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The Meta Network (TMN) is a free online community that describes itself as being "dedicated to learning and creative freedom". Founded on March 28, 1983, by Frank Burns, TMN was one of the first, public online communities. TMN was one of the consortium of online communities and networks that banded together to form the Electronic Networking Association in 1985. [ citation needed ]
The community forums, known as Conferences are supervised by conference hosts who guide conversations and may enforce conference rules on civility and/or appropriateness. All hosts are selected by TMN moderators.
Overall support and supervision of the conferencing services is by core unpaid members, often referred to collectively, as conference organizers. Conference organizers have more system operational powers than conference hosts, along with the additional social authority of selecting featured conference hosts and (rarely) closing accounts for abuse.
TMN requires registration and use of one's real name. TMN can only be accessed by registered users. TMN members use a consistent login name when posting messages, and a non-fixed pseudonym field alongside it. The pseudonym defaults to the user's real name, but can be changed at will but this is neither common nor is it encouraged. Although TMN is name based, the user's real name can be easily looked up using their login name. TMN members are not anonymous.
TMN is divided into general subject areas known as conferences, which reflect member interests. Within conferences, members open separate conversational threads called topics for specific items of interest. "Public" conferences are open to all members, while "private" conferences are restricted to a list of users controlled by the conference hosts. Some private conferences (such as "Spirit" for women and "Fire" for men) are listed in TMN's directory, but are access restricted for privacy or membership-restriction reasons. Members may request admission to such conferences. Membership in private conferences is by invitation. TMN members may open their own new public or private independent conferences.
A pseudonym or alias is a fictitious name that a person or group assumes for a particular purpose, which differs from their original or true name (orthonym). This also differs from a new name that entirely or legally replaces an individual's own. Most pseudonym holders use pseudonyms because they wish to remain anonymous, but anonymity is difficult to achieve and often fraught with legal issues.
LiveJournal, stylised as LiVEJOURNAL, is a Russian-owned social networking service where users can keep a blog, journal, or diary.
An online community, also called an internet community or web community, is a community whose members interact with each other primarily via the Internet. Members of the community usually share common interests. For many, online communities may feel like home, consisting of a "family of invisible friends". Additionally, these "friends" can be connected through gaming communities and gaming companies. Those who wish to be a part of an online community usually have to become a member via a specific site and thereby gain access to specific content or links.
Social software, also known as social apps, include communication and interactive tools often based on the Internet. Communication tools typically handle the capturing, storing and presentation of communication, usually written but increasingly including audio and video as well. Interactive tools handle mediated interactions between a pair or group of users. They focus on establishing and maintaining a connection among users, facilitating the mechanics of conversation and talk. Social software generally refers to software that makes collaborative behaviour, the organisation and moulding of communities, self-expression, social interaction and feedback possible for individuals. Another element of the existing definition of social software is that it allows for the structured mediation of opinion between people, in a centralized or self-regulating manner. The most improved area for social software is that Web 2.0 applications can all promote cooperation between people and the creation of online communities more than ever before.
USENIX is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit membership organization based in Berkeley, California and founded in 1975 that supports advanced computing systems and operating system (OS) research. Its stated mission is to foster technical excellence and innovation, support and disseminate research with a practical bias, provide a neutral forum for discussion of technical issues, and encourage computing outreach into the community at large.
In Internet culture, a lurker is typically a member of an online community who observes, but does not participate. The exact definition depends on context. Lurkers make up a large proportion of all users in online communities. Lurking allows users to learn the conventions of an online community before they participate, improving their socialization when they eventually "de-lurk". However, a lack of social contact while lurking sometimes causes loneliness or apathy among lurkers.
The Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, normally shortened to The WELL, is one of the oldest virtual communities in continuous operation. As of June 2012, it had 2,693 members. It is best known for its Internet forums, but also provides email, shell accounts, and web pages. The discussion and topics on The WELL range from deeply serious to trivial, depending on the nature and interests of the participants.
Flickr is an American image hosting and video hosting service, as well as an online community, founded in Canada and headquartered in the United States. It was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and is a popular way for amateur and professional photographers to host high-resolution photos. It has changed ownership several times and has been owned by SmugMug since April 20, 2018.
