Web Places: Using Intermediaries to Add People to the Web

Abstract

The web is a social phenomenon, with businesses and individuals finding myriad reasons to both publish and access information. However, though millions of people are using it at any given moment, the web is a lonely place — much more like a catalogue than a bustling downtown. Users have individualised experiences that hide the presence of others. People think of the web as a kind of physical space in which they move to obtain information (Maglio and Barrett, 1997b; Maglio and Matlock, 1999), but they do not think of it as a kind of place that affords social interaction (Dieberger, 1999). Erickson (1993) defines “place” as “space plus meaning”, and Harrison and Dourish (1996) define it “as space which is invested with an understanding of behavioral appropriateness, [and] cultural expectations” (p. 69). Put simply, a sense of place derives from a shared understanding about a space, and interpersonal interactions are required to create shared understanding (see also Munro, Höök and Benyon, 1999). To transform the web from a simple space into a social place requires the structure of an interactive culture