Web community

A web community is a web site (or group of web sites) where specific content or links are only available to its members. A web community may take the form of a social network service, an Internet forum, a group of blogs, or another kind of social software web application. The rise in popularity of Web 2.0 websites has allowed for easier real-time communication and ability to connect to others as well as producing new ways for information to be exchanged.

Web communities provide a platform for a range of services to users. They allow for social interaction across the world between people of different cultures who might not otherwise have met with offline meetings also becoming more common. Another key use of web communities is access to and the exchange of information. With communities for even very small niches it is possible to find people also interested in a topic and to seek and share information on a subject where there are not such people available in the immediate area offline. This has led to a range of popular sites based on areas such as health, employment, finances and education.

Unexpected and innovative uses of web communities have also emerged with Social networks being used in conflicts to alert citizens of impending attacks, the UN sees the web and specifically social networks as an important tool in conflicts and emergencies.

Blogging involves a website or webpage that is updated in a reverse chronological order on either a topic or a person's life. There are different types of blogs including Microblogging where the amount of information in a single element is smaller as on the popular social network site Twitter and Liveblogging when an ongoing event is blogged upon in real time, this has been used to live update important worldwide stories including a Twitter user inadvertently live blogging the raid which killed Osama bin Laden.

...
Wikipedia