my presentation

My presentation notes:
The concept of the online community

When looking at the success of the internet it is important to look at interactivity. The internet is at a point where ordinary people are making there presence felt, it is no longer just for those who understand the coding and can create there own piece of the web. The ordinary person has been given the ability to have an online presence. With the creation of online forums and what have become known as online communities, such as myspace, bebo and deviant art which thrive on the average Joe creating an online persona and socialize within what is fundamentally just a network of computers.

Firstly the seemingly overnight sensations like bebo and my space have been popularized by the masses, children, adults and companies come together to interact. The online persona gives them an image for other people to see, they can talk to each other in comments and chat, they can send each other information and meet new people. You tube and similar still image sites gives a more visual power to the people to share their own world through the screen.

I will be looking at a site called Deviantart specifically today to show the potential of web creators and developers to create what is really a virtual world. Deviant art, describes its self as “an online art community for artists and art lovers to interact in a variety of ways, ranging from the submission of art to conversations on a number of topics. In its purest form, deviantART is a means for expressing yourself in a variety of ways.” Deviant has been running for nearly seven years and has a number of features for its members of which it has over two million. For free users it allows a slightly customizable profile page similar to a myspace page but with an emphisis on the art that the user has uploaded. This art can be found in each person’s gallery. The idea of this is to have an open forum environment for critiquing each other’s work. Members can browse all art pieces submitted to DA by exploring via genre. Or by using the search tool. Deviantarts user’s known as deviants can befriend each other and watch them, this means that they are notified in there message centre when ever this person submits a piece of art. This is the basis of the community aspect. The people on deviant art have a common passion and the ability to track each other and comment on each other’s profiles and individual works is the perfect recipe for a community to form. The social growth of Deviant art is incredible, the pet project which started by a handful of enthusiasts is now operated by a full time staff of administration and help desk personel, technical coders, paid and unpaid staff for community interaction and help, the sites running count of individual art pieces grows by the second and has now surpassed 35 and a half million.

In addition to this, elaborate traditional forums and chat give users even more opportunities for interaction. Within deviant art there are many groups and clubs for different genre’s of art and just for general socializing. One of these such groups is the Kids with Guns group, this group was founded by a deviant called True-marmalade and addresses the need within deviant art for a graffiti art, particularly stencil art community. This leads me neatly from Deviant Art an established and sophisticated community to the independent Kids with guns forum, kwgcrew.org this is an interesting site because it is in its infancy. The site administration is purely True marmalade who adapts templates and uses collaborative knowledge of the group to code, design and improve the site. The group is made up of graffiti artists with a strong emphasis on design, with many members studying or active graphic designers. Most have been recruited from deviant art but use Kids With Guns for its closeness of community and the specific way in that it targets graffiti art as compared to all art. The costs of running the site are handled by true marmalade and voluntary contributions by the members. It is successful because of the smallness of community and the lack of a forceful administration, this gives the members a sense of ownership. In addition to being able to post on the forum in any topic and create their own threads members can enter in house competitions and design active parts of the site, for example the mastheads were all designed for members as a way of both showcasing their own skills and improving the site. The friendly rivalry and critique is constructive to the members in a fairly anonymous way. This is another interesting aspect not just of kwg but of all online communities, members of these communities are self designed in that the members can choose and spend time on how they represent themselves, the virtual representation, not necessarily having to match their physical persona. In the context of kids with guns in means that people feel a freedom to present their work in a more anonymous way, this can help honesty when critiquing and being critiqued. It also gives a voice to high school kids for example to mix there work with people from all over the world including those already involved in a graphic industry.

Kids with guns is just one example of an emerging online community, but the depth of member involvement and group pride and strength is very important when applied to web developers. A lesson that many are learning is the ability to have a continuing presence and involvement not only attracts people to a site but addicts them, Deviantart has thousands upon thousands of users who keep coming back after years and years, myspace has integrated its self into the lives of people around the globe, you tube allows unprecedented visual and audio sharing