Editorial: Five factors in making web communities to survive or fade

This special issue is partly built on the prior issue 'Web-based research networks and learning communities', IJWBC, 6(2). Earlier issues of this journal have underlined the benefit of 'virtual' communities so far: their dynamics, their flexibility to capture actuality, etc. This time, we focus closer on the degree of realism that make online powerful in its commercial and its ideological sense as well. Five factors in making web communities survive or fade are highlighted, and the special issue papers' fit into these factors is outlined.