Essay #2 --> iPhone Group

Social mediums where individuals interact via the Internet include IRC, MUD’s, MOO’s, Email lists, and Usenet. Over the past week I observed a Usenet channel. Usenet as defined by Wikipedia are “users that read and post public messages to one or more categories, known as newsgroups. Usenet resembles bulletin board systems (BBS) in most respects, and is the precursor to the various web forums which are widely used today.” Usenet groups can have several different topics that are opened and they are called threads. When people comment back to the opened thread they are posting. The Usenet group that I looked at for a week was on Yahoo! and the group was about the iPhone. The iPhone is classified as a smart phone for the resemblance it has to PC’s. Features such as MP3 player, GPS, video, e-mail, and the use of internet on the iPhone make it such a hot phone for today’s phone market. This group has been a great informational forum as well as a predictor to what I thought it would be like. Usenet groups act as great customer service sites, which can easily lead to free riding.

Free riding is a problem that many feel effect the integrity of learning. The reading "Managing the Virtual Commons: Cooperation and Conflict in Computer Communities" by Peter Kollock and Marc Smith define the free rider problem as “a resource from which all benefit, regardless of whether they have helped create the good.” The iPhone group has many users that are dependent on other people to help them solve the problems they have. On September 19th, 2008, the first day of observation, I noticed a forum where Mike (brokecarguy45) wanted a headset. In the thread that Mike opened he wanted someone to give him a headset that he could listen to music on and receive phone calls on as well. I consider this the lazy way to gather information about a product that might be of interest. Asking for reviews on a product is one thing, but asking for a specific headset to use is another. Mike is guilty of the free rider problem. This is not a huge academic free rider problem but let’s look at it according to Kollock and Smith’s definition. Everyone that reads the thread that may have some interest in a headset like this is going to benefit. Bill (boulware0224) commented back on the thread and gave him a headset that would accommodate his needs. Now I am sure that Bill put in his time to research this headset, now Mike is going to reap the benefit of Bill’s research. This is just a minor form of free riding but in my view definitely falls under the category.

On September 20, 2008, my second day of observation, I noticed a customer service thread. A guy was trying to send a text message with a picture attached using his iPhone. The iPhone offers many features but does not offer this form of image sharing. The only way you can send a picture is to send it to a recipient’s e-mail. This user would have tried many different ways to try to send a picture through a text message but, he decided to see what other people had to say. This could easily be translated into the user being smart and trying to find a quick answer to his problem. I translated this into free-riding. The user should read up on his phone and learn more about what the phone has to offer. I am sure the information booklet that he received with his phone goes over this subject. Free riding is such a problem because it is so easy. Related to an academic setting, going to class and listening to the class discussion about a matter is easier than spending an hour and a half reading. This supports free riding being so accepted in the eyes of many. But certainly it is not.

Over the next couple days of examining this Usenet group I noticed a couple of other interesting things. Yes, many of the threads were relevant to people having problems with their phones. There were a lot of customer service problems that were solved as well. As far as the group community it was very well run and everyone was respected. No one would criticize what others had to say. It seemed all the users were open to anyone’s ideas and opinions on all topics. On the last day of looking at the iPhone group Brian (roqabilly) lost some of his music on iTunes. He thought that all of his music was lost and he was really upset about it. Bill (boulware0224) responded and gave him information on recovering his music. Bill could have easily criticized Brian about his lack of knowledge on media recovery; instead he lent a helping hand. After the couple of days I got the idea who was on everyday from all the posts. There are users that were on everyday helping others and played a regular role in the community. This type of involvement leads to the ease of free riding. This is clear because, if someone has a problem why would they go and research it when they could get a fast response on here? As far as gender on this group it seemed it was predominantly male. Over the five day span if I saw three names that looked female it was a lot. On Yahoo! the user’s nickname is displayed as well as their full name registered with Yahoo! when signing up. This is why I concluded there were more males involved with the group than females. These are all characteristics of this group I analyzed over the five day period.

The areas that caught my attention over the observation period were customer service, the free riding problem, community atmosphere, and gender role. Many users go on these groups because they have problems and want answers conveniently. It is definitely a convenience when you can open a thread and receive comments on your topic. The knowledge and involvement of some members make it easy to free ride as well. Users will abandon the old method of research because it is simple to redeem information someone else did the leg work for already. The atmosphere of the group was very laid back and welcoming. This creates a comfortable environment for the group and future members. Last but not least gender role was dominated by male in this group. I do not know if this is due to more males owning an iPhone or maybe females tend not to free ride as much. This sums up the many norms I noticed about the iPhone group.

Bibliography

Kollock, Peter & Smith, Marc. (1996). Managing the virtual commons: Cooperation and conflic in computer communities. In Susan C. Herring (Ed.), Computer-mediated communication: Linguistic, social and cross cultural perspectives (pp. 110-111). Philadelphia: John Benjamins.