The example of an online community I would like to use for a final paper is a website called http://dandelife.com/. The site represents a variety of individuals telling their own stories using text, videos, and timelines. A typical Dandelife timeline shows headlines/titles for stories in a person’s life. Larger headlines generally denote bigger stories, while smaller ones would mean less important stories. Users can drag and drop You Tube videos and other public content straight into their stories. They can also comment on other people’s stories and link to their own.
The business model of the company is really neat because if the users choose, they can toss their stories up for corporations to bid on for use in advertisements or whatever endeavor they choose.
Since the site is still in its infancy, profitability reports remain to be seen. However, the concept promises to be interesting because it allows people with nothing else in common, that may have never met before, to share in each other’s stories, fulfilling expressive needs, and perhaps economic needs as well.
One thing that I see as a possible difficulty for the site to overcome is that some people treat their timelines as a place to drop a one-liner about an event, rather than tell the story behind it. However, as long as there are enough people telling their stories and connecting with one another, companies will likely choose to invest in the best of these. Also, I have yet to explore the site enough to see how reputation is obtained and maintained in the community, but feel that this will be an easy barrier to get past.
More formal research outline to come.
1 response so far ↓
brian carroll // February 8, 2007 at 2:54 pm
Ah, the one-liners might indicate the presence of community. If these are akin to “inside jokes,” then there is knowledge embedded in the network that makes these one-liners valuable. Maybe (I don’t know; haven’t looked).