Reader response #2 virtual communities

Upoc is talked about in Chapter seven of Smart Mobs. It is a mobile service located on Broadway in Manhattan. It is a mobile service that was made to keep people in contact with friends, and family via text messaging. You can join communities of your choice that have common interests. For example on the Upoc website you can join groups such as “American Idol Fanatics” and “The Dog Park”. There are positive and negative sides to this “mobile community”
A positive side is shown in Chapter 7 of Smart Mobs. As taken from Rheingold the following paragraph shows how this “community of people” is used positively during the 9/11 attacks.
Upoc employee Alex Levine sent a group SMS message to three dozen other employees immediately after he saw the second plane crash: “Do not go to work. Stand by for more directions”. Then he messaged nine employees already at work, telling them to evacuate. Although wire line telephone, cellular telephone, and email were all down , Upoc employees discovered that their text messaging service, based out of a server safely in New Jersey, stayed up and enabled them to regroup.
Without these communities of text messaging lives my have been taken because they had no idea what was going on right next to them. Being able to use text messaging like this and keeping in contact with what is going on around you, is great! Using this to meet up or tell your friends the latest news is all ok and I personally encourage it and do it myself. It allows people to keep in contact with friends and allows them to help them out. However, it can also become a hassle and create a negative social clique.

As shown in Smart mobs these communities keeping in contact via text messaging can also be a problem. As stated in Chapter 7 by Andrew Pimental…
“There are virtual cliques, groups of friends, enemies, grudges, gangs, fights, and double agents with multiple handles who spy on groups to make sure nobody is badmouthing then or their clique.”
This is terrible. When it reaches the extent that people are spying on other people, forming gangs and what not it can really affect others in the virtual community. It’s sad that people can take positive things, such as Upoc and use them in a negative manner.
I know there are positives and negatives to every situation, even in these virtual communities. I think people really need to think about how they are using their “friends” in their community and make sure they are not negatively affecting others. It’s a risky thing to join in my opinion. People can join groups just to join groups; there are a lot of creeps out there. You need to be careful, but I also think it’s a good way to meet others that share common interests. I guess you never know till you try it, and just hope it turns out ok.