Abstract
Business managers are recognising the potential of firm-initiated online communities to monitor user preferences, enhance brand awareness, advertise new products, and react to feedback. We explore the social organisation of such virtual communities via in-depth interviews with German online community managers about their daily work and their self-presentation. Norbert Elias’s insights into long-term changes in self-constraint and self-expression in occidental societies serve as heuristic framework. We argue that online community managers’ behaviour is typical of the trend towards informalisation, which can also be observed in for-profit relations.
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Notes
- 1.
Facebook was founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg and initially targeted students from Harvard University. It is one of the oldest online social networking services and has over 1.65 billion monthly active users (March 2016). Registered users can create online profiles and interact with each other on public messages, join common interests groups, and follow fan pages. Fan pages are increasingly used by business companies to market their products and connect with (potential) customers.
- 2.
Twitter, launched in 2006 in the United States, is a social media network that allows its registered users to publish and interact with short messages. These so-called Tweets may not exceed 140 characters and are often linked to specific topics with the use of hashtags (#). About 310 million users are online every month (March 2016) and range from private individuals to entrepreneurs, celebrities, and large business companies.
- 3.
Users of social media networks can react to and interact with each other on publicly shared content. If, for instance, a user uploads a photo, other users can express their liking of it by clicking on the “Like” button. Depending on the network, “Likes” are often symbolised by “Thumbs up” (Facebook, YouTube), ‘Heart’ (Twitter, Instagram), or “+1” (Google).
- 4.
Contests are a marketing tool to increase interaction of users and are mostly held by business firms. Contestants take part by liking or sharing the contest, solving a riddle, or leaving a comment in order to win a prize (e.g. products, discounts, holiday trips).
- 5.
A (hyper)link is used to redirect a user to another article, website, source, or video by simply clicking on it.
- 6.
On Facebook, every registered user has not only a personal profile, but also a home page on which selected news of friends, liked pages, and ads appear. This so-called newsfeed makes it easier to follow other users as it gathers updates in one page.
- 7.
In online communities, news spreads quickly and users can immediately and simultaneously react to it. So-called shitstorms occur when many users leave negative reactions to a public message of another user.
- 8.
This still leaves room, however, for online community managers to ‘individualise’, for the sake of good customer relations. If several individuals manage a firm’s online community account, for example, they can add their initials in small letters after each comment. Individuals, whose Twitter accounts are managed by a social media team, but sometimes choose to tweet themselves, add their initials in capitals.
- 9.
Blue hooks appear next to the name of profiles or fan pages to verify their authenticity. This is especially important for brands and celebrities to contrast their own official profiles or pages from those made by fans.
- 10.
Emoticons are symbols which can be used to better express feelings in online communities, emails, or short message services. Emoticons are often smiley faces with different facial expressions such as smiling, crying, laughing, and sleeping.
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van Iterson, A., Richter, J. (2017). “Friends and Followers”: The Social Organisation of Firms’ Online Communities. In: Connolly, J., Dolan, P. (eds) The Social Organisation of Marketing. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51571-7_7
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