QotW7: Twitter , what are you doing?

I. The Online Community
One of the old traditions of online community is the combination of a forum and its portal. There would be a normal homepage with latest news, posts and statistics while forum is the heart of the online community. Users can interactive with each other through posts and replies. Then the revolutionary blog came with entries and comments. The existence of these social networks of strangers around the globe has formed many virtual communities. It is not that the world is a global village, but as McLuhan said, one’s village could span the globe. And technology must change in order to innovate and build stronger social online communities. The latest hottest trend in the world of Web 2.0 is Twitter – a new online community where people can know what other are doing.
I see Twitter as a new form of online community because of its nature, methods of communication and social networks.

II. Nature of an online community
According to Rheingold, an online community is “a social relationship aggregation, facilitated by Internet-based technology, in which users communicate and build personal relationships” (as cited in Lin & Lee, 2006). Twitter gives users a space to write whatever they like.They can connect to each other by updating friend list. The homepage is the collection of all latest entries by Twitter members. In this way, each member will be able to update with the whole communities.
III. How to use
Twitter appears to the combination of blogs, IM and mobile phone. Users are allowed to choose one of the above methods to update their contents. As the main question of Twitter is " What are you doing?", Twitter encourages users to instantaneously update their contents. Therefore, Twitter will definitely want users to utilize handphone as a main method to post entries.
Like I am in Vietnam now, I don't have access to Internet at the funeral site, I will still be able to post a live report on Twitter by using my mobile phone( I have to pay for international SMS fee)
IV. Social networks
As other online community, Twitter users will be inter-linked with each other through channels. In this way, Twitter will form many social networks within their big networks.
V. But
Personally, I don’t like Twitter. I saw nothing but a mixed of pre-existing online communities. The technology of moblogging or IM blogging is nothing new at all. Yahoo! has been integrated their blogs into IM for a long time. The sudden rocket speed spread of Twitter is caused by the aggressive. After a while, the question of how to keep users to come back is a big one for Twitter. Most of Twitter members are American while other countries like Japan, Korea ... mob blogging was an old fashion a few years ago. It will be not easy for Twitter to enter these markets.
VI. Wind of change
As Texas commentator Jim Hightower warned:" While all this razzle-dazzle connects us electronically, it disconnects us from each other, having "interfacing" more with computers and TV screens than looking in the face of our fellow human beings" (Fox, 1995, p.12), we will see more advance technology applied in online community which help to clear the gap between computer screen and human beings. Amanda Walker has already mentioned about that: " Every advance in communication changes the nature of reality as we experience it..."


Reference:
Lin, H., & Lee, G. (December, 2006). Determinants of success for online communities: an empirical study. Behavior & Information Technology, 25, 6, 479-488.


Online community. (2007, March 14). In Wikipedia, The Free encyclopedia. Retrieved March 15, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_community

Wellman.B & Gulia.M (1996)Net Surfers Don't Ride Alone:
Virtual Communities as Communities. Retrieved on March 14, 2007, from http://www.acm.org/~ccp/references/wellman/wellman.html