Social Media and Community Development

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Social media sometimes gets a bad rap, but the tools are wonderful at sharing ideas and building community.  For last week's assignment, I discuss how tools like Discord have helped foster countless online communities thanks to its easy yet powerful chat features. 

Many tools like Discord formed out of necessity as some communities failed to grow without having the necessary tools for communication and collaboration.  With Discord, for example, users are able to create servers for online communities and then, create even more specific channels on those servers for chats, video calls, and voice chats.  This organization's ability has transformed online communication.  There are many communities centered around gaming, education, and even influencer-focused that have gained huge followings thanks to Discord.

I think tools like this have made it easier for social media tools to build and sustain communities around the world.  Instead of those sites having to include certain communication tools, often times they can just integrate with existing tools.  This benefit allows for less development time for social media companies as well as new users having the ability to use tools they might already be accustomed to.  

Now some sites like Facebook, do have very powerful community tools like chats, groups, and many others, which is wonderful for users that enjoy everything under one roof.  In my experience, this can lead to a bit of an overwhelming feeling as you receive countless notifications and replies from those groups and all their different channels.  But of course, this will differ per user.                                  

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