Tutorial Six: The internet and online communities

Chosen community

Bebo web address: http://www.bebo.com

Focus of the community

"Bebo is a social media network where friends share their lives and explore great entertainment."

What services are provided? How interactive is the site? How can people contribute?

Bebo enables people who are signed up to it to contact friends from their childhood and link up with new friends. On Bebo you can share and comment on pages, photos, add videos and music, add blogs to your page, private message people, join groups and bands and lots more. Bebo is a very interactive social networking site - you add friends or friends add you, you can comment on your friend's page, blog, photos, - there is even a tally of how many people have visited your profile. You can create your own polls and quizzes, create a white board for people to add drawings to your page, even make your own group.

Why people choose to contribute to Bebo? What are they seeking?

Bebo facillitates "socialability" to the extent that peopole who join have an easy way of communicate with friends, no matter where they are, as long as they access to the internet. Social networks allow people to keep in touch with friends in other countries.

They types of topics discussed on Bebo

There are different types of Bebo pages and therefore different topics. There are the personal pages and the topics on them will obviously be personal and related to the person and their life. However there are groups that you can become a member of. Some a funny and some are serious. For example you could join the 'Daniel Carter fan club' or perhaps the "Stop animal cruelty club.' Theres group are less disscusion and are ore of a way of uniting with other people who believe the particular group.

Ethical issues

As Bebo is a worldwide it means that your profile has the potential to be viewed by anyway. The way to prevent unwanted people viewing your profile is to restrict its viewing to "friends only" and you monitor who you give permission to. However not everyone restricts their Bebo, and this can lead a vulnerable person open to being the victim of misuse from other people.

Benefits of Bebo

Simply it allows you a "lazy" way to keep in contact with your friends and family. However there is a huge range of ways to keep in contact. It doesn't cost to sign up, you can connect on a certain level with people who have similar interests, basically, your page is your personality.

Bebo compared to a traditional community

Bebo can be a double edged sword. On one hand you're making connections with old friends, present friends and new friends, yet if you bebo a "bebo addict" you're being socially lazy in the real world and with traditional communities. There is even a application on Bebo that you can add to your page that calculates how addicted to bebo you are by the amount of time you spend on it.