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Basics "User Profiles: The Bridge that Connects Online Communities to the Real World"

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Sun-mi Kim's picture

Charles's picture

I'll comment on this one

Trek's picture

Excellent

This is something I wish we would cover in class a bit more. We seem to be exploring online communities almost entirely apart from their affect on the "real world".

With no offense intended to the authors, I think this might reflect their status as immigrants to a digital world. For those who grew up or are growing up with online communities I think many of the articles in this class will seem a) really obvious or b) just plain flawed in some way.

I really think the chart on page 2 is a fantastic visual for the point you are trying to make.
I don't know if it is within the scope of your research, but you may want to explore communities like facebook or myspace where the impact user profile information can be huge (myspace has had several unfortunate homicide events lately and many schools are limited student access to it because they believe students lack the maturity to properly censor themselves. Are students really expecting privacy that their guardians know doesn't exist or are parents just behind the times and this kind of privacy simple has less value for teens? or do the benefits (whatever they may be) simply outweigh the costs for teenagers who are native citizens in this highly connected world?

Charles's picture

Excellent as well

Very interesting topic Sun-mi. I feel that you addressed a
very interesting topic that could lead to a plethora of other developments.

 

A good direction now might be to look at various eCommunities
and give them a “practical score” that places them somewhere in your spectrum.  You can then start to analyze different traits
that similar scored eCommunties have in common. For example, you might find an
eCommunity that is more practical more robust since it’s interwoven to the
member’s lives.

 

Another interesting direction that you could take is to look
at maybe what kind of features these communities offer that gives them that
practically score. Some examples include the event announcement on thefacebook,
the meetup scheduling at meetup.com, the shipping/buying feature of eBay. I
think you were starting to do that when you started talking about the different
reputation systems that eBay and Amazon had.