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Online communities experience many degrees of success and failure. Some quickly flare up and grow exponentially, then burn out and disappear just as fast. Others start up and never really take off in terms of the number of members, yet the community persists for years, alive and well. Then, there are the ones that strike the perfect balance of attaining both growth and sustainability. The readings this week attempted to make sense of the logical reasons behind why some online communities succeed and why others fail.
Ridings and Gefen found that people join an online community for many different reasons. While the most prominent reason for joining was to exchange information, others joined for reasons such as friendship, social support, or recreation. Regardless of the reason, people joined an online community because it inspired a "sense of belonging," where people could commune and interact with one another toward a shared purpose. Schrock had his own perspective regarding social networking communities, where people's online actions were an extension of their offline personality. Ling et. al. found that people contributed more when their opinions differed from one another than if they were all in agreement, and that users seemed to be more motivated to participate when the reward for participation was self-fulfilling, rather than an external reward. Tedjamulia et. al. professed the importance of lurkers, who make up the majority of an online community's user base. The qualities that retain lurkers, such as credibility, searchability, and ease-of-use, are ones that ensure the continued success of the community. In addition, once the lurker becomes comfortable in the community, the lurker may progress to becoming a participant or a contributor, improving the sustainability of the online community. Finally, Java et. al. analyzed the topic of microblogging and its uses.
Of the topics discussed within these readings, there were two that positively stood out. The first was the idea that friendships and connections can develop through shared experiences. Ridings and Gefen discussed the idea that, while people may join a community with the primary intention to exchange information, the interactions that users have with one another can grow to become something more. The second is the idea that lurkers are important for a successful community. I can't begin to count the number of communities that I "participated" in as a lurker, sometimes, for years. During which, I suppose I was sort of a leech, taking in information and really not giving anything back in return. However, in concordance with Ridings and Gefen's idea that lurkers may think of members of the community as friends, so did I. Even as a lurker, I couldn't help but notice the personalities of individual users, and over time, I felt as if I actually knew them. After getting comfortable with being part of the community, I transitioned into a contributing member fairly seamlessly, where I was able to jump in and it was as if I was always there. Thanks to the experience I gained while lurking, how I participated made it seem as if I was a regular, even if my physical presence was only recently established. In some cases, I became friends with people in the community, and extended our friendship beyond the borders of the initial meeting place, where I chat with them on Facebook or play video games online with them on a regular basis. I feel as if I could meet them and hang out with them in person, I would (but since I live in Hawaii and they don't, that idea is out of the question).
It was difficult to find something that I really disagreed with, as I found most of the theory the authors gave to be reasonable. If anything, I disagreed with the methodology that Ling et. al. used in experiment three. I felt that the intrinsic and extrinsic variables they used did not accurately represent significant intrinsic and extrinsic properties and as such, the test was not relevant, even if the data. The statements they used for both are statements that I expect to see in spam mail, as, at least to me, it presents itself as having no significance to the content of the message. In my opinion, their intrinsic motivator of 'fun' is generic and essentially non-descriptive, and the statement itself causes me to think about if rating movies really is fun (to which, my answer is no, which makes me ask, why do other people think it is fun) rather than motivate me to actually rate movies. Their extrinsic value, to me, asks for me to do a lot of work for the chance that it pays off and recommends something I actually would like to see. My experience with recommendations is that, if the recommendations are not on a case-by-case basis (such as how Amazon.com gives related purchases on each item page), unless you do a thorough job of sorting recommendations, you will get a lot of junk for your efforts. The cost of my time and effort to rate movies does not clearly translate into a benefit for me, as I may actually gain nothing due to faulty recommendations. As there is no clear benefit, it does not feel as it is truly an extrinsic benefit.
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For my observations, I used AVS (Audio-Visual Science), a place where audiophiles and videophiles (or aspiring audiophiles/videophiles) discuss audio and video electronics. I've known about this website for a while (due to several of the websites I visit hotlinking to it) but I've never really looked at it before. For my survey, I used the 'New Posts' feature to get a "random sample" of posts from different categories. Posts must have been posted between 1/1/11 and 2/11/11 (as the forum is fairly fast moving, threads can accumulate posts rather quickly).
What modes of participation are there?
- post content
- reply to posts
- create and/or vote in polls
- send private message/e-mail
- add user to contacts (one-sided)
- add user to friends (mutual)
- add user to ignore list
- create/edit profile
- subscribe to RSS feed
- subscribe to forum/thread
- report post
- join social group
- give/receive reputation to users
- rate thread
- give tags to threads
How is participation encouraged?
- User's post count displayed under the username to indicate how active they have been
- Official product representatives contribute and facilitate discussion (Link)
- Users are generally friendly and accommodating toward one another Link)
- Forum is heavily sub-categorized, allowing easy access to the desired area (Link)
- Debate threads with polls posted on hot topics by the administrators (Link)
What types of content draw the most responses?
