Rheingold's "The Virtual Community" - Facebook

Rheingold is back this week in our reading schedule to discuss “The Virtual Community.” In the article, written several years ago during the early stages of the Internet, he introduces the WELL (Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link) that allows computer users to publicly converse around the world. Rhinegold then goes on to discuss virtual communities. He says, “[p]eople in virtual communities use words on screens to exchange pleasantries and argue, engage in intellectual discourse, conduct commerce, exchange knowledge, share emotional support, make plans, brainstorm, gossip, feud, fall in love, find friends and lose them, play games, flirt, create a little high art and a lot of idle talk.” What he is saying here is that online communities are almost identical to real life communities, except that there are no real physical bodies involved.

The best example of this idea is the increasingly popular, Facebook.com. Although it started as a networking site just for college students, it has turned into one of the largest networking sites in America. It began with just people friending their real life friends. The initial users didn’t understand the dimensions that Facebook could be used for. It allows you to see your friends’ friends, therefore providing users with the ability to network with people who have a common friend. Facebook has now grown and allows people to sell things in the marketplace, write comments to on each other’s walls, poke (flirt with) each other, create graffiti expressions on one another’s pages, create online Facebook group petitions, schedule real-life events and more. Of course, it would take days to list every feature of Facebook. The main idea is that Facebook allows people to communicate and network in ways similar to a real life community, but in a virtual setting independent of their physical bodies.