Tutorial Six. The internet and online communities

Face Book
www.facebook.com
I believe the focus of this community is to keep in touch with family and friends. It is a community where you can shear thoughts, feelings and pictures with others. Facebook is also a place where you can meet others and find long lost friends.
People contribute to this site by writing information about themselves, adding and tagging photos to share with others and sharing thoughts and ideas.

Services provided on face book include your own profile page which is a space where you have the ability to notify friends about themselves. users have the ability to upload photos and videos and send both private and public messages. a public message would show up on the persons profile, where everyone else can read it, however the private message is only able to be read by the person themselves.

I believe people join facebook to seek various things. Some including, making new friends, finding old friends, talking to current friends. Keeping up to date with gossip, or just to join in on the latest craze.

Topics being discussed of face book involve lots of different things. Whats happening in their lives, social events, activities, what they are going to do in the weekend, where the are going and so on. people are constantly updating their profile as their life events change or occur and conversations between friend can last for week and weeks. then when other friend come online users are able to chat instantly.

Potential ethical issues that may arise with getting an account with face book is that others can potentially see very personal information, even if they are not added as a friend they can always go on line under one of their friends accounts who has you added as a friend. People can also upload photos of you which you have not given consent. Users can give out too much personal information and the threat of sexual predators. Data theft, or viruses. People can create a fake identity and profiles, as a result people become mislead.

The benefits of this site compared with older ways of communication is that you can see the person you are talking to (through photos). You can write a message and it almost instantly can be seen by the other person who could be on the other side of the world. It allows for silent observation prior to participation, and individuals are able to have equal voice

The aspects that this online community lacks in relation to traditional communities. is that you carnt have actual face to face communication, there is potential for misuse and often delusions and reliy on virtual communities. There is not always valid information being shared and only people with computers and Internet are able to join the communities.