The Rhetoric of Reputation

This is a very small selection of online communities—there are literally thousands of others that you could examine in your profile of an online community (our first short assignment, due January 28).

Social networks and other social applications

From Wikipedia: “A social network service focuses on the building and verifying of online social networks for communities of people who share interests and activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others, and which necessitates the use of software.”

• MySpace

  Currently the largest social network service, with over 100 million accounts.

• Facebook

  Over 34 million active users, according to Wikipedia.

• Wikipedia

  It's not a social network service, but the discussion pages reveal a dynamic community of dedicated and often passionate users.

• del.icio.us

  A social bookmarking service.

• Flickr

  A photo sharing website that currently houses almost 1 billion photographs.

• LastFM

  A social music platform that offers recommendations based on the music you play.

• YouTube

  Video sharing website.

• Technorati

  A popular directory of user-generated content (blogs, photos, etc.)

• Care2

  A social activism network.

• Twitter

  A “micro-blogging” service much like the status indicator in Facebook.

• StumbleUpon

  A website link-sharing and recommendation system based on a browser plugin.

Blogs and forums focusing on technology-related news

• Slashdot

  A technology news forum with a sophisticated moderation system.

• Digg

  A popular link/news sharing site.

• Kuro5hin

  A news site modeled on Slashdot with more community control over front-page content.

• Ubuntu (Linux) Forums

  Support and discussion forums for Ubuntu, a popular Linux distribution.

• SmartMobs

  A website and blog about social networks and communication technologies.

Other blogs and forums

• Metafilter

  Smaller discussion forum.

• Everything2

  A collaborative writing community.

• Daily Kos

  A liberal political news and discussion site.

• Little Green Footballs

  A conservative political news and discussion site.

• Huffington Post

  A political commentary and discussion site with articles by “friends” of Arianna Huffington, including many celebrities.

• World Magazine Blog

  An evangelical Christian news and discussion site with a diverse collection of regular participants.

• Balkinization

  A blog by Yale Law School professor Jack M. Balkin.

• Gladwell.com

  A blog by The Tipping Point author Malcolm Gladwell.

Search/commercial

• eBay

  One of the first successful large-scale formal reputation systems.

• Google

  The link-based PageRank system is currently the most extensive formal reputation system on the Internet.

• Craigslist

  A community classified ads site with a large community of users.

Weird

Note: Some of the content or images on these sites may be offensive to some people.

• BoingBoing

  A “Directory of Wonderful Things” by Cory Doctorow and others. Unfortunately doesn’t have facilities for user commentary.

• Fark

  Weird news and bizarre photo manipulation contests.

• Something Awful

  Reviews, pranks, etc.

• 4chan

  A controversial “imageboard” whose users were recently attacked by Fox News as “hackers on steroids.”