In modern society, digital technology is in widespread use across the many scattered members of our culture. Digital technologies, such as online social network sites, are available for anyone looking to belong to any particular kind of community. In Where the Counterculture Met the New Economy, by Fred Turner, two early social network forums, the Whole Earth Catalog and WELL, are examined to understand how the consciousness of society in regards to technology, information, and commerce has transformed. Turner claims WELL has established the countercultural ideal that technology provides us with a nonhierarchical social order where geographically dispersed individuals could experience a shared mindset. The virtual community instituted by WELL has set the path for online social interactions and networking sites that have followed its design.
One virtual community, Yet to Know, has a very similar design to WELL since there are community categories from which members can choose to become a part of. Just to list a few there are restaurants, food, night-life, shopping, automotive… The list goes on. You can also click on a city to find people and conversations. There are no privacy settings as there is with Facebook as all members are free to comment in any community category.
What I found most interesting when researching different virtual communities is not the standardization of their design but rather how one virtual community is now recruiting members from another that is ironically in competition with them. Yet To Know is one example that pairs with Facebook and Twitter to connect people with similar interests. Its tag line: socialize with like-minded people in Iowa City. It knows where one is located (locality is an advancing characteristic of digital technology nowadays) and aims to build an online community with those near and far, depending on what the user is looking for, by combining multiple networks.
Recruitment of members from Facebook was also seen recently in the launch of an unknown online dating site, Lovely-Faces.com. This time without permission. The site recently scraped 250,000 names, locations, and photos, from publicly accessible Facebook pages and categorized individuals into personality types using face-recognition technology. As you may assume the Facebook team and its members were not happy with the stunt and plan on taking appropriate legal action. If you want to read more check out this article...
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