Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Online Communities

Recently, I made this blog for not only myself but for a course culture awareness course in school. I'm really excited about it but unfortunately the connectivity to some of the school's websites from here are making it a bit difficult to see everything but since I figured out the majority of it.. herego assignment numero dos.
I was looking at a map of online communities by Randall Munroe last night and was ABSOLUTELY stunned at how big Farmville actually is. I mean I just recently grasped the idea that Facebook has connected more than  500 million people across the globe and Farmville has over 7 million people play it a day!
Although I can proudly say I am not one of those 7 million people harvesting virtual brussel sprouts a day, I definitely use my facebook account and Skype account daily to stay in touch with my friends and family back home and new friends here in Spain. It never fails to amaze me how small of a world we must live in to be able to have a face-to-face conversation while thousands of miles away.
I guess it's only human nature to reach out to others and seek companionship so it really shouldn't come as such a surpise that millions of people religiously follow others' day-to-day grocery store runs and lunch dates on Twitter  but  the online communities have emphasized this nature to an extreme. And it's only going to get more prolific.

Here's the link to the map that amazed me;
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2010/10/06/130375121/map-of-online-communities

1 comment:

  1. I, too, am amazed by the growth of Farmville - and I, too, am amazed from "outside" that community! (Look at Elizabeth's blog - the video she posted mentions the fastest growing segment on Facebook - maybe a demographic clue about Farmville there?)

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