3C or not 3C, that is the question

In the case of Lotus Notes use within one particular multinational firm, after an initial period of installing, debugging and learning the system, Notes use both supported existing communities and created new (and unusual) ones. Prior to Notes, the firm had had topicallyfocused, globally represented interest groups that used mass mailings, telephone and infrequent meetings to come together. Notes allowed these groups to become 'local' and 'come together' via Notes discussion groups despite the distances involved. In varying ways and styles, such discussion groups did emerge: from relatively formal ones that stayed strictly topically focused to others that wandered away from core topics and allowed more informal (yet useful) discussion. The Notes groups supported preexisting communities: people could more easily call on each other as well as the whole group for opinions or experiences as well as get to know each other in new ways ( the publicly-available and rapid exchanges exposed this rather staid firm to what we might call flames or less-than-well-thought-through messages as well as ordinary posts). In addition, since the infrastructure was already in place, Notes supported the development of new communities among firm employees, who might not have t~ad the ability to come together otherwise (e.g. some discussions developed about recreation topics or new topical areas, whether closely firm-related or not). My point is that Notes technology could and was used for communities: it provided technological support for socially created (non-physical) neighborhoods, marking community boundaries (by name, membership, behavior and reputation, at a minimum), and distinguishing types of behavior (in one ~roup, it might be legitimate to tell