This worldwide connection of computers we call the Internet brings people together on a truly global scale. Students in Australia can email fellow students in Canada to compare notes on a shared research project about Blue Whales. A model train fanatic in Zimbabwe can join a discussion with like-minded folks anywhere else in the world. Name one of your all-time favorite interests; more than likely, somewhere on the Internet a group of people from all walks of life is engaged in a conversation on the very topic. This online communicating about a million different subjects is the very beginning of what we mean when we use the term "Virtual Communities." Virtual communities take many shapes, but they all share a number of characteristics. They allow people with common interests to meet each other, to communicate, and to stay in touch if so desired. You can consider each one of the thousands of Usenet newsgroups as a virtual community of sorts. Most often, each newsgroup has a bunch of regulars who know one other, and who are in the middle of calm conversations or raging debates with friends they've made online. Chat rooms on online services (such as America Online and Compuserve) as well as chat channels on the Internet (such Internet Relay Chat, or IRC) allow for the formation of virtual communities. Covering everything from snowboarding to cross-stitch, from computer programming to ostrich farming, these chat rooms enable people across the globe to have live (realtime) conversations with one another - in other words, without the constraints of distance, they allow people to find their "neighbors" thousands of miles away.