Online Communities

During my undergraduate years, I was introduced to online communities for the first time.  This was odd to many of my friends in college, but I did not find the need to join MySpace or Facebook even as a high school student.  When I arrived to college, I found that Facebook would help me stay in contact with my high school friends.  Once I joined Facebook, I joined several different groups to help me stay in contact with certain groups of people.  This included the education honor society, music honor society, drama club, and a high school group.  Later as I began working, it was required that I also join the group for our educational program and the Library of Congress.  Facebook has served me well over the years with keeping in contact with people and groups.  One of the sites mentioned above were not that great because they were not kept up to date causing it to be not useful for the members.  While in college, I was also asked to join a Yahoo Group for the music society which also did not work for the group because it was not kept up to date.  After trying the Yahoo Group, we decided to try a Wiki instead because we could share more items and we could keep it up to date more.  I was the one that created the group but it has been monitored by the current members who still use if to share specific items.  Lastly, I joined Second Life and Twitter when I came to San Jose State University as part of my classroom assignments.  I have not used these much, but have found that I do like Twitter because I can follow several of my friends, educational items, and celebrities.  Twitter has allowed me to stay more informed of what is going on in the same way that Facebook has.  The one other online community that I have knowledge about but have not created an account for is Flickr.  I have accessed Flickr for my work with the Library of Congress.  I may one day set up an account, but have not found the need.  Overall, I find that online communities are very important because they allow people the opportunity to stay connected and collaborate on certain things.