Comment

e-Tribe vs. Virtual Community: the concept of e-tribe emerged from early works done on virtual communities (especially the works of Kozinets back in 1997, 1999, and later on). This concept was extremely popular in the first half of the years 2000 (2000-2005 approximately), particularly in the field of marketing (and e-marketing). However, this concept carries the notion of relatively stable and reasonably small and homogeneous groups, as well as the notion of a strong (and somehow absolute) level of affiliation. But clearly, virtual groups can be really large, and usually the same person will belong to several such groups, which may or not overlap. So nowadays, the concept of virtual community is preferred (relating back to the very first concept, but with a different understanding of what a virtual community is).