Design and implementation of online communities

Abstract

oney on todayαs Internet. The idea of an online community is to build communication tools into a website to allow visitors to interact with each other and encourage them to return often. By providing visitors with a place to interact with others and talk about their interests companies can better target them with advertising. Certainly a web site that brings users back over and over again is very appealing to any organization that is trying to sell goods or get their message heard. But the building of an online community is not as simple as just adding discussion forums and/or chat rooms to a web site. In fact, many believe that a successful community is only 10% dependent upon technology and 90% dependent upon people. This thesis takes a look at the principles of successful online communities according to current literature and then analyzes the application of these principles on some popular online communities. It then takes a detailed look at PRESENCE-Lite, an online community built by the author based on the principles of online communities.