Subscribe to PostsCompare and contrast the works of Ward Cunningham,
Adam Curry, Jenny Preece and David Winer in 500 words.
What has been their contribution to development of online communities?
Rheingold described virtual (online) community as
“…social relationship aggregation, facilitated by Internet-based technology, in which users communicate and build personal relationships.” (Rheingold, 1993)
Whether in construction, continuance, extension or understanding, Ward Cunningham, David Winer, Jennifer Preece and Adam Curry have made important contributions to development and use of online communities.
Cunningham began and continues work in software patterns and extreme programming. Best known, however, for creation of ’wiki’, collaborative, online software, Cunningham’s first offering, “WikiWikiWeb” was installed at c2.com in 1995. With “Wiki” being Honolulu for “fast” Cunningham’s aim was to create web pages quickly editable by their users. Today, Cunningham is Chief Technical Officer with AboutUs (www.aboutus.org) an online wiki community for business contacts providing
“… introduction to sites in the areas you care about as well as a way to share your knowledge of those websites.” (AboutUs, 2009)
Unlike wikis, blog content is typically contributed by single users, yet their characteristic methods for sharing information and feedback among members has contributed much to online community development. David Winer is credited with creating and publishing the first blog site in 1997 - Scripting News - www.scripting.com and described as “software developer, entrepreneur and writer” (Wikipedia, 2009), pioneering outliners, content management systems, xml-RSD and RSS - Really Simple Syndication.
Involving enclosure tags within blogging software, RSS allowed “bloggers” to automatically syndicate information. Links received to information or audio visual updates in podcasting, enabled download of files for use offline. RSS has been described as -
“… most significant advance in the fundamental architecture of the web…” (O’Reilly, 2005). Read the rest of this entry »
