Ian Delaney at twopointouch.com has an interesting post about how to characterise a community.

He makes the point that the behavioural psychology behind communities probably isn’t that different in online communities compared to offline communities – indeed the three sources he references all pre-date the internet as we know it now.

I agree with Ian on that point – many of the communities, groups and behaviours that exist on the internet are in many ways the same as exist offline.

What’s different now is that technology has enabled the same things to happen, but has taken away geographical, social, economic and temporal boundaries that previously existed that limited the frequency with which said things could happen.

[tags]twopointouch, ian+delaney, community, behavioural+pscyhology[/tags]