Tutorial Six: The internet and online communities

The community I have chosen to investigate is Skype

The focus of Skype is to enable the world's conversations. It allows users to send instant messages and make video & voice calls over the internet with friends, family and even randoms anywhere in the world.

People choose to contribute to Skype as it provides free services such as voice/video calls to anyone else on Skype; conference calls with 3 or more people and instant messaging; file transfer and screen sharing. Users can also call landline and cellphones around the world by purchasing the Skpye credits. It is simple for the users to contribute. The users need access to internet (preferably broadband), a webcam, download the Skype software and sign up for a free account in order to contribute. Anyone can join up and contribute, the site is safe and secure as the users have the choice of who to/not talk to.

People would choose to contribute to community such as Skype as it provides free services and services that the users needs to pay. Users get to choose the desirable service to socialize and keep in touch with anyone around the globe as well as meeting new people who enjoys using Skype to meet other new people in the comfort of the users own home. Users can save a lot of money by using the free voice/video call but more importantly it is safer to meet someone new by video chatting to avoid meeting people with fake details on their profile. this could be the incentive for singles to join the community and go on to look for potential partner.

Example of the topics being discussed:
Play, Gear, Mobile, mac, security, business, and international blogs with 10 different commonly used languages.

Skype-News has learnt that users of other computers, mobile devices or non-Windows operating systems are not warned that they have no control over much of this information. For example, their location or time zone, are apparently taken from their private operating system paramaters, without any warning, and displayed to - at the very least - those who have placed them on their contact lists, as well as the number of "friends" they have. There is no way to turn this "feature" off, and a good comparison of what it means is in order: it basically amounts to a one-way mirror into - potentially - your bedroom or at least the living room of your house - but a one-way mirror from the outside looking in, not the other way around. Not being informed about, and having no control over, others being able to know your apparent location or time zone, is surely an invasion of privacy.

An advantage with Skype community is that with a touch of button the users can see & chat to anyone wherever they are instantly, whereas traditionally people have to wait for photos or video footage to come through the mail to see what the other person is getting on from the other side of the world.


In comparison to traditional communities, this online community may waste a lot of time due to all the fancy addons and the interactions with others without leaving the house. But you do not get to do meaningful activities with the person! It is meaningless comepare to actually doing something with the other person and all the chatting can lead to wasting valueable time in front of the computer. It can also lead to injuries such as sore neck/back if the user stayed in front of the computer with a incorrect posture for a lenghthy period of time.