"Community"

History of the Internet
Technical Arpanet	Community Delphi, Unison, Dialcom, Easylink, EIES, GeoNet, UUCP, BitNet, APC
	Now Buzz-Word-Compliant

Mitra Internet Consulting
<mitra@earth.path.net> http://earth.path.net/mitra

Two key concepts

Interaction between users
Customers / Users are a valuable source of content

Why are service providers interested?

Stickiness - selling ads
Customer Service - better impression of the company
Shared Goal - political - social

Types of Service

CyberSex / Help Groups etc - lonely people looking for company or support.
Shared Interest
Looking for help - experts, support forums, technical newsgroups etc, Knowledge Management
Buddys. (ICQ 20million users in October)

Characterisation of Community Software

Identity v. Anonymity v. Aggregate

Privacy, Reputation etc

Immediate || Time-Delayed
Push v. Pull
Free v. Moderated
Persistent v. Transient v. Managed
Text or Structured (e.g. Calender, Bookmarks) or Audio/Video

Hype leads to Minimal Thinking leading to Poor Choices,

some examples

GeoCities - no features of community other than people's home page, NO interactivity between users.
eGroups - mailing list host - makes transient groups persistent.
Compaq - no Knowledge management, no longer answer email, advertised before working
ICQ - allow locating individuals, but not groups

My own Interests

How do people share and build a knowledge base.

Standard Web browsers
Dumb users
Social Engineering >> Software Engineering

Some of the Challenges

Helping people come to conclusions

Stating consensus

Dynamically building databases

Quality issues

Locating important messages