ONLINE COMMUNITIES

 Social networking
 Online gaming
 Online workspaces
 Virtual learning environments (VLE)
 User generated reference sites: wikis, websites, forums
 User generated content: video sharing sites, blogs, websites
 Social bookmarking

SOCIAL NETWORKING
Function: allows members to connect through shared interests or
relationships.
Features:
a) Profiles – when you create an account with a social networking
site you can add information about yourself. Some services allow
members to decide which information should be made public.
b) Friend, follow and connect – Different social networking
communities have similar features that allow users to add someone to
their social network. These can be known by many different names
such as friend, follow and connect.
c) Stream, wall and timeline – a users’ stream, wall or timeline is
the place where the posts from members’ friends appear.
d) Status, updates and posts – members of a social networking
community can either send a message to other members in their
network.
Social networks are powerful marketing tools because they contain a
huge amount of information that people post about themselves. The
owners of the social networking community can store this information
in a database and analyse it. They can then sell this information to
advertisers, because this gives the advertisers the ability to
specifically target relevant sponsored posts to matched members.
The ability to match members to advertisements is called targeted
marketing.
Groups, lists and circles – Allows members to create named groups,
lists or circles of members. Users’ posts can then be made visible
only to members.
Tags – allows members to categorise the content that they create and
post on social networking communities.
User suggestions – Social networking communities suggest other
members that users might want to connect with.
Reactions, ratings, likes, upvotes and downvotes – Social
networking communities have features that enable users to show their
reactions to posts by other people, such as liking them or finding them
funny.
Share – Share functionality allows members of a social networking
community to repeat other members’ posts to the community .
Comments and quotes – provides different ways for members to
write comments about other members’ posts.
Third party integration – Many websites now include direct links to
social networking sites so that people can easily share the information
provided on the third part website.
Additional feature for social networking sites:
 Add content to post
 Private and direct message
 Notifications
 Analytics – Many social networking sites allow people to see
information about how their followers have reacted to their
posts. Analytics service helps individuals and organisations to
identify their most effective communications so that they can
increase the size of their networks and gain new followers.
ONLINE GAMING COMMUNITIES
Function:
Allows members of the community to play multiple player games
together.
Features:
 Links to social media
  User profiles
 Information that allows users to find out how to complete games.
 Experience points that can be tracked and displayed on a users’
profile.
 Discussion boards and forums that allow members to discuss
tactics.
 Statuses that allow users to see if other members are online.
 Notifications about what is happening in the game.
ONLINE WORK SPACES
Functions:
Allows members to collaborate together for a purpose.
Features:
 Cloud storage and web applications that allow members to work
on documents through web browsers.
 Comments that can be left on documents for other users to see
and reply to.
 Enabling documents to be edited at the same time by two or
more members, which allow users to develop documents
together.
 Messaging systems so that members can discuss the work.
 Shared calenders so users can see each other’s diaries and
arrange meetings.
 Shared contact lists.
 Chat rooms to allow discussion work.
 Systems for booking resources such as ICT equipment, meeting
rooms and transport.
 Virtual meeting spaces with the ability for members to:
o Give and watch presentation
o Speak to each other using VoIP
o Use video conferencing tools.
VIRTUAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS (VLE)
These are websites that contain teaching and learning tools.
Features:
 A wall or timeline similar to those on social networking
communities that contains posts by teachers and students.
  A notice board for announcements about the course.
 The ability to share audio, video, web links or files.
 Quizzes or multiple-choice tests that are often graded
automatically.
 Tools for submitting assignments.
 Communication tools with posts from the teacher.
Forums for discussions
 Chat rooms
 Wikis
 Blogs
 Third party integration
Additional features
o Log-in system
o Document editors e.g class notebook
o Gradebooks
o Access statistics
USER GENERATED REFERENCE SITES
1. Wikis – a website of database that is developed by a number of
collaborating users, all of whom can edit content.
Features:
 Member accounts, which allow users to track which edits
have been made by which members of the community.
 An edit button, which takes editors to a text editor so that
they can edit the content.
 Structured Language, which allows member to format web
pages or add links to other content.
 Search tools.
2. Forums
Function:
Forums provide members of the community with online spaces for
structured discussion.
Features:
 Groups, allowing members in one group to have different levels of
access or rights to members in other groups.
Moderators, who are members who have the right to allow or
block posts or members.
Administrators, who are members with the same priviledges as
moderators plus some additional rights such as being able to
promote members to be moderators and to demote moderators.
Posts -messages sent by members to the group.
Threads – topics for conversation, with replies usually arranged
and sort by date or topic.
Sticky notes or stickies – are notes usually kept at the top of the
list of thread to make them easily accessible to members.
Ratings, which allow members of the community to rate other
members posts and enables members to see how helpful or genuine
the posts are.
Private or direct message functions, which allow member of the
community to send private messages to each other.
Safety features:
 Word or URL censoring
 Ignore or block
 Rules and responsibility or acceptable use policies
 Report or flag a user or post
USER GENERATED CONTENT
1. Video and photo sharing sites
Function:
Allows people to access and share content created and uploaded by
members of the community.
Features:
 User accounts and profiles
 Content management systems
 Tags to categorize shared content
 Ratings
  Comments
 Third party integration
2. Blogs and Vlogs
Function: Allow people to create online diaries of events or articles.
Features:
 User accounts and profiles
 Text editors
 Upload tools for adding videos and photographs
 Tags
 Ratings
 Comments
 Third-party integration
SOCIAL BOOKMARKING SITES
Function: allows people to share web documents and URLs with
each other.
Features
 Social networking features to connect with each other.
 Third party integration
 Tags
 User accounts
HOW TO STAY SAFE
1. Anonymity of others and misrepresentation
Anonymity can protect users, but it also means that some users can
misrepresent themselves by pretending to be someone that they
are not.
2. Disclosure of personal information or location
To reduce the risk of disclosing too much information, online safety
organisations advise individuals to think carefully about how much
of their personal information they want to make public, and not to
post publicly any images containing information about their
location.
3. Cyberbullying
 This is the term used to describe the use of the internet to send
text or images in order to upset or embarrass someone.
Terms;
 Geotag to add location data to a piece of content.
 Grooming pretending to befriend someone with the intention of
harming or abusing them.