Virtual Communities Research Paper Example

Introduction

Humans are by nature social beings who share their feelings, opinions, and ideas. In the past, communities participated in sharing within the geographical boundaries of villages of neighborhoods. Following the advent of the internet, individuals increasingly use it to share their views and perceptions regarding the world around them. Nowadays, virtual communities provide individuals with similar interests' powerful tools for communicating and interacting. Although typical VCs reside on the web and function as coffee shops, some VCs have e-commerce features such as the ability to conduct transactions and auctions. VCs influence the lives of its members in various ways including the formation of romantic relationships and friendships, eLearning, e-commerce services, virtual learning, discussion boards, and bulletin boards. However, most virtual communities provide a socialization platform that eliminates the limitations of geographical location and political censorship and enhances reciprocity among a community's members. VCs facilitate the seamless, fast, and spontaneous sharing of views and ideas for their members. Initially, VCs provide people with a social or professional sharing platform. Over the years, these communities adopted a business model based on e-commerce practices.

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According to Feng & Ye (2016), VCs comprise of limited public interactions, some participants, and a sustained level membership over time. Besides, Yao, Tsai, & Fang (2015) posit that social capital, socialization and business opportunities combined with influence the types of relationships that flourish within virtual communities. As a result, these insights provide an in-depth understanding of the internal workings of Virtual Communities. Accordingly, this paper presents an analysis of CafeMom, a virtual community made of mothers and mothers to be.

Theoretical Constructs

Web 1.0 to Web 2.0

Since the evolution of the World Wide Web, developers have added features that differentiate Web 1.0 from Web 2.0. Demarcating where Web 1.0 ends and Web 2.0 begins is a daunting undertaking. Traditionally, Web 1.0 refers to features that allowed readers to read or download static web pages connected using hyperlinks that characterized the Web's initial development stage. Essentially, Web 1.0 technologies allowed users to use the Web as an information portal with limited or no interactive content. Even so, a key differentiating factor between the two is the rate at which data updates over time. Web 1.0 displays static data whereas in Web 2.0, offers dynamic content and real-time updates. Example Web 2.0 applications include Facebook, Twitter, and news feeds. Since its advent in 2004, Web 2.0 has become an industry buzzword that references bidirectional communication, social networks, content types, and development tools.

Additionally, Web 2.0 introduced some features that transformed that transformed how people access, locate information, communicate, learn, and interact with one another. Among these subtle features is the free classification of information, user participation, immersive user experiences, basic trust, dispersion, long tail, and user-generated content (UGC). Besides that, Web 2.0 introduced a slew of features that distinguish it from Web 1.0 such as APIs, XML, RSS, tags, sharing, peer to peer networks, presentation and scripting technologies, sociological (groups and friends), and structural (site purpose and layout).

Interestingly, virtual communities rely on Web 2.0 technologies to enrich a community's experience, value, content, and engagement. As a result, virtual communities have access to unique relevant and compelling information sharing tools that foster collaboration between members. Also, these Web 2.0 technologies enable virtual communities to save time, money, and technical know-how required to apply these applications. Most importantly, virtual communities that sue blogs, wikis, and social media leverage the ability of Web 2.0 to connect people horizontally and to create collaborative networks. By using these tools, virtual communities can meet and exceed user demands resulting in the creation of a balance between resources and user needs. For example, through wikis, a VCs' members can author, edit, and publish a community-based knowledge management system. Blogs help provide feedback, nurture creative writing, reflection, and critical thinking skills essential for active and collaborative learning within virtual communities. Most VCs leverage social media to connect, interact, share, collaborate, and learn new things. Since 2006, proposed Web 3.0 and Web 4.0 technologies expand the ability of VCs to engage, interact, and share. For instance, Web 3.0 provides a set of protocols for linking and structuring data across different applications.

By embracing Web 3.0, VCs can seamlessly analyze, automate, discover, integrate, and reuse data from different data sets to obtain unique and practical insights than ever before. Incorporating Web 3.0 technologies equips VCs with potent tools for promoting creativity, innovation, mobility, customer satisfaction, and collaboration in an increasingly digitized globe. According to Machado, Souza, & da Graca Simoes, (2018) Tim Berners Lee conceptualized Web 3.0 technologies like the Semantic Web, which seeks to create intelligent software that can perform complex data retrieval processes according to a user's specific needs. In this way, Web 3.0 bridges the gap between computers applications and human Moreover, the highly anticipated launching of Web 4.0 and Web 5.0 technologies will provide VCs with ever-powerful tools for leveraging the power of Artificial Intelligence in their activities.

