Competition Within and Between Communities Within and Across Social Networks

Glossary

Virtual Community:

A community on the Internet whose members share common beliefs or interests

Influential Leader:

An active user who spreads information to many other users in a virtual community

Definition

People often use functions provided by social networking websites to establish explicit communities or groups. In business environments, many large corporations and government organizations use this type of explicit groups to facilitate communication among the community members in order to promote employer-employee or company-customer relationships. Unlike explicit communities, implicit communities do not rely on the group function but exist based on interactions, such as subscription, linking, or commenting, among users. Virtual communities have been used to serve various purposes, some of which, unfortunately, are not quite positive. Some covert organizations such as hate groups take advantage of social networking sites to spread their beliefs, recruit new members, and...