My view on Virtual Communities

I never really had a great idea about virtual communities before we started the lectures . I knew about Bebo and hotmail but I never realised how many different virtual commuities were available to the world! For someone who does not know what a virtual community is it is a gathering place for people and businesses that do not have a physical existence. In my opinion I believe virtual communities to be a good idea sites like bebo and myspace allow people all over the world to communicate with each other. If it wasn't for Bebo I wouldn't be able to contact my aunt who lives in Australia as much.

However, the only bad sides to virtual communities is the sleezy side that we hear about on a day to day basis. For example older men preying on younger girls and boys on chat rooms pretending to be someone of the same age and asking them to meet up. I feel that is the dangerous side of virtual communities because there is very little privacy on the web and people can easily have access to pictures and contact information. This is the bad side to these virtual communities that not many people like to hear about.

One of the main things that struck me about virtual communities was how people can express the things that they are passionate about and they are able to meet people with similar interests to them. From learning about these communities I was struck by how other worlds can be created. For example we learned about something called 'Second Life'. It is basically another world where people can create a profile and actually enter a pub called 'The Blarney Stone' were they can meet and chat with other members of this community. They can mingle with other people and dance. It took me a little while to actually get my head around the fact that real people worked in this 'Second Life'. People from the real world getting paid for working in a virtual pub..I found this really interesting!

Another aspect involved in virtual communities that caught my attention was blogging. From starting my own blog I found it a really good way to talk about things tou like maybe things that annoy you also. In the past few years blogging has become very popular worldwide from celebrities to housewives blogging about their everyday thoughts. There you have it my view on virtual communities.=]