Editorial: Five factors in making web communities to survive or fade

摘要

This special issue is partly built on the prior issue 'Web-based research networks and learning communities' with guest editors of the iPED Research Network under the guidance of Virginia King. The authors of the underlying Articles 3 and 5: Heather Conboy, Alan Brine and Jane Clarke and by Rebecca Clothey and Stacy Austin-Li have been so loyal to become integrated in this special issue with both accents on learning communities and on marketing aspects. The earlier issues of this journal have underlined the benefit of 'virtual' communities so far: its dynamics, its flexibility to capture actuality, etc. This time, we focus closer on the degree of realism that make online powerful in its commercial and its ideological sense as well.