Togetherness Reading

I found this article very fascinating, and it made me think about a lot of his points. The web allows us to be so unique yet so anonomous, and allows someone not only to be him or herself, but also find others with similar interests and connect in such a way that through these connections, we learn more about our interests and more about others. Becoming "famous" on the internet is such a true statement as well, and even more attractive is the fact that internet fame can be acheived by anyone (look at youtube and the number of people who have had their fifteen minute of fame.......anyone remember Chris Cocker and his Brittany Spears rant......or the video of the bridezilla cutting off all of her hair during a breakdown, etc.) As the article stated, "on the web, the community is defined by interest, not geography."

I think there are both positive and negative aspects concerning web groups and real world groups. Real world groups give people the chance to know the people in the group -- so their answers reflect who they are as a person and you get to intimately know those in your group, thereby, making them a more reliable source for feedback and dependability. With web groups, there is no guarentee that feedback and responses will come because of how easy it is to break a group or move on to a different group. The advantage of web groups is because there is a kind of freedom in involving yourself in a web group. There is no membership criteria except for an interest, and because you are anytomous, there is no holding back because you are able to say anything (no boundaries to what you can or cannot say or shyness). You are more comfortable stating your point and are not afraid to say what you want to. In the real world groups, others might intimidate you into silence, so a good point might go unsaid. Web groups are not only cheaper in most cases, but they are also easier to find. Search engines can bring up hundreds of groups, bullenteins, and discussion tables in a matter of seconds, while real world groups, like book clubs, may take a while to find and may not fit into your schedule.

The last point I want to discuss is how great community is on the web when it comes to commerce. The mass of products available to consumers today has a more difficult job of making sure that product is exceptional because of the web communities that can ruin its reputation. I love the reviews that people post on different websites as to what the pros and cons were of certain projects. And the great thing about that is that in reviews, I get a number of different reviews on a number of different features. Every person is different, so I get a wide variety of views on different parts of the product instead of reviews on exactly the same thing. For example, I looked over many review sites before i bought a digital camera. Some people talked about the size and durability aspects, others discussed the quality of the photos, others talked about the different features, some even posted pics on the site. These reviews were so different yet each one was helpful, and those reviews played a major role when buying my digital camera. By having these web groups, we are able to connect people who were just as interested in a product as we were and giving them a unique, individual review of the product instead of a general, mass-marketed overview of the product.