E-commerce strategists advise companies to create virtual communities for their customers. But what does this involve? Research on face-to-face communities identifies the concept of “sense of community: ” a characteristic of successful communities distinguished by members ’ helping behaviors and members’ emotional attachment to the community and other members. Does a sense of virtual community exist in online settings, and what does it consist of? Answering these questions is key, if we are to provide guidance to businesses attempting to create virtual communities. The paper explores the concept of sense of virtual community in a newsgroup we call Multiple Sports Newsgroup (MSN). We first demonstrate that MSN does indeed have a sense of virtual community, but that the dimensions of the sense of community in MSN differ somewhat from those reported for physical communities. The nature of these differences is plausibly related to the differences between electronic and face-to-face communication. We next describe the behavioral processes that contribute to the sense of virtual community at MSN—exchanging support, creating identities and making identifications, and the production of trust. Again, these processes are similar to those found in non-virtual communities, but they are related to the challenges of electronic communication. Lastly, we consider the question of how sense of community may come about and discuss the implications for electronic business.

E-commerce strategists advise companies to create virtual communities for their customers. But what is involved in establishing and maintaining virtual communities? This paper addresses two questions: Does a sense of community similar to that sometimes observed in physical communities also occur in virtual settings? And how is a sense of virtual community maintained? These questions are examined in an intensive study of an established virtual community called MSN. MSN members experienced a sense of community, but the dimensions of sense of community differed somewhat from those reported for physical communities in ways plausibly related to the differences between electronic and face-toface communication. The experienced sense of community in MSN was actively maintained through the social processes of exchanging support, creating identities and making identifications, and the production of trust. Again, these processes are similar to those in non-virtual communities, but related to the challenges of electronic communication. The findings suggest a process model of sense of virtual community creation and maintenance that is simpler and more powerful than previous theories.