---- Original message ----
Date: Thu, 14 May 2009 00:52:57 +1000 (EST) From: Christopher Lueg <christopher.lueg@utas.edu.au> Subject: Re: [Air-L] Social network site nomenclature To: air-l@aoir.org
On Wed, 13 May 2009, Caroline Haythornthwaite wrote:
Social networking sites (SNSs) are online sites which provide the technical infrastructure for social networking. While the term is used, and I'd say reserved for online sites, the concept of a social networking site could also apply to offline settings as well -- after all, what is a pub for if not a social networking site.
Totally agree. Just like a pub can be a superior place for knowledge management. Back to topic: so what in the difference between social networking sites and 'regular' online community sites then? Is it possible to draw a line?
A good question, and one that I answer this way -- Community is a hypothesis to be tested, i.e., you can't know you've got a 'community' until you look at what people are doing, with whom. Some people within a giant SNS will develop and maintain a community through that tool and probably others; other people will not be part of a community even if spending a lot of time in an SNS. Same for 'regular' online communities. The distinction to me is whether the individuals involved pay attention to each other, making and creting their own norms of interaction, or whether it is site managers who make the rules, with individuals oriented to something other than the site. (In a continuing work in progress, I've explored this extensively in a paper discussing the differences between crowdsourcing and virtual community - [https://www.ideals.uiuc.edu/handle/2142/9457]) Also, it's a question that keeps us all in business :) /Caroline -------------------------------------- Caroline Haythornthwaite Professor, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 501 East Daniel St., Champaign IL 61820 haythorn@illinois.edu OR haythorn@uiuc.edu