Week 4: Thinking About Community

Today we'll look at three online communities: James will present the Yahoo! Health Group, Jeannine will show us the Guitar Hero site, and Shira will give us a tour of GameDev.

We'll talk about each of these with a view toward generating ideas for our own BECA online community project. What features and functions can we find that seem like good ideas (or adaptable ones) for our community?

We'll also talk about this week's reading and the issues it raises regarding "professional" news vs. citizen journalism, and the nature of online communities in general.

And — yes, there's more! — we'll get everyone set up with Feedburner feeds, and discuss stats, publicizing, and audience-building through blog carnivals and webrings.

HOMEWORK:

1. Catch up on blogging: by next Thursday at 2:00, you should have 3 posts (spellchecked and proofread, with at least 3 links and one image or video) and also you should have made 10 comments (each on a different person's blog, each with a link). PLEASE NOTE: I do expect you to go back and spellcheck, proofread, and correct your previous posts; however, only this week's post needs to be 300 words — you do not need to go back and lengthen your previous posts.
   
2. Read SF Weekly article "Wikidiots".
3. Jesse, Tony and Sharon: find an online community that you think has some relevant, inspiring features, and be prepared to give a short presentation to the class next week.