Week 11 Looking for online community: Social networking platforms

This week we are required to:
Write up a description of your experience with your chosen community (one of the three: Facebook, Ning, LinkedIn) and include ideas on how you think facilitation would work in such a context.

I’ve never been to above three communities before I start this course. Thanks Leigh this paper really brings me to a wider field of relearning and I have the opportunity to learn and experience more on communities.

One friend from this course is a member of LinkedIn and invited me to put comments on her profile. So I registered in LinkedIn and then found it a very popular platform for people to be linked and exchange all sorts of information through it.
I like the ideas of LinkedIn. Besides name, everyone has his / her own profile, most of them displayed a photo of themselves. That makes names and pictures of individuals more meaningful. The first thing after registered, I searched for different groups and joined two of them. I subscribed group news and discussions everyday. So everyday the discussion info is send to me. By reading and replying I feel I am one of a group people, thou we never meet each other, but I am connected. Now as a start, I have 2 individual linked with me. I can tell many people have hundreds links around them. Amazing!

In LinkedIn, from my experience by far, in the groups that I joined in, people keep posting advertises, articles, questions. It’s hard to apply facilitating skills in the group. Maybe we could ask questions about specific topic to help it go a bit further?