Classifying Online Communities
A number of authors have looked at classifying online communities and those within them to better understand how they are structured. It has been argued that the technical aspects of online communities, such as whether pages can be created and edited by many, as is the case with Wikipedia, or whether only certain users can post entries and edit them, as is the case with most weblogs, can place specific online communities into types of genre.
Some research has looked at the particular users of online communities. Amy Jo Kim has classified the rituals and stages of online community interaction and called it the 'Membership life cycle'. Clay Shirky talks about community of practice whose members collaborate and help each other in order to make something better or improve a certain skill. What makes these communities bond is "love" of something as demonstrated by members who go out of their way to help without any financial interest. Others have suggested character theories to break particular patterns of behavior of particular users into certain categories.
In 2001, Consultants at McKinsey & Company did a study where they found that only 2% of transaction site customers returned after their first purchase, while 60% of new online communities users began using and visiting the sites regularly after their first experiences. Online communities have changed the game for retail firms, forcing them to change their business strategies. Companies have to network more, adjust computations, and alter their organizational structures. This leads to changes in a company’s communications with their manufacturers including the information shared and made accessible for further productivity and profits. Online communities have evolved how entertainment and news firms share information. Because consumers and customers in all fields are becoming accustomed to more interaction and engagement online, adjustments must be considered made in order to keep audiences intrigued.
Some of the most successful online communities are those whose members have positively invested positive approaches to posting and carrying on conversations in forums and chatrooms. Online communities are used to chat and partake on a virtual social network.
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“The horror of class stratification, racism, and prejudice is that some people begin to believe that the security of their families and communities depends on the oppression of others, that for some to have good lives there must be others whose lives are truncated and brutal.”
—Dorothy Allison (b. 1949)