Specialized digital societies in a new confrontation with social media

Social media is a noticeable decrease, especially in terms of quality, due to the immigration of content makers and users to specialized digital communities.Many people have abandoned these sites and are looking for alternative platforms to spend their free time instead of spending hours on them, which in turn constitutes a new wave of interest in digital societies.

In this article, we will talk about the importance of digital societies, and how they become a gradual alternative to social media platforms, especially for the most specialized and professional group in society, and we will talk about the benefit of these digital societies and how they are reflected positively on the topics and areas around them.

ما هي المجتمعات الرقمية ؟

Digital societies are any digital platform that allows users to exchange information and comments among themselves on any specific topic or field that this society is interested in, and these issues may be a specific hobby or gathering of a specific area of a specific area or a specific specialization in a field.

The forums at the beginning of the new millennium were the most prominent example of the idea of digital societies, as there were forums specialized in the fields of technology, entrepreneurship, women's interests, etc..Who among us does not mention the Swalf Soft, Traidnet or Linux community forums?

Facebook groups and YouTube channels and before them +Google groups before they disappear are examples of mini -digital societies hosting on communication platforms as well, digital societies are not limited to those that have their own location, for example, but any place where a number of people collects on a specific topic to discuss it is a societyDigital.

Examples of some famous and leading digital communities are: We mention:

1. Indie Hackers: وهو مجتمع رقمي متخصص بإنشاء الشركات الناشئة والمشاريع الجديدة، حيث يسمح للمستخدمين بالتعاون والنقاش حول أمور ريادة الأعمال المصغّرة وأي مواضيع متعلقة بتأسيس المشاريع.
2. Hacker News: وهو مجتمع رقمي متخصص في النقاشات المرتبطة بعلوم الحاسوب وما ينبثق عنها، وهو واحد من أشهر المجتمعات الرقمية المتخصصة في العالم.
3. Wall Street Oasis: مجتمع رقمي متخصص بأمور الاستثمار والتداول والاقتصاد، مناسب لمن يفكّر بدخول مجال الأموال.
4. Stack Over Flow: مجتمع متخصص في الأسئلة والأجوبة البرمجية، ويزوره عدد هائل جدًا من مطوري البرمجيات والمهندسين على مستوى العالم. استُحوذ عليه سنة 2021م بمبلغ 1.8 مليار دولار.

And many others that you can find by searching the network in the field you are interested in.

Are communication sites constructive digital societies?

According to statistics, traditional social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and their like losing millions of users annually, and these in turn are either moved to other social networks or are looking for various alternatives at all to spend their time, including digital societies.

There are certain features that it is noticed that they are in the host societies on the communication sites:

In contrast, independent digital societies are:

Therefore, if you are considering joining one of these societies or creating one yourself, it is best to choose independent digital societies if possible.

كيف يمكن بناء المجتمعات الرقمية وحشد المهتمين لها؟

The technical aspect of the creation of the digital community is very easy;Just fixed one of the community management software on the Server and tie it in the name of a domain.These software either be:

1. برمجيات منتديات تقليدية مثل MyBB وphpBB وvBulletin وغيرها، وهي تعتمد على فكرة “الأقسام” أو التصنيفات بشكل أساسي لنشر المواضيع. وهي منتديات لم تعد مناسبة لروح العصر الجديد فلا يمكنها منافسة وسائل التواصل من ناحية الشكل والمميزات المتوفرة.
2. برمجيات مجتمعات مُعاصرة مثل Discourse وFlarum، وهي تعتمد على مفهوم النقاشات بشكل أساسي بغض النظر عن تصنيفها (قد تستعمل الوسوم للتصنيف لا أكثر)، وهي أكثر حداثة ومبنية بوسائل متطورة.

All this is easy and you can accomplish it in less than a working day, but the real difficulty in establishing digital societies is not here, but in mobilizing those interested in and managing them and controlling the actions of their members in the long run.

