Online community

An online community is a place where you can meet people online. This can be for different purposes like for work, for study, personal interests, gaming, getting new friends or simply just another way of keeping in touch with old friends. In today's Western society i think it would be hard for many people if they were given the task to find someone with a special ability without using the World Wide Web or their phone. Many of the people who were asked to do this would probably say that this is a hard task or that it would take so much time. I guess that's an advantage with online communities. It works much quicker than offline. I know I prefer to use the searching tool online for finding resources instead of searching offline because this is more efficiently for me. Using for example the QUT library ebooks search saves me time when I'm writing assignments. I also find that with just using the Google search tool I spend less time finding resources and more time learning, writing and getting new ideas. Not only do is it quicker to use the Internet but it is something I have an easy access to. According to Allan Schweyer 87 % of Americans have Internet access at home which I think would make it easy for them to do a quick search whenever they want to.

As I said an online community does not only have to be an advantage for university work. Imagine when you have finished your degree and are ready to look for a place to work. The Internet is a perfect place to look for different jobs. It is easy both for you and for the persons/companies who wants to employ you. You can find pages with search engines where you type inn what kind of job you would like, where you would like to work (like country, area or city) and press search and you will find the jobs available within your preferences. At the same time you can put your resume out there for the employers to find you. An example of a community where you can both search for a job and employers can search within job seekers is Australian Job Search. Here people can find you or you can find a work place.

According to Allan Schweyer the use of finding jobs online have increased the last few years. He also says that it has become more common for companies to search within online communities to find employers. It is also becoming normal to use referral systems so you can as an employer can refer people you know are worthy for a job. Again I think the use of Internet in these cases are easy and quick, and it is accessible for a lot of people.