Personal Group Communication *

Figure 1: Evite is one application that allows users to invite a group of people to an event and create a collective messaging space for them.

internet group communication includes MASS COMMUNICATION mechanisms such as virtual communities and newsgroups along with PERSONAL GROUP COMMUNICATION means.

The internet creates a communication web between people who are online. There are mechanisms such as newsgroups or virtual communities that enable contact between people who would otherwise be strangers. Such open community-oriented methods are ill-suited for communicating with familiar faces because lack of intimacy and privacy. However, communication directed to one person as with ICQ or internet phoning does not cater to group interaction. Therefore, there should be a simple way to create a group of people to interact with and to communicate with them online.

To enable online group communication, an application should have the following features:

• There must be a simple way to communicate to this group of people without having to specify each person for every instance of communication.
• There should be an accessible list of members which can be thought of as one communication unit.
• At least one person must be able to create and modify this list of members. Modifications should allow for adding, deleting, and modifying member information.
• It should be clear to the recipient that the communication was addressed to a group as opposed to an individual.

Email lists are a basic form of group communication that stores the email addresses of the members. An alias is created to refer to this group of people. Evite offers additional functionality on top of email lists by providing a web space for coordinating events. The host of the event creates a list of guests (members) and an email specifying the event's url is sent to these people. Guests can then view the list of invited people and see who among them will be attending. Communication can either be made via comments posted to the website or as automated reminders sent via email. Yahoo! Groups (formerly known as Egroups) enable group collaboration and sharing of information by combining an email list with a group online workspace. Members of the group can communicate through the email alias or by uploading information (files, urls, photos, etc) to the workspace.

Therefore:
Make it easy to target a group of people by providing shortcuts for the members to communicate to each other. Let users update and modify the list of members.

***

ALIASES allow users to communicate to a group of people using one name. The list of members can also provide information about the user such as their online status-ONLINE STATUS INDICATOR. To give the users control over what groups they belong to, have either a USER CONFIRMATION or JOIN PROCEDURE.

Lower Level Patterns