Social Media Content

Typically, the thriving of VCs depends on the availability of relevant and engaging content that promotes internal and external interactions between a community and its surroundings. Content that is appropriate for this virtual community includes blog posts, videos, articles, email newsletters, discussions, and podcasts. For instance, CafeMom provides mothers and mothers to be with a discussion forum for topics such as technology, parenting advice, and politics. In addition to that, CafeMom allows its members to write blog posts, make journal entries, games, contest, polls, and videos. As a VC dedicated to mothers, CafeMom integrated various social media tools in its community activities.

In contrast to other social networking sites, CafeMom typically acts as social networking and information resource for moms. As a social networking site, CafeMom's Daily Buzz tab that curates article from five bloggers covering topics such as healthy living, children, and pregnancy. Its Answers tab lets members browse through its collection of questions and answers with the Groups tab facilitating discussions on specific interests. What is more, members can participate in online polls using the Polls Tab.

Over the years, CafeMom has evolved to include many different features as well as expanded to induced sister sites like Mamas Latinas, The Prowl, and The Stir. Some of its distinctive elements include targeted advertising, advice forums, entertainments, video galleries, helpful sites, and groups. Moreover, its design incorporates functionality that its community share and interact using sites Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and YouTube. Alexa (n.d.) ranks CafeMom at position 13,877 in popularity globally. Currently, CafeMom receives approximately seven million new visitors each month and has a community of over 18 million members. Its 70,000 groups provide a platform through which mothers can connect, interact, and share similar challenges, location, interests, passions, and content. Besides that, this VC offers marketers with an opportunity to target and market their products and services to a diverse consumer base.

CafeMom's Typology

Today, the proliferation of the internet and web technologies connects people from different backgrounds through virtual communities. Presently, there lacks a standard classification methodology regarding VCs. Available classification methods differ from each other depending on the academic perspectives of their originators and are not exhaustive or inclusive of the different types of virtual communities that exist online. Given that, this section creates a classification basis for the virtual community CafeMom using several classification schemes including attributes, social interactions, and boundedness. The attributes that characterized CafeMom include shared goals, resources, communal support, intense emotional ties, and shared social conventions. When it comes to categorizing virtual communities, two approaches are available including organization sponsored or member-sponsored communities. Accordingly, CafeMom falls under the latter category, i.e., a member-initiated virtual community. Calsifiiyng CafeMom in this way is appropriate as this community fosters social, professional, and economic relationships among its members. This typology is suitable for CafeMom as its interactions revolve around non-professional interests, hobbies, and parenting activities. Another crucial classification criteria relate to CafeMom's level of boundedness which determines a virtual community's group level interactions. In CafeMom, a majority of social relationships occurs between the community's members. In this regard, boundedness determines the type of interactions that CafeMom members participate in.

Furthermore, this aspect limits the activities of this community to only mothers and mothers to be. By design, CafeMom limits its membership as a way of ensuring the security of interactions, productivity factors, or because of its organizational culture. In doing so, CafeMom restricts its interactions within its membership. Interestingly, doing so determines whether this virtual community is tightly or loosely bound. As a result, empathetic social interactions characterize interactions in this community.

On the other hand, studying virtual community's often presents challenges to researchers due to their aspatial nature. For instance, before becoming a member, potential candidates require to sign up using a basic form in which they provide details such as date of birth, email addresses, and names. Due to the different variables used in categorizing virtual communities, CafeMom stands out from other social networks in defining the types of interaction that members enjoy within the community. For instance, this site orients interactions using variables like context, relationships (whether social or professional), and perspectives.

Challenges

Despite CafeMom's success, it has encountered various types of challenges in defining its community lifestyle and pursuits, this section details the various types of shortcomings identified using the existing theory of virtual communities typology.

Technical Issues

CafeMom lacks sufficient backup servers in contrast to social networking items su...