Language Difference in Virtual Communities in Cyberspace: Blogosphere, Wikis and Social Network Sites

As the Internet population grows worldwide, new population using minor languages keeps joining the Internet. At this point, understanding how language difference affects virtual communities on the web becomes more and more important. As virtual communities, blogosphere, wikis, and social network sites were investigated. I argue that language difference serves as a barrier in the virtual community and makes the network clustered. I then argue that the multilingual population, or those who connect the separated different language groups, diffuses information from one network to another. They are the weak ties of the entire network and help others better search new information such as job postings. Keyword: language, blogosphere, social network, wiki, information, diffusion