment on. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Facebook, from the beginning has been\nable to expand online communities with the ability for individual members to be\nable to setup and join communities as they want to also members are able to publish\ntheir own content in real time that other members can also comment on in real\ntime. Facebook has adhered to the concepts of the World Wide Web vision with users\nbeing able to publish their own content to the web although it does commercialize\nthe member data which was not the original intent of Tim Berners-Lee. Currently\nit is estimated that Facebook has over 2.2BN (Statista, 2019) users worldwide with the majority of\nthose being in multiple online communities. To round off what Facebook is in\nterms of size Smith (Smith, 2019) has 53 statistics as\nof January 2019 these key ones are; 2.2Bn members, 1.5Bn active users per day,\naverage member is online 20 mins per day and its members produce 4 petabytes of\ndata per day <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Facebook was inevitable as the technology\nof the Internet evolved and the world Wide Web was developed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Facebook has enabled the growth of\nonline communities by enabling an individual member to join and or create a\ncommunity which could be composed of family, friends, likeminded people, the local\narea or just a social community, these communities expand as Facebook membership\nexpands which can expand as the reach of the Internet grows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each Facebook member becomes a producer,\npublisher and consumer of content as proposed in 1989 by Tim Berners-Lee and\ncalled the World Wide Web it took a while for the Internet technologies to be\nable to reach this goal that we now call Web2.0.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Facebook provides a Web 2.0 platform\nenabling the strong growth of online communities based on the World Wide Web proposed\nin 1989 and facilitated by the reach of Internet technologies.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

References<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Aresnberg, C. a.\n (1965). Culture and Community.<\/em> New York: Harcourt, Brace and World.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Baym, N. (1995). Emergence of Community in computer\n mediated communications.<\/em> Thousand Oaks CA: Sage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Berners-Lee, T. (1999). Weaving the Web: The past,\n present and future of the World Wide Web by its inventor.<\/em> London: Orion\n Business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Black, T. (2018, December 16). Using facebook Groups<\/em>.\n Retrieved from Lifewire: https:\/\/www.lifewire.com\/facebook-groups-4103720<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brugger, N. (2015, May 4). A Brief History of Facebook as a\n Media Text: The Development of an Empty Structure. First Monday<\/em>,\n Volume 20 Number 5.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Calhourn, C. (2002). Virtual Community: Dictionary of\n the Social Sciences.<\/em> Oxford UK: Oxford University Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cerf, V. G. (1974, May). A protocol for packet network\n interconnection. EEE Trans. Comm. Tech., vol. COM-22, V 5<\/em>, pp.\n 627-641.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DiNucci, D. (1999). Fragmented Future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Effrat, M. (1974). Community and Community Developmnent.<\/em>\n London: Free Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Facebook. (2019). facebook.com<\/em>. Retrieved from\n facebook.com: https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hillary, G. J. (1982). A Research Odysey, Developing and\n testing a Community Theory.<\/em> New Brunswick: NK: Transaction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jacobs. (1961). Detah and Life of Great American Cities.<\/em>\n New York: Random House.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Katz, J. E. (2004). Personal Mediated Communication and\n the Concept of Community in Theory and Practice. In P. Kalbfleisch (Ed.),\n Communication and Community: Communication Yearbook 28 (pp. 315-371).<\/em>\n Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leiner, B. M. (1997). Brief History of the Internet.<\/em>\n Retrieved from Internet Society:\n https:\/\/www.internetsociety.org\/internet\/history-internet\/brief-history-internet\/<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NASDAQ. (2019, March 29). Facebook<\/em>. Retrieved from\n https:\/\/www.nasdaq.com\/symbol\/fb<\/p>\n\n\n\n

O’Reilly, T. (2005, September 30). What Is Web 2.0.<\/em>\n Retrieved from O’Reilly:\n https:\/\/www.oreilly.com\/pub\/a\/web2\/archive\/what-is-web-20.html<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rheingold, H. (1993). The virtual community:\n Honmesteading the elctronic frontier.<\/em> Reading MA: Addison Wesley.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Romano, A. (2019, March 12). The World Wide Web \u2014 not the\n internet \u2014 turns 30 years old. VOX<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sanders, I. (1996). The community: An introduction to a\n social system.<\/em> New York: Roland Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Smith, K. (2019, January 5). 53 Incredible Facebook\n Statistics and Facts<\/em>. Retrieved from Brandwatch: https:\/\/www.brandwatch.com\/blog\/facebook-statistics\/<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Statista. (2019, January). Most famous social network\n sites worldwide as of January 2019, ranked by number of active users (in\n millions)<\/em>. Retrieved from The Statistical Portal:\n https:\/\/www.statista.com\/statistics\/272014\/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users\/<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suttles, G. (1972). The Socila Construction of\n Community.<\/em> Chicago: Chicago Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Welmman, B. (2001). The persistance and transformation\n of community: From neighbourhood groups to socail networks.<\/em> Report Law\n Commission of Canada 101pp.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Abstract This paper looks at the development of Facebook as a Web 2.0 platform that has enabled the expansion of online communities and delivered on the vision of the World Wide Web developed by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989. The paper not only defines the meaning of communities and how that has changed over the decades… Continue reading Facebook expands the use of online communities<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[155,157,152,158,154,156,130],"class_list":["post-258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-communities","tag-facebookcommunities","tag-imaginedcommunity","tag-onlinecommunitiy","tag-socialnetworkcommunity","tag-timbernerslee","tag-worldwideweb","tag-web2-0"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/networkconference.netstudies.org\/2019Open\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/networkconference.netstudies.org\/2019Open\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/networkconference.netstudies.org\/2019Open\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/networkconference.netstudies.org\/2019Open\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/networkconference.netstudies.org\/2019Open\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/networkconference.netstudies.org\/2019Open\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":260,"href":"https:\/\/networkconference.netstudies.org\/2019Open\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258\/revisions\/260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/networkconference.netstudies.org\/2019Open\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/networkconference.netstudies.org\/2019Open\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/networkconference.netstudies.org\/2019Open\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}