Creating a community online

In “Here Comes Everybody” Shirky talks about groups and grouping so much. He says that the tools on the Internet have made it very easy for users to group together. I tried long and hard thinking about something I could use as an example for grouping. Something from my life that I use everyday, there was no way it could be hard to think of something. And then it hit me. It was sitting there in front of my face this whole time, usually on my computer screen. It was so obvious.

Reddit.com

A quick disclaimer here, if you have never been to Reddit or know nothing about it you may want to just avoid going there. It’s not that it’s a bad site but you will lose a good chunk of your time and life to this website. It’s addicting. It will suck you in. There is no way to fight it. Get out while you still can.

Ah, with that warning out of the way I can get on with what I was trying to say. Reddit creates grouping by allowing users to subscribe to different “sub-reddits” which each have their own specific content. These sub-reddits can range from any topic you can possibly imagine. There is one devoted to pictures, one devoted to funny things, there are ones for each religion and those not religious, there is one for each political party, one for movies, music, sports, books, seriously if you can think of a topic it probably has a sub-reddit.

Since each person can subscribe to different sub-reddits, it creates a unique experience for every different user on Reddit. And more importantly each sub-reddit becomes its own little community.

While these groups may not solve any of the worlds problems or really solve any problems beyond helping each other with boredom. Some sub-reddits are helpful for things such as fixing things around the house, or learning guitar or relationship advice but nothing real major. But that’s not the goals of these groups. These groups are solely designed for the point to get like-minded people and those who share the same interests to the same place on the Internet where they can share ideas and thoughts. And making a sub-reddit and joining it is as simple as a button click.

While nothing really mind-blowing it is a solid example of what Shirky was talking about. The ease of tools can allow people to group together with relative ease and in this case the grouping happens at a website where each topic has its own community, resulting in a website where you can combine multiple interests into one website. The Internet truly has made it easier to connect with like-minded people.

Now if you will excuse me I’m going to go on Reddit.