Competition Within and Between Communities in Social Networks

Synonyms

Rival communities; Social communities competition

Glossary

Influential leader:

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

Virtual community:

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

Definition

Social networking sites provide users group functions to establish explicit communities or groups. In business environments, many large corporations, organizations, and government agencies maintain explicit groups to facilitate communication among the group members in order to promote employer-employee or company-customer relationships. Unlike explicit communities, implicit communities do not rely on group functions but form 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. For example, some covert organizations such as hate groups take advantage of social networking...