The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies for Business Success, 3rd Edition

What You Need to Know

A social network, trusted network, virtual community, e-community, or online community is a group of people who interact through online networks, blogs, comments, sharing, checking in, reviews, and who use text, audio, photographs, and video for social, professional, and educational purposes. The social network’s goal is to build trust in a given community.

Every social network has different levels of interaction and participation among members. This can range from posting and commenting on updates to Facebook, sharing tweets, adding comments or tags to a blog (see Chapter 6, The Ubiquitous Blog) or checking in from a smartphone to share with followers where you are, what you are doing, and whom you are doing it with, to watching videos of funny cats on YouTube.

Life Cycle

A membership life cycle for online social networks begins when members initiate their life in a community as visitors, lurkers, or trolls (see Chapter 5, The Internet Forum, for more information). After becoming comfortable, people become novices and participate in the community dialogue. Once they’ve contributed for a period of time, they become regulars; and oftentimes, these regulars will break through a barrier and become leaders. Members who have been participating in the network for a while and eventually depart are known as elders. The amount of time it takes to become an elder depends on the culture of the site. It can take only a few months or more than a year. This life cycle can ...