Page 304 - Electronic Commerce

Social Networking, Mobile Commerce, and Online Auctions

conducted through the site’s social network. Poshmark has optimized all actions on its site
for mobile phone users, so the social network is designed to work best when members are
using their smartphones or tablet devices.

Idea-Based Social Networking
Social networking sites form communities based on connections among people. Other
Web sites create communities based on the connections between ideas. These more
abstract communities are called idea-based social media and the people who participate
in them are said to be engaging in idea-based social networking.The del.icio.us site calls 279
itself a “social bookmarks manager.” Individuals place Web page bookmarks with one-
word tags that describe the Web page in a community-accessible location on the site.
The bookmark-tag combinations are focusedonideas andthe contributionsofall
community members build a shared base of knowledge about those ideas. Among the
most active tag names on the site are words such as design, reference, tools, music,
news, how to, and photography. Another idea-based social network that uses shared tags
is 43 Things.

Virtual Learning Networks
One form of social network you might have used is the virtual learning network. Many
colleges and universities now offer courses that use distance learning platforms such as
Blackboard for student-instructor interaction. These distance learning platforms include
tools such as bulletin boards, chat rooms, and drawing boards that allow students to
interact with their instructors and each other in ways that are similar to the interactions
that might occur in a physical classroom setting.
Although the concept dates back to 2008, massive open online courses (MOOCs)
became widely known in 2012 with the formation of Coursera and Udacity by Stanford
University personnel who had developed MOOCs there. MOOCs are often offered at no
cost and each one can attract hundreds of thousands of students. In 2013, Georgia
Institute of Technology, partnering with Udacity, announced plans to offer the first
entirely MOOC-based master’s degree, at a fraction of its usual tuition.
Although many schools are launching MOOCs or using them in some way as part
of their curricula, many academics are critical of the value of this form of education.
Most MOOCs have extremely low completion rates (in many cases, fewer than 2 percent
of enrollees actually finish the course). MOOC defenders point out that they can
extend the reach of educational experiences to nearly anyone in the world at a very low
per-student cost. As more research is conducted on MOOC outcomes, we will have a
better idea of when, how, and if MOOCs can contribute to education in a meaningful
way in the future.

Open-Source Software
Some open-source software projects are devoted to the development of virtual learning
communities, including Moodle and uPortal (maintained by the not-for-profit open-source
software development organization, Jasig). Open-source software is developed by a
community of programmers who make the software available for download at no cost.

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