The Potential for Community-based Social Networking Sites
September 22 (Thursday) 2005
Satoshi Hamaya
Research Fellow
SUMMARY
- Internet activities in local governments consist of more than just one-sided information distribution over websites. Electronic bulletin board systems (BBS), where residents are able to express their thoughts freely, are also not uncommon. For example, the city of Fujizawa, in Kanagawa Prefecture, has operated “Citizen's Electronic Discussion Rooms” since 1997, in which various themes are presented over the Internet. Additionally, the city of Okayama has operated “Electronic Neighborhood Communities” since March 2003. In this case, the city loans electronic BBS and scheduler systems and servers to neighborhood communities who then independently create their own websites. As of the end of July 2005, 49 associated and individual neighborhood communities in Okayama are participating in this service.
- Community participation-style sites are not limited to Fujizawa or Okayama; BBS and other sites are being created and utilized in various regions all over the country. However, not all sites are success stories.
Issues with Existing Community Participation-style Websites
Before discussing the structural problems of administrative responses to the questions and comments posted by residents, it is first necessary to clarify the following issues with the system itself.
- Decrease in Active Members and Posts
As a result of many BBS being established based on specific themes, there are some themes that elicit many comments from interested residents; at the same time, if there are no themes that spark residents' interest, there will be no responses. Additionally, in some cases, in order to voice one's own opinion it is necessary to grasp the "gist of the conversation" at a certain level, and thus new participants are not always able to comfortably contribute their own remarks. - Decrease in Site Traffic
If entries do not increase, attractive information will be low, and the amount of traffic on the site will not grow. - Increase in Irresponsible Entries
In cases where users are free to make entries under pseudonyms or nicknames, there are instances of defamation and other kinds of malicious intent, and it becomes the responsibility of the moderator to respond to these problems.
Social Networking Sites (SNS) show potential as a kind of tool that could contribute to solving the above problems faced by community participation-based sites.
The "Gorotto Yatchiro" Approach
In the city of Yatsushiro in Kumamoto Prefecture (estimated population of 105,000), a community-based portal site-separate from the official website-entitled "Gorotto Yatchiro" ("Yatchiro" being a term of endearment for the city of Yatsushiro) was developed. From its start, the site had been host to a club formed by the mutual interest of the site's members, as well as a bulletin board that allows users to exchange opinions and information. However, a declining number of entries and other issues such as those mentioned above became serious problems. In response, in October 2004 the site underwent renovation, and new SNS functions were added, such as the ability to create and store ones personal profile and post links to friends. Additionally, just like "mixi" and other popular SNS sites in Japan, a blog function-where members can post journals-was added. However, the site went further than "mixi" and other well-known SNS to include functions that support picture uploading, dynamic data links to geographical information, customizable user pages, and other features.
According to the person in charge of the Yatsushiro administrative system that developed and manages "Gorotto Yatchiro", as a result of including SNS and blog functions on the website, site traffic and active members have increased over twofold. The reasons given for this increase include: the ease of soliciting new members through the SNS-style invitation function; the members' freedom to write journals about topics that interest them without having to worry about understanding the "gist of the conversation"; being able to read and comment on a large number of friends' journals regarding shared, local topics; the weakening of anonymity thanks to the profile feature, as well as the virtual elimination of irresponsible entries.
Since this system was developed by one young staff member and hosted on the same server as the city's official website, aside from the cost of labor of the aforementioned staffer, the development and management fees are almost zero. The software programs of "Gorotto Yatchiro" were developed based on free software like Free BSD, PostgreSQL, and PHP, and are available to the public as open-source from the website. The hope of the developer is that other local governments will build similar SNS, and that numerous community-based SNS will be developed alongside each other (as SNS on SNS). Beyond just the contents of the system developed for "Gorotto Yatchiro", the development method itself exemplifies the site's extraordinary uniqueness.
Of course, "Gorotto Yatchiro" also has its issues. As a result of the plethora of functions available, beginners especially may find it difficult to use rather than user-friendly. Moreover, as the number of users grows, the burden on both the server and the manager will also grow. Furthermore, though SNS may become sites of exchange among city residents, tools such as BBS and other intercommunity services, as well as devices for the management and structural side are necessary in order to encourage city residents' administrative participation. As the present “Gorotto Yatchiro” site has been developed and managed primarily by young staff members, debates about its significance and place within e-municipalities, as well as concrete estimates on the site's actual benefits and investigations as to its cost-effectiveness have not been conducted. However, as the attention to the site and related burdens to the system continue to rise, there is a possibility that the site will be drawn into a process of "formulation"
in order to measure the effectiveness of the SNS. If this becomes the case, the question of whether or not "Gorotto Yatchiro" will be able to continue to support the flexibility that lies at the root of its uniqueness will become a serious issue.
The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) is also hailing blogs and SNS as a tool to reduce anonymity on the Internet; MIC announced the empirical testing of SNS communities in the city of Nagaoka and in the Chiyoda Ward of Tokyo beginning in December of this year. As an example of a pioneering community-based SNS, "Gorotto Yatchiro" is a case worthy of attention when considering the manner of utilization of IT in local communities.