- Questions/Advice Requests: 30 threads/735 replies
- Hardware Information/Announcements: 11 threads/3692 replies
- General Technology Discussion: 3 threads/273 replies
- Selling/Buying: 2 threads/41 replies
- General Technology News: 2 threads/28 replies
In my "random sample," the most prevalent discussion topic was requests for advice and troubleshooting questions. To me, advice and questions being the most common topic was unsurprising, as from my experience, most of the time I hear technology being discussed is because there is a problem with it. In addition, many of the users requesting advice joined the community recently and/or had a low post count (as seen here, here, here, and here). This result supports Ridings and Gefen's finding that the most common reason for joining an online community is to exchange information. These posters also support Tedjamulia's claim that lurkers contribute by asking questions that trigger discussion (link). One thing that I did find interesting was the post disparity between this thread and this one. While both topics were posted at around the same time frame, the latter thread has over seven times the amount of posts as the former thread. The disparity between the number of posts seems to be the result of the presence of an official product representative fielding questions, contributing information that may be exclusive and otherwise unavailable from other sources (except from this particular community). By fielding questions, the product representative may have stimulated extra discussion that may not have taken place had he not answered questions posed early in the thread. The last thing I found interesting was how many of the posts were dedicated toward questions and advice and hardware information and announcements. I anticipated these two topics would be most represented, but did not expect them to consist of nearly the entire sample size. My theory on this occurrence can potentially be explained by (a) as my data sample consisted of only recent threads, it would exclude many of the popular topics and general discussion threads (as they most likely would have been created before 2011), (b) questions/advice topics are generally highly active until they have been answered, and as I took my data from the 'new posts' thread, a higher than average ratio of question/advice to other threads may have been present, and/or (c) a recent technology show may have taken place, which would cause an increase in both questions/advice (due to people comparing old technology to new technology) and hardware information/announcements (due to new hardware discussion taking place). I do know that the Tokyo Consumer Electronics Show took place in January (which some threads referred to technology revealed there), but am uncertain of whether any other shows have occurred since then.
Wow! Thank you for sharing your story about how you transitioned from a lurker to a participant in one of your on-line communities! It is definitely fascinating to hear a first-hand account of the transition. Your transition does make me wonder about others’ transition and if it is typical to follow suit in this fashion. If this is the case, are their implications for designers to consider when developing their communities to promote the growth of lurkers to participants?
ReplyDeleteI also found your insight about the two threads posted at the same time to be interesting. To add to your thoughts about exclusive information to the community, I would like to propose the idea of information authority. In this sense, users getting users’ perspectives are one thing. However, being able to acquire authoritative information may be different in the community, which may also stir more participation. In this sense, a lurker may feel the need to ask a question if he/she feels that an authority can speak on the matter, as opposed to “novice” views.
I found your thoughts on the transition from lurker to participant a definite possibility. I would believe that the reliability of the information and interest garnered from continued lurker activities will result in transition to participant.
ReplyDeleteI also found it interesting that the OC you observed had such great amount of responsive posts- with 30 threads and some 735 responses. It is clear that this online community had more active partipants.
Guy - I too liked your description of how you transformed from a lurker (or leech as you say) to a regular member of an OC. It's interesting how you note that even as a lurker, you felt like you "connected" with other users. You began recognize their names and value certain authors over others, I am sure. I also find myself doing this which is something I never noticed before until you pointed it out. I find myself looking up information on a particular query and seeing a certain personality response and thinking to myself "oh yeah, this person knows what they are talking about" or "oh yeah, this person ALWAYS responds to everything and often it's meaningless." It's also interesting how you chose an OC to explore where you already visit the blog on a somewhat regular basis. Another student said this same thing in her blog post this week. Perhaps this exercise is opening our eyes to places we never really thought to go within other places we always go.
ReplyDeleteI think you've hit on a much larger issue of how people in an audience (lurkers) can bond and identify with actors, those publicly participating in the community, even if the interaction is only one-way.
ReplyDeleteAVS was an excellent choice for a community, because you have folks who are hardcore about their audio and video, wanting the best reproduction possible, usually for as little money as they can spend. The passion of looking for the ideal system can motivate strong participation in a community like this. Pointing out how the presence of a product rep on one thread stimulated more response was an excellent clue about what this community values--it's easy to imagine the opposite effect, where a rep jumping onto a thread might be viewed as an intrusion of a biased participant with an agenda to sell something. You also observed the common effect that new users need to post something that resonates with the community to get a response--the number of posts after a person's name carries with it assumptions about the likely quality of that person's posts.
I guess I never thought of it that way, that lurkers can be viewed as leeches (by themselves or others). The article touches upon that point, but since it's an academic article, it doesn't come out and explicitly use the word "leech."
ReplyDeleteI addressed something related in my blog, that we should be wary of awarding the high achievers in the OC sphere, but if you look at it from their perspective, and you take into account one of the concepts from a previous article about how SNS usage is basically "unpaid labor," I can understand better what might cause them to have resentment towards the lurkers.