Remember the good ol’ days when people were satisfied with the simple privileges of being able to surf the Internet, check e-mail and talk in chat rooms? Times have changed and it appears the Internet has evolved into much more than a simple communication tool. The latest Internet phenomenon: people building entirely digital communities.
While online communities have been around for quite some time, it wasn’t until recently that these communities became a crucial aspect of many Internet users’ online experience. Online communities are Web sites people can join (usually for free) to share pictures, create profiles, network, search for other users and make new friends.
University student Stacey Malstrom believes the popularity of these forms of community has a lot to do with the way people live their lives today.
“As peoples’ lives get busier, they don’t have the time to go out. These communities are easy ways for people to socialize. Everything nowadays is about accessibility and easibility,” she said.
Leung, who is a member of My Space, Thefacebook, Live Journal, Yahoo! Groups and Friendster said she is very involved with online communities.
“I think everyone is a bit narcissistic,” she said. “You know that when you post your information, other people are reading it. I’ve been approached at the U of O by people who have seen me in different communities. You are your own celebrity. People read about you and judge your life before you’ve even met them. It’s like when you see celebs, you approach them about their shows. With these communities, people can approach you about your page.”
Friendster, an online community founded by Jonathan Abrams in mid-2003, is credited with setting the online networking trend on the path toward its current premiere popularity. The community pioneered the use of connecting users through stated interests, which then act like links to other users. While the Web site proved popular for about a year as it seemingly held a monopoly, other similar Web sites soon began to infringe on the community. Friendster took a back seat to more updated and populated social networking Web sites.
“Friendster was cool because I got to re-connect with old friends. It was a good way to passively re-connect with people I had met throughout my life. After a while, there were no new people and the excitement died out,” junior sociology major Emily Hayes said.
“No one ever uses Friendster. There are no new people, so there is no point in having it. The site is outdated,” junior journalism major Becky Leung said.
Following the rise and fall of Friendster’s popularity, other sites have managed to take its place. One of the online communities currently on the popularity rise is My Space. The Web site, located at www.myspace.com, takes qualities of Friendster and enhances them. The community allows people to create highly detailed profiles, post ten photographs, search for other members, add friends, send people private messages and public profile comments, comment on friends’ photos and join groups.
Unlike Friendster, however, My Space does not directly display how one person and another person are connected, or even connected at all. My Space seems to attract users who identify with the alternative and emo crowds, as well as a disturbingly large quantity of women who appear to be hoping to get discovered by the porn industry, independent bands and artists trying to publicize their music and just average, everyday folk.
Another newly popular online community making inroads on campus is Thefacebook. The Web site, at www.thefacebook.com, fuses aspects of Friendster and My Space with its own unique quality. Thefacebook is unlike other online communities because it is exclusively for four-year college students whose colleges are registered with the site.
The site requires students to register under their real first and last name, and from there they can search for friends and friends of friends within the approximately 260 schools registered with the site. The community encourages users to connect with participants within their own school; the Web site offers participants searches for other members within their given universities and provides lists of people on the site who have registered for the same classes they have. The site also allows people to directly search for others who attended their high school and, like Friendster, directly lists if and how a user is connected to other members.
While social networking online is at the forefront of digital communities, another type of commonly used online community is the more traditional online journaling community. While there are countless sites that host online journals, Live Journal, one of the oldest, has a large legion of dedicated users. Founded in 1999 by Brad Fitzpatrick, the Web site allows users to search for other users and add other users and friends to their “friends” list. Users can create simple user profiles and post unlimited journal entries, making them either public, private or available for only users on their “friends” list to see.

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