Doesn't the same thing happen to 'communities of interest' where business sees an oppotrunty to make money out of the community they target them in marketing? I'm thinking of the marketing to 'rockabillies', 'heavy metal' or 'gays'. Bob Hope-hume

-----Original Message----- From: D. Silver To: air-l Sent: 17/12/01 16:48 Subject: Re: [Air-l] Re: Company vs. Community

Intellectually and politically speaking, I agree wholeheartedly with Andrew's comment above. But it seems to me that one of the most common (and nefarious depending where you stand on the issue) developments in mainstream cyberculture during, say, 1997 - 2000 has been the commercialization of online communities. Is it just me or does it appear to the rest of you that the folks at Amazon, Yahoo, and fill-in-the-blank.com have been reading Howard Rheingold? For a number of dot.coms (and former dot.coms ... rip), there's a thin line between commerce and community: Online communities are set up and nurtured as portals to e-commerce.

I've seen very little critical work on this angle but a good start is Chris Werry's "Imagined Electronic Community: Representations of Online Community in Business Texts" and Janelle Brown's "Three Case Studies," both in Online Communities: Commerce, Community Action, and the Virtual University, edited by Chris Werry and Miranda Mowbray (Hewlett-Packard Professional Books, 2001).

david silver http://faculty.washington.edu/dsilver