Cash and Konsynski (1985) were one of the primary researchers in defining community within a business context and considered the relationships that exist within connected business systems prevalent at the time. They define an organization to be either a
‘facilitator’ of network interaction such as an internet service provider or a ‘participant’
(Cash and Konsynski, 1985).
The context of the internet evolved and a variety of communities developed as a result of several factors. One was the deregulation of the internet in 1995 and the introduction of communication protocols and page description language for the internet which enabled a new form of community to become prevalent. Individuals were suddenly able to
communicate and interrelate over a global network. This created a new channel of social interaction and already in 1992 it was estimated that there were over 400,000 communities resident in the world wide web.
With the proliferation of these communities came a research direction to try to classify the types of communities springing into existence. Jang et al., (2008) supported the
differentiation between types of online communities as to whether the community is the purpose of the site (such as social networking sites like Facebook), whether it aids the goals of a site (supports purchases such as on Amazon), or whether it supports an entity as a whole (supports products such as Microsoft). Some communities which are product or service oriented are user initiated as opposed to being company initiated such as some brand communities (Harley Davidson).
Earlier, Hagel and Armstrong (1997) posited a method of partitioning the online community of space into four areas. These are shown in table 2.1.
Community Type Examples
Communities of Relationship Facebook
MySpace YouTube Twitter
Communities of Fantasy Second Life
Mooveonline
Dungeons and Dragons
Communities of Transaction Business to consumer (B2C) sites
Amazon
Business to business sites (B2B) The Dialog Corporation
InfoMap.com
Consumer to consumer sites (C2C) Ebay
Craigslist.org
Communities of Interest Motley Fool
Health Boards Patients Like Me Parents.com WELL
Table 2.1 Taxonomy of online communities, adapted from Hagel and Armstrong (1997)
The distinction between the four community types is coming into question, however. An example of communities which overlap into two (or more) categories can be found on sites such as MyBarackObama.com. During the 2008 presidential campaign, this community existed to both drive user support for the campaign as well as drive commercial support in the form of campaign contributions. As such, it drives participation from users who have a
who want to “purchase” or support the campaign monetarily. Thus the community supports both the common interest and the commercial aspect of the site.
Following this example, it can be seen that communities of interest and communities of transaction could be argued to be increasingly overlapping. Whereas the origin of the community of transaction on a site like Amazon.co.uk was solely for the purpose of enabling customers to review their purchases and read other’s opinions of purchases, Amazon.co.uk has now added a forum feature in which users can discuss for example, technical problems or questions about products. Additionally, whereas the previous
communication between customers was unidirectional (users were either reading or writing but not communicating with each other aside from rating the usefulness of a user’s
comments), Amazon has now enabled bi-directional communication. An example can be taken from a forum on the Amazon.co.uk website under the Kindle (electronic book reader) product pages in which one user is asking others for technical information about a Kindle application.
D. C. L. Ford says:
I've downloaded and installed the Kindle App for PC and i've downloaded some eBooks from Amazon.
Someone has sent me some eBooks in 'Mobi' format but i can't get them into the Kindle App.
Help!
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Damaskcat says:
Have they got DRM protection on them?
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Figure 2.10 Sample from Amazon.co.uk Community Forum section
This sample gives an illustration of how once transaction-only based communities are now starting to take on aspects of interest-based online communities. Thus it could be argued that the types of communities are not as clear cut as they are depicted in the above taxonomy and that an evolution is taking place. The evolution of communities in commercially orientated sites is such that they are starting to take on aspects of socially orientated communities. The boundaries between social communities and commercial communities are starting to overlap as commercial companies try to harness the power of these ever expanding social communities in drawing and retaining customers.
Commercial institutions are increasingly positioning themselves on social network sites in order to take advantage of the business opportunities which are developing. For example, Wauters (2009) indicated that the retailer 1-800-Flowers is increasingly finding social media an ideal place to connect with customers and launched a transactional application that lets customers shop directly from a Facebook app(lication). The company is also concurrently running two Facebook contests to reward existing customers and encourage them to share interest in the brand with friends.
Based on the above discussion, the evolution of online communities of these two types could be depicted as follows.
Figure 2.11 Evolution of transaction based and relationship based communities
Transaction based
Relationship based
Transaction based
Relationship based
Regardless of this overlap, it is important to develop an understanding of types of online communities, as user participation in different types, or the reasons to join different types of community may vary.
Plant (2004) more recently developed a taxonomy of the online community space which uses the three dimensions of
Degree of community regulation
Degree of for-profit community activity
Degree to which the community is open
Figure 2.12 A three dimensional taxonomy of the online community space Degree of
Community Regulation
Degree of Community Openness Degree of For Profit Community Activity
This approach offers the advantage of being able to indicate the increasing overlap in online community origins and functions. The three dimensions are defined below.
