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A better way to comprehend this foggy situation is, for a moment, to postpone struggling with the confusing terms, and instead to return to the basics—people who use the communication technologies—by asking a fundamental question: Why do we use the new communication technologies? Most previous studies had attempted to answer this question within the context of human-computer interaction (HCI) by focusing either on the characteristics of new media or on the perceptual processes of users. Hence, the reasons for using the new media were frequently reduced to the attributes of the media, such as convenience, interactivity, and flexibility. By fixating on the HCI, researchers overlooked the importance of social need—the need for connecting with and interacting with others—as a core reason people use new media. As pointed out by many scholars, when research is centered on technology, the people who use this technology are often overlooked.
Since then, the attention has gradually been shifted from dyadic HCI (I am not saying that HCI is not an important research topic) to multiagent interactions, thanks to the proliferation of blogs and social networking sites. Many studies dealing with virtual communities, blogging, online forums, and/or shared information databases have been published, and academic journals in communication and business have already published or are preparing to publish articles focusing on online social interactions and relationship building. The growing interest is not limited to academics, but extends to practitioners, and companies are beginning to recognize the enormous potential of online social collectivities for their businesses. By creating an online consumer forum for a product, for example, the company is able to interact with, disseminate information to, and get feedback from target consumers for a fraction of the traditional management cost.