Online Communities allow us to chat and argue, engage in intellectual intercourse, perform acts of commerce, exchange knowledge, share emotional support, make plans, brainstorm, gossip, feud, fall in love, find friends and lose them, play games and metagames, flirt, create a little high art and a lot of idle talk. We do everything people do when people get together, but we do it with words on computer screens, leaving our bodies behind. Millions of us have already built communities where our identities commingle and interact electronically, independent of local time or location.
An increasing figure of people are also taking advantage of new technological breakthroughs to enhance their communication with the outside world, by using web cam's and video conferencing (allowing users to interact with imagery and sound). .
The most obvious use of a virtual neighbourhood is the sharing of information. It is a new form of publishing, of putting material out in the public view. In considering this, we should compare it with other forms of publishing - the personal letter, the manuscript, the broadcast, the video broadcast. The Virtual neighbourhood is the fastest and most widely distributed of all and combines the cheapest delivery system. Its great potential lies in its democratising power, enabling a multitude of people to communicate information with each other at speeds and distances formerly only available to corporate broadcasting powers. .
The following list aims to give some idea of the variety of activities within different communities. The categories listed are not to be seen as "essential types"; most communities partake of all six to some extent, and the examples I list are unusually narrow, having been chosen as clear examples of the activity in question.
* Information Exchange.
Examples: Mensa, Astronomy.
This tends to be most prominent in intellectual and technical communities focused around academic disciplines and technical subjects.