Tutorial Six: The internet and online communities

Facebook is a social networking site that people use to keep in touch with each other.  You can add people as friends, send them messages, update their personal profiles and just generally keep in touch.
Facebook is a free service of which you can share your photos, personal interests and contact information and other personal information. Communicating with other users can be done through public or private messages or through the chat feature which works like msn messenger. It also enables the user to choose their own privacy settings and choose who can see parts of their profile. The website also includes advertising from businesses.
Facebook can be a way of finding friends from school or family members.
People may use facebook to invite people to parties or for peer group work in a study situation.  I cancelled my facebook page as I found it was a bit of a time waster.
http://www.facebook.com/

MySpace
On myspace you can listen to streaming songs from all genres of music and artists.
http://www.myspace.com/

Trade Me a website designed for people to buy and sell online.  It is smilar to eBay which is a worldwide site.  Traders use New Zealand's banking system to settle payments, although the site also offer the ability to accept credit cards as a form of payment. Trade Me operates several sister websites including Find Someone, Old Friends, Travelbug, Safe Trader and Holiday Houses.  I personally use Trade Me to buy and sell and I have also used this site for finding holiday houses around the country.
http://www.trade-me.co.nz/

Ethical considerations that may arise when visiting an online community is that you really don't know who you are talking to.  You may have friends who have taken photos that you are in and they have uploaded them on the web.   This can be a breach of privacy for the people concerned.
While you are talking to someone online their is a lack of face to face socialising.  It could become a bit isolating for a person if this is the only social interaction they have.   I think in time we may loose the art of conversation face to face.
A positive of online communities is that there is so much information that can be obtained without going anywhere.  We can communicate instantly with people anywhere in the world and at any time. is one of the largest social networks with about 125 million users.  MySpace provides users with a way to connect around content and culture.