A virtual community is a group of people or social entity that have a primary means of communication other than face-to-face contact e.g. telephone, email, online social networks or instant messages. Generally these networks are used for a social, professional or educational means. They can be the sole source of communication between acquaintances or they can be a secondary supplementary source. It is common in today’s digital age for a user to have both a digital and physical relationship with.

Most online social networks make use of Web 2.0 technologies and ways of thinking. This has lead to many describing them as ‘Community 2.0′ (Ripanti 2008). However precursors to this modern phenomenon of online social medium were evident in the mid 90′s. Sites such as TheGlobe.com (1994), Geocities (1994) and Tripod (1995) attempted to bring users together through chat rooms and message boards. These were the harbingers of blogging and today’s social network platforms (Wikipedia 2009). In the early 2000′s modern social networks began to appear. Standard bearers such as flickr, mySpace and facebook had arrived. Similar trends are becoming apparent in the professional arena, as more and more companies begin to represent their staff and customers in a virtual community.

Online, and physical communities are dependent on similar kinds of social interaction and communication. Without these interactions, communities become dormant groups of people with no collective purpose or goals. Virtual communities can develop in much the same way as physical communities, in that they can develop cliques, fracturing to form new groups (Kim 2004). However one sees them, online social networks are now deeply embedded in everyday life. Be it social calendar, professional job hunting or online learning and tuition.