What Is An Online Community And What Are The Rules

Jeremiah Owyang Defines an online community as: Where a group of people with similar goals or interests connect and exchange information using web tools.

Jeremiah developed the definition by relating to members of his community on Twitter, which is where I found it.

I was actually about to post a comment on Twitter about something else, but had second thoughts, because there was a conversation going on, and I would have been totally off topic!

This brought me to other questions that led on from Jeremiah’s – communities have rules, and social conventions, how do these apply in online communities, and are they the same from group to group?

Teeg wrote about this a little while back, and asked a similar question.

The area that I grew up in has two regional cities about 50 minutes apart. My town was a pioneer town, and well established, while the one next door had sprouted like a mushroom, and had seemingly grown from nothing overnight.

Both are country towns, but there are a lot of differences between the two, and the differences are social, as well as physical.

If this is true offline, surely online the differences would be even greater because of the number of people involved, and their various backgrounds.

This added dynamic is a part of what makes social networking so much fun, but it could also make social relationships more difficult if one were to assume that everyone saw the world from my point of view.

Twitter is an online community with people there having a range of interests.

I must say though that I find it painful when someone makes post after post about what they had for lunch, or walking through the mall and so on every five minutes.

This actually causes me to limit my time there, because it makes it unpleasant sometimes.

Stumbleupon is another unique community, but I wouldn’t want to make the mistake of assuming that it works the same as Twitter, or I could be in trouble.

Facebook and Myspace are different again – if Stumbleupon and Twitter etc are communities, then these two are cities, with a whole range of people with different, sometimes competing, interests.

Treating everyone as potential customers is a definite no no, and is something that anyone with an ounce of common sense should realize.

There are other conventions to observe as well, but one of the things that I observe very closely is the range of people that I interact with, their backgrounds and beliefs, as well as their interests.

Some of my friends are into art and music, others are there to network for business, while others are there just to hang out!

If I get these mixed up too often, I’m going to find myself in strife.

Even simple things like the amount of noise my network creates on the newsfeed can upset people with a small group of friends.

Taking this a step further, if I assumed that everybody on Facebook was Australian, and enjoying a Summer Christmas, I could upset more people…

And so my questions are: What are the rules and conventions for online communities? Are these common rules, or do they vary from site to site?