Networked People: Blogging My world

Here are the other 2 blog systems which I’m using now.

Wretch:

It's the top visited blog site and the second popular site (Yahoo is the first) in Taiwan. There are around 2.8 million users in the Wretch. It provides four languages which includes English as well. Wretch provides free photo albums and guestbook services, and extensive VIP version. Non-members can see those contents as long as the users allow it. The Wretch was found by several students in a university as a testing site originally, therefore it was firstly popular within students.

• Home page of Wretch
  

• My Weblog in Wretch
  
  

Mixi:

It’s the most popular SNS (social networking service) site in Japan now. There are more then 5.7 million members and 490,000 communities in this site. You can only be a member as being invited by mixi member. The word mixi is a combination of mix and I, referring to the idea that the user, "I", "mixes" with other users through the service.

• Log in page of Mixi
  

• My main page in Mixi
  
  
  

According to Shenton and McNeely (1997), the reasons of why people participate in online discussion group can be the capacity to circulate new ideas among a group of like-minded people; the chance to find people who share the same interests; and the opportunity to form friendships and relationships that may people perceived as being more difficult to develop in the ‘off-line’ community…etc.

I agree with that people participate in online discussion group because of they want to find people who share the same interests or join a group of like-minded people. However, in my opinion, not only people who have difficulties to develop relationships in real life can participate in online communities. Some communities are made for connecting users with each other, including friends and families, which is the basic and original idea in communicating online. The mixi is a good example of this point. People only can join their member when they knew someone there. And in my experience, many of online communities’ users have a lot of friends, and they use those communities to make up the relationship between them and their friends even they can see each other very often.