Infrastructure of Fully-Functional Online Community (OC)

Business, educational, research, and other types of organizations now can be rebuilt (to some extent) into an online community. To be more effective than previous forms of organization, the online community has to have the appropriate network infrastructure. This infrastructure should include:

(1) Means of integration of information flows of OC members into one database because often people perform their information activity on different sites. It creates a unified information environment of the OC (see more).

(2) Personal information robot of OC member as his/her online representative. The robot function is to help its user save time and overcome information overloading inside OC environment. OC members instruct their own intelligent robots according to their interests and current goals. Such instructions include rules for information filtering, gathering and commands for interactions with information robots of other members to carry out the specified tasks. (See more).

(3) Special conditions (common protocols, carrier of interactions, and "rules of the game") necessary for the interaction of information robots. These conditions should look as an online service  that support activities of artificial community of intelligent online agents (information robots). A "living" environment for robots allows them to imitate quite effectively the interactions of real OC members and perform their tasks specified by their users. (See more).

(4) A network model of socio-economic regulation mechanism necessary for the OC to function effectively. It is the so-called "third type" of the regulation in addition to the market (regulation by price signal system) and hierarchy (command mechanism). The basic conditions for the use of the third regulation mechanism are created by OC infrastructure as it described in items above. (See more).

(5) Statistical indicators based on the Internet traffic that produced by activity of OC members are an essential part of the new socio-economic signal system. Traditional signal systems for decision making include "price signals" and "manager's commands". Real time utilization of network traffic reflects online activity of the community helps community members immediately visualize the shifts in general trends and interests of this community as a whole. The traffic-based signal system can also increase efficiency of community functioning and be used addition or instead of traditional signal systems. (See a research and online database related with traffic-based indicators).

Theoretical Model of Online Community

One of the consequences of Internet Technologies implementation (such as E-commerce, E-business, E-conomy, and etc.) is a need for the human users to have their own online representatives to ease technical communications and socio-economic interactions with other members of numerous human online communities. According to this trend, one should develop a theoretical concept of artificial environment or community inhabited by information robots (software agents). On this way we also have to develop standards for the construction of the typical information robot and for their interactions between each other; a theory to model and design the efficient "living" environment for such artificial agents and their organization; and a regulation mechanism to keep the artificial community inside a  framework of sustainable development (on the same way as "invisible hand" of a market and "visible hand" of a manager is governing "natural" socio-economic systems).

Unified Model of Socio-Economic Regulation Mechanisms

Economists describe an economy functioning as a process of agents' interactions governed by two types of recently dominated regulation mechanisms (market and hierarchy). Current stage of Internet technology makes possible a wider implementation of the so-called third type of economic mechanism, which in the past could work only inside small groups of people. This third form of regulation does not use price signals of the market or commands of the hierarchy, and therefore it can not be described by popular economic concepts. Hence, theoretical instruments should be replenished by a model of network type of socio-economic regulations. The key point here is a concept of information interactions between agents. By describing the economic world in terms of information interactions, one can have the unified model of an economy where all types of regulation mechanisms co-exist and are considered as specific cases of one general regulation scheme.