As a whole, Facebook may not be a CoP, as users are not all connected to each other. But rather, the Facebook technology enables users to create CoPs based on interests, individual social community, professional needs, etc.
The functional aspects of Facebook include:
- Newsfeed – offer users a customized stream of data specific to their interests.
- Chat – allows users to interact in real-time
- Creating/Moderating Groups – Groups are positioned around specific topics. Groups can be private or public. People can be invited or seek out the group based on the topic. Members do not have to be – but can be – Facebook friends to be in the same group.
- File-sharing – Multiple file types disseminated easily to users/groups.
- Inline Commenting – on posts
Facebook also supports
- sharing of content related to topic
- discussions around content
- “real-time” conversations
Overall Affordances
- Global Reach – users don’t have to be regionally co-located.
- Omni-present – most individuals are already familiar and/or have a Facebook account.
Cons
- Difficult to follow discussion
- Comments on posts are not threaded
- Targeted Ads based on user actions
- Facebook algorithms generate newsfeed data without user input
We would suggest that Facebook, as a tool, affords users to create Communities of Practice. But Facebook, in and of itself, is not a Community of Practice. What are your thoughts on this?
Arjana, Michael, Dean
Dean says
Having just read Chapter 11 in the book, What is a Community of Practice and How Can We Support It? (Christopher Hoadley, 2012), I stumbled across an interesting statement that I thoughts pertained to the activity in our last Disruptive class. I wanted to share to get your thoughts…It reads, “Community of practice is not the name of a particular software genre. Instead, any tool or set of tools which support a group of people working in a community through shared practices can be the platform for a community of practice, whether it is a wiki, a blog, a virtual world, a course management system, or simply telephones and email.”