What Is an Electronic Community?

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Webster's defines community as "a group of people living together as a smaller social unit within a larger one, and having interests, work, etc., in common." Similarly, an electronic community focuses on a group of people with common interests ; only their interests are mediated through a computer network rather than through physical proximity.

Electronic communities, known also as "virtual communities," have existed for some time on the Internet, the government-sponsored computer network whose roots go back to the late 1960s. Many communities were organized through on-line bulletin boards, called Usenet news groups, starting around the early 1980s. These communities consisted of self-organizing interest groups in academic, research and government circles. Using electronic mail and bulletin boards, hundreds of interest groups sprang up.

Electronic communities catering to business and consumer interests didn't generally emerge until the late 1980s, after the rise of on-line services such as CompuServe, Prodigy and America On-line. The World Wide Web ; launched in 1991 and made graphical through the advent of "Web browsers" such as Mosaic and Netscape ; has increasingly made the Internet the site of many consumer-oriented electronic communities. Hundreds of interest groups have emerged, from cancer patients to rock-and-roll fans.

These communities have become dynamic places for consumers to pursue their interests. As Howard Rheingold wrote in his 1994 book The Virtual Community, "People in virtual communities use words on screens to exchange pleasantries and argue, engage in intellectual discourse, conduct commerce, exchange knowledge, share emotional support, make plans, brainstorm, gossip, feud, fall in love, find friends and lose them, play games, flirt, create a little high art and a lot of idle talk. People in virtual communities do just about everything people do in real life, but we leave our bodies behind."

Yet even since the publication of Rheingold's book, the activities in electronic communities have been changing dramatically with every technological breakthrough. The type of human interactions Rheingold described occurred mainly through electronic mail and bulletin boards. These technologies essentially enhance the ability of people to network with each other. Through advances that improve people's sensory experience, aggregate products and services, and customize offerings to their unique tastes, today's electronic communities offer a far more powerful wa y for a group to achieve its interests. That is, they help address far more of a group's consumption process. With future advances that will give people nearly full-sensory experiences on-line, we can envision entire consumer processes ; such as finding a job or buying a car ; being done through electronic media.

Who organizes these communities is also changing. In contrast to the self- organizing electronic communities of 25 years ago, entities with commercial interests have discovered the economic potential of tapping into an electronic community. These so-called electronic community developers have, therefore, expanded the boundaries of communities to include themselves, as well as providers of goods and services.

Steve Case, CEO of America Online, the most successful consumer on-line service, says his company's challenge is to create electronic communities that provide an interactive and participatory medium. "The community aspect is crucial," he has said. "It is the soul of the new medium."

We'll go one step further: We believe the soul of the electronic community is the critical consumer process that community members are trying to achieve. Thus, the business opportunities associated with electronic communities lie in identifying and servicing consumer processes ; that is, being the catalyst that enables a segment of consumers to far better accomplish its common interests.

Return to "The Rise of the Electronic Community"

InformationWeek http://techweb.cmp.com/iw

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