Internet privacy involves the right or mandate of personal privacy concerning the storing, repurposing, provision to third parties, and displaying of information pertaining to oneself via Internet. Internet privacy is a subset of data privacy. Privacy concerns have been articulated from the beginnings of large-scale computer sharing.
MSN Groups was a website part of the MSN network which hosted online communities, and which contained Web pages, hosted images, and contained a message board. MSN Groups was shut down on February 21, 2009 as part of a migration of online applications and services to the Windows Live brand. Windows Live Groups, a part of the Windows Live branding, was never marketed as, or intended to be a replacement for, MSN groups.
Web conferencing is used as an umbrella term for various types of online conferencing and collaborative services including webinars, webcasts, and web meetings. Sometimes it may be used also in the more narrow sense of the peer-level web meeting context, in an attempt to disambiguate it from the other types known as collaborative sessions. The terminology related to these technologies is exact and agreed relying on the standards for web conferencing but specific organizations practices in usage exist to provide also term usage reference.
LogMeIn Hamachi is a virtual private network (VPN) application developed and released in 2004 by Alex Pankratov. It is capable of establishing direct links between computers that are behind network address translation ("NAT") firewalls without requiring reconfiguration ; in other words, it establishes a connection over the Internet that emulates the connection that would exist if the computers were connected over a local area network ("LAN").
Internet identity (IID), also online identity or internet persona, is a social identity that an Internet user establishes in online communities and websites. It can also be considered as an actively constructed presentation of oneself. Although some people choose to use their real names online, some Internet users prefer to be anonymous, identifying themselves by means of pseudonyms, which reveal varying amounts of personally identifiable information. An online identity may even be determined by a user's relationship to a certain social group they are a part of online. Some can even be deceptive about their identity.
Community centres or community halls are public locations where members of a community tend to gather for group activities, social support, public information, and other purposes. They may sometimes be open for the whole community or for a specialized group within the greater community. Community centres can be religious in nature, such as Christian, Islamic, or Jewish community centres, or can be secular, such as youth clubs.
Fotki is a digital photo sharing, video sharing and media social network website and web service suite; it is one of the world's largest social networking sites. Fotki licenses photo-sharing software for many global companies, such as Telecom Italia, Alice.it, Sears, Mark Travel, Vegas.com, Funjet.com etc.
A Linux User Group or Linux Users' Group (LUG) or GNU/Linux User Group (GLUG) is a private, generally non-profit or not-for-profit organization that provides support and/or education for Linux users, particularly for inexperienced users. The term commonly refers to local groups that meet in person, but is also used to refer to online support groups that may have members spread over a very wide area and that do not organize, or are not dependent on, physical meetings. Many LUGs encompass FreeBSD and other free-software / open source Unix-based operating systems.
vSide was an Internet-based 3D virtual world that was launched on May 15, 2006. The game is in its public beta phase. However, the game appears to have been discontinued as of 2021. Initially developed by American studio Doppelganger, Inc., a studio founded in 2004, the game was acquired in June 2009 by ExitReality, which is the owner and developer. Inside the game's universe, users are called "vSiders" and can interact with each other through social networking, celebrity entertainment, virtual boutique shopping and self-expression. Membership is free.
Frank Lee Burns was a U.S. Army lieutenant colonel who served in Vietnam and, in retirement, became an information specialist.
Discourse is an open source Internet forum and mailing list management software application founded in 2013 by Jeff Atwood, Robin Ward, and Sam Saffron. Discourse received funding from First Round Capital and Greylock Partners. The application is written with Ember.js and Ruby on Rails. PostgreSQL serves as its back-end database management system.
Letterboxd is an online social networking service co-founded by Matthew Buchanan and Karl von Randow in 2011. It was launched as a social app focused on sharing opinions about, and love of, film, and is maintained by a small team in Auckland, New Zealand. The site is meant for sharing its members' tastes in films. Members can use it as a diary to record their opinions about films, keep track of films they have seen in the past, write reviews or make lists of films and showcase their favorite films, as well as meet and interact with other cinephiles. Films can be rated, reviewed, included in a list and tagged with relevant keywords. The 100 millionth film was marked as watched on the site on May 15, 2017, six years after launch. As of February 28, 2021, members have marked over 600 million films as being watched.