Lesley Anderson

My Experiences with Online Communities - 1

Well, this subject is all about Social Networking and Online Communities and I think I am actually beginning to catch on. I could say I am hooked. I have used MSN for years, ICQ as well and have found them great for keeping in touch with friends and their families but really not much more.

I have also spent many hours(much to my husband’s dismay!) accessing , chat rooms, mailing lists, emailing etc. as I have followed a passion of mine - genealogy. Strange, though that, previously, I never really saw them as online communities or thought of them in terms of the “learning” they were providing. My list would be a couple of kms long, if I were to write down all the things I have learned from those online communities!!

Even now, I see MSN, in a new light.  Read the rest of this entry »

Social Networking Taxonomy.
What is Folksonomy?

Although I understood the term Taxonomy- the classification or ordering of things, the term Folksonomy was certainly something new to me. Before I started to look for enlightenment on its meaning, I began to link it with other similar words i.e. Folktale, Folklaw or just plain Folk. Of course, they have something to do with people and I presumed that Folksonomy would be similar.

Seeing Taxonomy and Folksonomy so close together in the outlining of this exercise made me think that perhaps Folksonomy had something to do with people working to order information. Read the rest of this entry »

 What is Social Networking?
How does it compare with your ideas about online communities? 

My initial thoughts about Social Networking centred on groups of people meeting together to form links or friendships that have common ideas or interests. Online Communities, immediately brought to mind the online facilities that help people to make links or friendships - the websites that enable Social Networking to occur.  

I accessed the following websites, looking for some information to help me define Social Networking and found that my personal ideas of Social Networking were not all that different to what I read.

Directory Submissions.eu
http://directorysubmissions.eu/news/2009/04/22/social-networking-definition/

“Social networking is defined as the bringing individuals together into to specific groups, often like a small community or a neighbourhood.”

Successful and Outstanding Bloggers
http://www.successful-blog.com/1/what-is-social-networking/

“Most literally, social networking would be meeting and making connections and relationships - both business and social - online and offline.” 

In order to discover information about online communities I accessed the website http://www.ifsm.umbc.edu/communities/   (University of Maryland, USA) and found the following  basic definition of an online community -
“…any group of people who communicate with each other via computers.” Read the rest of this entry »