Virtual Community Report

FanForum is an online community for fans of tv shows, female celebrities, male celebrities, movies, music, news and other entertainment. The community is designed for the most obsessive of fans, providing almost 160 message boards covering news & politics, spoilers, fan art, fan fiction, general discussion, role playing games and other entertainment talk. People use the community to gossip about, for example, about their favourite actors or what is happening in their favourite TV shows.

People of all ages belong to FanForum, however I met people who were generally younger (15-30yrs). Members who post regularly have friendships with many people in the community who visit the same boards as they do. Due to the diverse range of topics, users can feel a close connection with other users according to their range of interests.

Members can communicate on the message boards by posting a reply to a thread, or starting a new thread entirely. They can also send messages through a private message system that resembles an email inbox which only registered FanForum members can send messages to. A wide range of information is provided on members profiles. Most users are willing to share their interests and personal information such as their email address, location, birthday, interests and occupation rather than keep it private.

There is certainly no difficulty in determining whether this community is a success or not! The highest record of people online in one thread was 6401 early this year. There are at least 3-4 threads started per day per board, and one only needs to look at the extensive number of message boards available or the friendliness between members to realize that FanForum is a very successful community.

I thoroughly enjoyed communicating in this online community, and believe I will continue long after I have finished this subject. It is amazing that the owner has been able to keep the site running without charging a subscription fee or using advertisements to fund the domain name/space. It's wonderful!!

This link will take you to a thread in FanForum I have posted on about internet pedophilia. My post is #23 (down the bottom).