Community

In contrast to social networks, the term community refers to groups of people that collaboratively develop knowledge, share experience, and build up a common identity (cf. Wikipedia).

Occurrences of communities are
 * online (or Internet) communities : groups of people that share similar interests and exchange experiences via websites, e.g. Wikipedia or Usenet.
 * offline communities : publishing of information to community members (cf. )
 * communities of practice: informal practice-oriented groups of people with similar tasks, described by a specific set of practices, which are shared by its members to achieve these tasks.