We have many online communities which can be categorised as follows:
informational, professional, educational, hobbies, academic, and news related.
Within each of these major categories, there are many hundreds of communities filled with active members who dedicate a fair portion of their day to participating in those social networks.
Let us have a look at each cateory in detail:
1. Informational
This is the most basic type of category which is used by maximum number of people. They are used for solving everyday problems. For example, when you are looking for the best talk plan of your telecom service provider or search data about the various advertising agencies in Mumbai. You may perform a web search and discover countless blogs, websites, and forums filled with people who are looking for the same kind of information. These types of communities are often linked to from businesses like banks, retailers, and other companies that are using social networks as a way to interact with customers. In these social networks you’ll find a lot of “how-to-do or use the product” style information and advice columns written by professionals.
2. Professional
Professional social networks helping you to advance within your career or industry. If you’re a field technician for a computer engineer to repair your Laptop. You might consider getting involved in your company’s online community where customers can post questions. Answer them well and your company’s own CEO may notice. If you’re a freelance copywriter, you may want to get involved in one of the many online writing communities where publishers and literary agents also tend to hang out. The perfect example of this is the mouthshut.com website where you can make or break a products fortune.
3. Educational
As the name suggests, Educational networks are where many students go in order to collaborate with other students on academic projects, to conduct research for school, or to interact with professors and teachers via blogs and classroom forums. This though isn’t much used in India for want of broadband speed. Educational social networks are becoming extremely popular within the educational system today primarily in the developed countries.
4. Hobbies
This was the start of social networking where people wanted to interact with people who had similar inkling to any subject. Thus in most cases, when people find a website based on their favorite hobby, they discover a whole community of people from around the world who share the same passion for those interests.
5. Academic:
Internet was stared as a network for scientists and academicians to interact information in a very speedy manner. Social networks are an offshoot of this sharing of information where it is peer-to-peer sharing of information.
Finally there are another popular type of social network are those that publish “community content.” These are large content websites where members are allowed to publish news stories, commentary, or anything else. Carefully monitored, these sites sometimes generate some interesting content, but unmonitored they often turns into a promotional madhouse filled with advertisements and self-promotion. This is the bane of such sites but they provide good knowledge to the user. But since it isn’t administrator monitored, a lot of nonsense stuff too is available and hence you need to ‘sift through the chaff to get to the wheat’.
