How do online communities organise themselves?

Facebook is one of those online communities that needs to organise itself better. A recent article on the Time website points out how closely linked the site is with spam. It seems the internet is growing larger in terms of web 2.0 and users are faced with more problems to waste their time with. Though, users of the website are protesting against this annoying facet of the site by apparently spamming a petition for Facebook to add a button to prevent being sent friend requests. So it becomes apparent that the users are happy with Facebook itself, they just want the ability to improve the site for their benefit. Why wouldn't the Facebook owners allow for such a request? After all, it is the community that makes the website so popular. And why wouldn't Facebook creators have thought of this idea in the first place? It is interesting that so many people would have once enjoyed these greeting cards and virtual presents until they just became so common and unimaginative. In this case we have a constantly evolving web 2.0 platform that needs to keep changing the interface in order to keep it relevant.

This brings the idea of produsage, a term defined by Axel Bruns as a "participatory environment which...enables all participants to be users as well as producers of information". This is how communities are formed on the internet. Though, they organise themselves based on the features of the interface that the community uses. While Facebook and MySpace are good examples of social networking sites, many online communities exist in virtual worlds like Second Life. Some other examples of virtual worlds include There and Kaneva. Most of these worlds appear to be a take off of The Sims, yet all these worlds have their own specific target audiences that they cater to. Take childrens communities such as Neopets and Club Penguin for example. Both these websites cater to children who want to have virtual pets that they can look after and both rely on children playing games to earn virtual money that they can use to care for their virtual pet. These sites are really just a child friendly version of the Second Life platform, which acts like a completely uncensored adult meeting place.

Apart from the communities that act as virtual realities, virtual fantasy game communities are also a large part of the internet's social side. These also use chat functions to communicate, though the main focus is your character and winning games to advance to high levels to achieve a high status among other gamers. There are many massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG's) from sites such as outspark which offer free games and also the well known fee based games such as World of Warcraft and Everquest II. These games are so popular as a result of users produsing their own characters as they advance through different stages of the game. Overall, virtual communities do not really have a lot of organisation involved apart from gathering friends together and making new friends from similar interests or skills.