Over time you will discover that it is costly to reach the target group in your digital community through advertising means (Facebook ads, Google ... etc), and thus you will need to use a mixture of these ads in addition to other creative means to invite those interested in your field (technology, writing, design, programming, programming,Agriculture, engineering ... etc) to join your community.

The older your community, the more difficult it becomes its management, the societies need a continuous follow -up to ensure that all contributions are subject to the laws of that society and do not go out of it, otherwise problems and quarrels may occur between members of society, which may gradually lead to the loss of a number of members and weak interaction.Therefore, you may need to employ a number of supervisors with you to do the mission.

Digital societies in the end are human gathering places, and therefore the management of these gatherings is what will be the most difficult in the long run.

Note that digital societies are useful for companies and institutions as well, not just individuals.Companies can benefit from the whereabouts of these specialists in any field of marketing for themselves and their products, or as possible employment points for any vacant places in the company, these societies actually contain the target group that companies are looking for, and therefore they are more valuable to them than traditional communication sites or other means.

المصدر المفتوح كمثال على مجتمعات رقمية متخصصة بنّاءة

Open Source is a pattern of alternative software development for traditional monopolistic software, as users are allowed to obtain the entire source of the program, in addition to the right to amend it, share it or copy it whatever the user wants.

The open source has grown strongly in recent years, and there have become a lot of software that serves users in various sectors.This software in turn has digital societies around them to provide technical support or development or talk about anything related to them.For example, WordPress possesses an open source content management system a large community of users and developers, and there are also Arab WordPress forums as the largest Arab community specialized in WordPress.

Open source software is often published on sites like GitHub and Gitlab, which are social platforms specialized in software development, publishing and discussing them. Of course, no one will care about the development of a monopoly program that reaps companies behind millions for free, and for this you will not find many specialized societies about these software, except for technical support, but open source software succeeded in this because they are often free and free from monopoly, and provide benefit to the user and respect his freedom That is why you find that there are hundreds of societies that revolve around various open source software with the aim of contributing, developing and marketing them.

For example, GitHub allows these software to take care of materially from within the same platform, in addition to opening discussion pages and reporting about the ills and problems that may exist, and many participatory features of software development, revision and management of software, which benefits open source software by nature, because everyone can contribute to it, on, onReverse monopoly software.

أهمية بناء المجتمعات الرقمية العربية ودعمها

The Arab market is thirsty for constructive Arab societies.

That is because of the closure of many old classic forums, the Arab user has become very limited in places where he can be present to talk about specialized topics that concern him, and he has only social media.Foreign there are very many societies and forums for everything, so that you may even find more than 10 digital societies for the same topic or specialization, and for all its users who are separated from the other.

Hasop I/O, for example, is a famous Arab alternative to Reddit's foreign community, as it employs the same idea of subreddits to bring those interested in any field they want.Hassoub I/O today visits tens of thousands of visitors monthly, and there are many discussions, personal experiences and topics in various fields that are published every day.

But there is still a wide range of other ideas. Specialized societies in certain areas (not public) are very few and are almost no Arab, and therefore the market is very open to any person, company or institution to enter the field and establish a constructive digital community that brings these interested people.

We repeat the use of the word "constructive" and this is because it is not sufficient to create a digital society. Rather, it is necessary to explore, follow -up and supervision to make it a society that users interested in joining it through:

All this may be difficult at first, but the results will be amazing in the long run.Building digital societies may take years to take it, but the size of this eating will be large if it is matured as we explained in this article.

خاتمة

Digital societies are in great growth.Very large growth that you can know its size and the danger that it poses on traditional social media about the size of the steps that these platforms try to make to bring content makers instead of letting them work their own digital communities.

The Arab user’s interest must begin, build, search for them, join them and publicize them, as it is better for everyone than traditional media that have nothing but to display ads and make users remain for the longest possible period in the platform to reap profits.