Innovate - Places to Go: Facebook
The Art of Building Virtual Communities (Techlearning blog)
Two models for understanding roles in online communities: 4L (Linking, Lurking, Learning, Leading) and 4C (Consumer, Commentor, Contributor, Commentator). Also includes some questions and ideas about what makes healthy online communities.
Blogging boosts your social life: research
Social and emotional benefits of blogging include better social support networks and feel more part of a community.
<p>Bloggers reported a greater sense of belonging to a group of like-minded people and feeling more confident they could rely on others for help.</p>
<p>All respondents, whether or not they blogged, reported feeling less anxious, depressed and stressed after two months of online social networking.</p>
Search People By Site Diigo
Vanity search on Diigo to see everyone who has bookmarked my blog. They call this the "user community" around the site.
Site Community for christytucker.wordpress.com,
Better view of the site community around my site, showing which pages are bookmarked, how many have been bookmarked, and who saved them.
Harold Jarche » Selecting Social Network Platforms
Describes several smaller social network platforms with some pluses and minuses, including Ning, Grou.ps, Buddy Press, and Elgg.
The Bamboo Project Blog: Deconstructing the Work Literacy Learning Event
Michele Martin debriefs the experience of teaching the Work Literacy online course via Ning. Several things they did were very successful. Ning was a good platform, even though it's intended as a social networking tool rather than a CMS. Explicitly saying that different levels of participation were acceptable meant that lurkers felt comfortable dipping in and out as legitimate perispheral participants. Was the course a success? It sounds like they all learned from the experience; to me, that means it's a success even if some aspects didn't work as they hoped.