On-line communities

When we say internet these days we think of the world wide web. But the internet is actually the backbone of the the web and there are other protocols and programmes which operate over this back bone. Some of the earliest manifestations of the internet were bulletin boards and Usenet. Othere services that use the internet backbone are e-mail, Gopher and FTP amongst others and to search for information (files) there was Archie, Veronica and Jughead long before Google.

Bulletin boards and e-mail were the initial applications which started web-based conversations. Usenet, in particular, grew and formed the basis of today’s on-line forums and communities – spaces where people engaged with each other, with particular topics (academic as well as general interest) and sometimes interpersonal warfare. That spawned chatrooms and the spillover to the cell phone industry n applications such as the (infamous?) MiXiT.

Our GoogleGroups address is actually an on-line forum, so we are already making use of the technology.

So how can we engage clients in such discussions, providing answers etc.?

Could one use this process as a way of training people?

On Thursday I’ll vist a couple of on-line communities to show the range of the discussions that occur there.