NTT Social Communication Laboratory
Aims to develop a social information infrastructure and create a new lifestyle for interpersonal communication via the Internet.
Online Community Building Concepts
List of fundamental principles to consider when starting a new community site.
Online Hospitality: Moderator Guidelines and Community-Building Tips
Gail Ann Williams writes about building conversation and community in online environments, adapted from the WELL Host Manuals.
Peter Kollock
Associate professor of the University of California, Los Angeles. Includes curriculum vita, course syllabi and recent papers on online communities and markets, which is his current research.
Suite101.com: Communication in Cyberspace
Articles, links and discussions on various programs used to communicate on the internet. Covers messaging, conferencing, discussion forums, telephony, chat and email.
The Virtual Communities (VirCom) Project
Five PhD students out to study virtual communities, their rise and development, evolution, meaning and its effect to traditional organizations. (Some papers are in Swedish.)
VirtualCommunities Start4all
Directory of resources and tools for building online communities. Rich content for analysis of virtual communities. With a list of popular communities and vendors in this field.
WELL Conferencing Team - Community Building and Hosts Manual
The WELL's description of conferencing, why it's the best tool for building community, and how to get starting in a conferencing environment. Links include the WELL Host Manual.
Xgencia - Best Practice in Online Communities
UK online community specialists providing planning, RFP and ROI analysis services. Requires Flash.
First Monday - Phantom authority, self–selective recruitment and retention of members in virtual communities: The case of Wikipedia
Peer-reviewed journal article by Andrea Ciffolilli. (December 1, 2003)
First Monday - A Social Network Caught in the Web
The authors present an analysis of Club Nexus, an online community at Stanford University. Through the site they were able to study a reflection of the real world community structure within the student body. (May, 2003)
Salon.com Technology: Must AOL Pay "Community Leaders"?
Article by Janelle Brown discussing issues on the use of volunteers to manage a site's online community. "The volunteers may feel good about giving their time, but the for-profit online communities are clearly profiting from those volunteers' services." (April 16, 1999)
Salon.com Technology: Netscape to community: You're evicted
As Netcenter's forums fall casualty to AOL-merger cutbacks, participants mourn. (April 6, 1999)
CNet.com: Will Media Giants Bulldoze Communities?
News Analysis by CNET observing how Disney and Time Warner, by building enhanced entertainment sites, threaten topical online communities. (March 31, 1999)
Community is Dead; Long Live Mega-Collaboration
Usability expert Jakob Nielsen's take on Online Communities: "The Web is not a community: a huge impersonal city is a better metaphor. User-contributed content can be valuable (if edited), but chat rooms should be avoided because of participation inequality." (August 15, 1997)
Fragmented by Technologies: A Community in Cyberspace
Early academic paper studying the human interaction within an online community. The author observed antinomy, atomisation, carnival, decentralization, disembodiment, impersonality, intensification and lurking. (April, 1997)
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