January 10th 2008
Building Online Communities
We considered some of the new business models that are developing online. One of these was the consumer-to-consumer (C2C) model, upon which online communities are based.
These communities have evolved considerably since the early days of news groups and chat rooms. They offer a simple means of overcoming the lack of human contact online and hence can meet consumers’ social activity needs. Consequently, online communities can now represent a significant commercial opportunity. According to Kozinets,
Online social interaction is therefore a unique public—private hybrid never before encountered in human history. Changes in capitalism, social thought and new technologies have imploded the boundaries between home and workplace (and production and consumption). CMC [computer-mediated communication] offers ordinary people access to a mass medium, a stage before a global audience. . . . Opportunities abound not only to broadcast one’s own private information, but also to partake publicly in the private information of others, and also to commoditise and commercialise these relationships. Continue Reading »
