On being virtual

Source: Corante

Date: 15/12/2006

Author: Danah Boyd

That's the big joke about the social media explosion. 1980s and 1990s researchers argued that the Internet would make race, class, gender, etc. extinct. There was a huge assumption that geography and language would no longer matter, that social organization would be based on some higher function. Guess what? When the masses adopted social media, they replicated the same social structures present in the offline world. Hell, take a look at how people from India are organizing themselves by caste on Orkut. Nothing gets erased because it's all connected to the offline bodies that are heavily regulated on a daily basis.

Inside a main community of Orkut users, people often desires to belong to a sub-community. This sub-community should be able to moderate his users and to deliver specifics functionalities.

*NOTE*: Why not let the sub-community suggest widgets ?