The Internet + Online Communities

Tute 6: The Internet and Online Communities

Hi Everyone!

For this post I will be looking at online communities. The community I have chosen is spinchat.com.

The focus of the community
"All about spinchat.com
spinchat.com is an extensive online community with thousands of men and women you can get to know. Here you can create your personal homepage with a free blog, guest book, photos and much more. Registration only takes five minutes and then you can start blogging, chatting and discussing immediately. Furthermore, we offer a big chat and many online games such as chess, backgammon and our chat games, for instance, our popular quiz chat.
You can chat immediately for free with many thousands of other people, no matter whether you are looking for a flirt chat or a general chat, if you are trying to find a partner, or if you are just bored, or if you want to meet people for serious discussions - you will always find nice people in our many chat rooms. Take part in our huge discussion board.
Since 1996, we have been trying to provide you with a good online community and chat. This makes us one of the oldest online communities on the internet."


What services are provided? How interactive is the site? How can people contribute?

- Find new friends
In our cosy online meeting point with many boards and great chats
-Free homepage
Create your free homepage with photos, guestbook and blog.
- Play together
Play chess, backgammon, Tetrinet and many other games. Exchange virtual gifts.
- Many extras
Groups, event calendars with party pictures, photo voting and much more.

Anyone can join up an contribute in any of the above ways, the site appears very interactive.

Consider material presented during the lecture and make comment on why people choose to contribute to this community. What is it they are seeking?

People would choose to contribute to an online community such as spinchat.com as it provides an outlet for discussion, socialising and ways to meet interetsing people who enjoy the same interests as them. People can feel like they belong to a specific group and can relate to a range of people without the pressure of actually meeting them. This could be an incentive for people to join the community. Some also go on the community to play the games with friends, share their life stories and photos and singles go on to look for love too!

An example of the topics being discussed includes:

Announcements, Books, Chatrooms, Computers and Technology, Cooking, Food & Drink, Discuss, Entertainment, Features / Bug Reports ..., Funny Things, Games, Internal, Music, Off-Topic, Poems, Politics / Society / Religion, Singles or Searching Chat Friends, Sports, VIP Board

(go to http://www.spinchat.com/topics/ to see more).


Considering material presented during the course and make comment on the potential ethical issues that may arise in this community e.g. lack of identity and accountability.

The potential ethical issues that may arise in this online community is that as it is so open and accessible, anyone can write anything about anyone -- this could lead to revealing personal information about others and the ability to bully people online without consequences. A person could post really offensive things in a discussion board and not be held accountable as it is simply a user-name they will using.

Consider material presented during the lecture and make comment on the benefits this community holds over traditional notions of community e.g. communities reliant on geographic proximity

The benefits of this community is that people can relate and discuss with other people all around the world - in which they would normally have no access to very easily. This factor can be quiet benefical as it would mean increasing knowledge in specific areas, finding out about different cultures and finding out more about the world. It aids friends and families to share more information with each other (i.e. photos, stories) on a more regular basis even if they are geographically quite separate. It opens up a whole lot more opportunities for people to experience things with others that in the past was not possible due to distance.

Consider material presented during the lecture and make comment what this community lacks or can not provide which traditional communities can.

Things in which this online community lacks in relation to traditional communities include...