User: Concept, Types and Examples

We explain that you are a user, what are the types of users that can be found and what role each one plays on the Internet.

Web 2.0 users play a very active role in content production.

What is a user?

In informatics and Web culture, a user is understood as a set of permissions and resources assigned to an operator as part of an information network , and that may well be a person, a computer program or a computer.

This user concept differs from the traditional one contemplated in the dictionaries, since for the latter a user is “someone who uses something”, while the users on the Web 2.0 play a very active role in the production of content and other activities that require a high level of participation.

Thus, when you want to specifically refer to the human individuals behind a computer or a system, it is better to refer to them as subjects or citizens .

In many cases, users are referred to refer to user accounts, that is, to the personalized and/or individual configurations that have access to the functions of an information system .It should be noted, without However, that the same human user can manage several user accounts, or none (if not registered in the system).

In that sense we can talk about the following types of computer user:

• Registered users: These are those users who have a user account and who live regularly on the network, either as consumers or producers of information, or both figures intermittently.


• Anonymous users.Those who surf the Internet without making their presence manifest through registrations, formalizations or accounts assigned to a user, but remain unidentified.Normally they have fewer privileges than the registered user.


• Trolls.This category includes users of forums and social networks whose presence in these social fields is problematic or abusive: they incite hatred, verbally assault others and make the experience less pleasant.


• Beta – testers.These are test users, that is, they use software experimentally or in development, in order to take note of their weaknesses or evaluate their operation, etc.


• Hackers.Those users endowed with deep knowledge of computer science and who are able to sabotage or alter code segments of Web programs to benefit from it in different ways.

Other possible user classifications are based on the level of expertise in the management of the network or the information system, and that is usually reduced to: beginners (or newbies ) , intermediates and experts (or pros ).

However, any classification of users will always be partial and, at most, temporary.

See also: Spyware.