Degree of community regulation
Unregulated communities: These are communities which are initiated by a set of
participants who interact through a common site or location and often start out as not for profit groups with a common interest. Such groups are unregulated by a facilitator or through rules of conduct. Plant (2004) holds that regulated communities are either an evolution of unregulated communities where the facilitation of services can be transferred to a professional body such as IBM AOL or Yahoo, or more recently, to a platform such as Facebook: networks which have clear and stringent rules on interaction and presence.
While this definition of unregulated communities may be somewhat dated as all
communities tend to have an administrator and a set of community rules, this aspect of the framework is still valid in that it demonstrates the spectrum of communities available from less restrictive to more structured and restrictive. Movement to a professional service provider needn’t mean that the community change from (for example) not for profit to commercial. Plant uses the example of a health related site which uses a professional community provider (for example AOL) yet remains independent of bias from health care providers or pharmaceutical companies. Regulated communities can then be further partitioned into either public or private.
Degree of Community Openness: is the site open to all who wish to access it or can one only become a member if invited? In current trends, a user typically has to register in a community site using some personal details, ranging from an email address to a full profile containing name and address. Some sites are only available to those who have been invited by someone who is already a member of the community. Public communities (Facebook, online news sites) are mostly open to anyone whereas private are invite only (for example:
LinkedIn).
Degree of for profit activity: denotes the primary role of the site, if for profit or not for profit.
Plant (2004) cites the example of a for-profit, open and regulated community as one which is open to any individual or group that obeys the rules of the regulator of that community.
eBay is such a site.
More recently, Stockdale and Hunter (2009) support that communities fall into the following four categories:
A virtual community which integrates content and communication via computer mediated space (Hagel and Armstrong, 1997; Lee et al., 2003).
A virtual settlement which includes virtual community, but adds concepts surrounding the idea of interactivity and sustained membership (Jones, 1997).
An open source community for the development of shared software. (Kidane and Gloor, 2007).
A community of practice or a group of people who share common concerns, problems, or passions for a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise through interaction on an ongoing basis” (Lin and Lin, 2006, Zhang and Watts, 2008). These communities relate to highly specialized topics and shared expertise (Wenger and Snyder, 2000).
Thus when determining where an online news site community would fall, both Stockard and Hunter’s (2009) and Plant’s (2004) taxonomies can be integrated.
First of all, organizations such as online news sites are straddling the first two categories:
the virtual community and the virtual settlement. In striving to utilize the power of online communities, a move from a simple virtual community to more of a virtual settlement would be advantageous. The evolution of the community on Amazon.co.uk from simply enabling users to read and write comments on products to providing forums in which users
can interact with each other to discuss product usage or other topics is an example of a move from a virtual community in the direction of a virtual settlement.
Secondly, within Plant’s taxonomy, online news sites could be seen to lie as depicted in the figure 2.7.
Figure 2.13 Position of news service online communities within Stockard and Hunter’s (2009) Online Community Taxonomy
Whilst online news sites have a high degree of openness (no invitation is necessary to join, however, usually, one is required to register with a valid email address), the degree of community regulation can be seen as intermediate. As described in the literature on online news services, editors keep a watchful eye over content and comments generated by users, and users are able to report abuse or comments which they find unfit or not in coincidence
Online news
sites Degree of
Openness
Degree of Community Regulation
Degree of For Profit Activity
Low High
High
High
with community rules. The degree of for profit activity is still low in online news sites, but as previously discussed, this is changing as online news organizations struggle to find a working business model.
Two aspects of online community which are especially pertinent to the online news service industry were described by Hagel and Armstrong (1997). These are:
The capacity to integrate content with communication
The appreciation of member-generated content.
While Hagen notes that virtual communities provide a broad range of published content, within an online news site this content is generated both by the editors (through journalists) of the site and the users of the community and is usually consistent with the distinctive focus of the community. The content is integrated within a rich environment fostering communication which includes posting messages or comments which are accessible to all, chat areas and blogs which in turn allow members to maximize the value of the online content, enabling them to clarify their understanding of published or posted items by communicating with its publisher (whether a journalist or a citizen journalist) and to evaluate the credibility of the content by communicating with each other.
Appreciation of member-generated content: In addition to published content, virtual communities provide environments for the generation and dissemination of member-generated content. Hagel and Armstrong (2007) hold that this is perhaps the single most empowering element of a virtual community. It gives members the capability to compare and aggregate their experiences, which in turn creates for them a fuller range of information and a perspective independent of editors and journalists and advertisers on the items that are important to the members.