MEANING AND ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF VIRTUAL COMMUNITY

A virtual community is a community of people sharing common interests, ideas, and feelings over the Internet or other collaborative networks.
A possible inventor of this term and one of its first proponents was Howard Rheingold, who created one of the first major Internet communities, called the Well. In his book, The Virtual Community , Rheingold defines virtual communities as social aggregations that emerge from the Internet when enough people carry on public discussions long enough and with sufficient human feeling to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace .

Virtual communities might be thought of as subgroups within Marshall McLuhan's notion of cyberspace as a "global village." Before the Web,
virtual communities existed on bulletin board services and many still do.

In general, there are two kinds of communication among virtual community members:

   (a) Message postings
   (b) Real-time chat.

Usenet newsgroups are an example of the former many Web sites, such as GeoCities, foster subject information exchanges.

For real-time chat, Internet Relay Chat is a system used by many Web sites that foster virtual communities this was last updated in September 2006 contributors we're Stacy Wren
Posted by Margaret Rouse.

THE FOLLOWING BELOW ARE THE ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF VIRTUAL COMMUNITY

(1)Advantages of Internet communities.

Internet communities offer the advantage of instant information exchange that is not possible in a real-life community. This interaction allows people to engage in many activities from their home, such as: shopping, paying bills, and searching for specific information.

Users of online communities also have access to thousands of specific discussion groups where they can form specialized relationships and access information such such as politics, technical assistance, social activities, healthy and recreational pleasures.

Virtual communities provide an ideal medium for these types of relationships because information can easily be posted and response times can be very fast.
Another benefit is that these types of communities can give users a feeling of membership and belonging users can give and receive support, and it is simple and cheap to use it.

Economically, virtual communities can be commercially successful, making money through membership fees, subscriptions, usage fees, and advertising commission consumers generally feel very comfortable making transactions online provided that the seller has a good reputation throughout the community.

Virtual communities also provide the advantage of disintermediation in commercial transactions, which eliminates vendors and connects buyers directly to suppliers. Disintermediation eliminates pricey mark ups and allows for a more direct line of contact between the consumer and the manufacturer.

(2) Disadvantages of Internet communities

While instant communication means fast access, it also means that information is posted without being reviewed for correctness. It is difficult to choose reliable sources because there is no editor who reviews each post and makes sure it is up to a certain degree of quality.
In online identities can be kept anonymous which enables people to use the virtual community for fantasy role playing as in the case of Second Life 's use of avatars.

Some professionals urge caution with users who use online communities because predators also frequent these communities looking for victims who are vulnerable to online identity theft

MGEMA MUSA Z.
BPRM 42615
18th WENESDAY MAY 2016