successful initiating of online communities

7/28/2019 Successful Initiating of Online Communities

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Successful Initiating of Online Communities

An Analysis of Reports, Projects and Expert Interviews

Sandra Schaffert(Salzburg Research, Salzburg, [email protected])

Diana Wieden-Bischof(Salzburg Research, Salzburg, Austria

[email protected])

Abstract: There are several reports, analysis and comments on online communities but just a

few meta analyses about successful initiating of online communities. This study focuses on

concrete, practical hints and suggestions for practitioners building on literature, analysis of

existing online communities and additional expert interviews. Besides a general process

description, it gives a more elaborated orientation and decision support for six different

application fields.

Keywords: virtual community, online community, open innovation, self-help group, learningcommunity, community processes, community lifecycle

Categories: L.6.1, K.4

1 Introduction

The need for vibrant communities in a lot of fields, such as the enterprise knowledge

management, brand communities, or the usage of new Web 2.0 tools, is enormous.

These and many other ventures are unthinkable without active users or without an

active community. Their involvement is essential for the success of these Web-related

projects. Hence, the question about successful community initiating and building is

crucial and gets a lot of attention.

Terms such as virtual community, online community or Web communityare used often and similar, too, but without consistent meaning, nor definition. In

older definition of the term community the geographical proximity and/or familiar

relationships play a role [Stocker, 08, 64f]. One, if not the first, approach to define

virtual community was done by the sociologist Howard Rheingold: Virtual

communities are social aggregations that emerge from the Net when enough people

carry on those public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form

webs of personal relationships in cyberspace. [Rheingold, 93]. Within our study, we

define an online (virtual, Web) community as persons with common interests, using

Internet and communication technologies to interchange or develop common

contents, developing a strong bond and a feeling of togetherness.In the following, we will describe the methodology and results of an analysis of

practice reports, scientific literature and expert interviews about how the building of

an online community will be successful [Schaffert, 09]. The analysis was done within

Proceedings of I-KNOW 09 and I-SEMANTICS 092-4 September 2009, Graz, Austria 199


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an ongoing project at the Salzburg NewNewMediaLab (SNML) about online

communities and their (also technological) challenges and consequences and is the

first within a serial of four project publications.

2 Methodological approach of the study

The purpose of the study was to give an overview about how the building of an online

community will be successful from the practical perspective [Schaffert, 09]. After a

first review of publications and research we developed the following procedure:

Focusing on the publications of the last years in German language we identified (i)

theories and explanations of the online communitys life cycle, (ii) categorizations of

online communities, and (ii) recommendations and examples for their successful

initiating. After this we selected six very diverse application areas of the online

communities, e.g. non-commercial online self-help groups or enterprise driveninternal knowledge management. Now, every recommendation was scrutinized if it

can serve as general or as fitting to just one of the application areas. Additionally, we

broaden our research for publications, statements, projects and potential interview

partners, also to international publications, in the six applications areas. This approach

builds on the ideas and concept of Grounded Theory, which describes a systematic

theory building from data in the process of research [Glaser, 67]. This procedure

resulted in a list of recommendations, short interviews and project description for

community initiating in general and within the selected application areas.

3 Theoretical approaches concerning the lifecycle of online

communities

There are some theoretical approaches existing, which try to explain the complex

incidents of online community development with relatively simple rules or phase

descriptions.

On the one hand, social science approaches are focussing the processes within the

community: [Tuckman, 65] developed a four stage model of group development

which is easily conferrable to online communities [Swenson, 08]: In the forming

phase the group becomes initially known each other, the storming phase is a chaotic

phase with a lot of conflicts concerning leadership, roles and tasks. It is typically

followed by a norming phase, which reaches an eventually agreement of the group

norms; whereas the fourth phase, the performing phase, is the one where the group

works effectively.

On the other hand, theoretical approaches are existing that uses variables such as

the number of registrants, of contributions as well as time for explanations concerning

community development. For example, Reeds and Metcalfes laws explain that the

utility of networks rises with every new node, so it can even scale exponentially with

the size of the network. An online community is always a small form of a social

network, where every new member means an additional potential contributor and

partner for every single existing member. Nevertheless, these simple rules cannot be

validated in reality: It does not explain why it needs time until online communities

starts to communicate or stop it, even if they have a lot of members. Here the

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following explanations help: The theory of critical mass refers to the well known and

evident phenomena that it needs a certain amount of registered users before a

discussion or collaboration within a platform starts. For German discussion forums,

the critical mass of registrants is at about 100 [Beck, 07], other studies ask for at least

20 to 50 needed registrants or interested people to initiate an effectual interaction[Palme, 95].

Furthermore, there exist explanations, why online communities or community

platforms cannot have an infinite number of members with an effective

communication flow [Beck, 07, 26ff]: The theory of social loafing focus on the idea

that people tend to reduce their effort for common, collective tasks compared with

individual tasks, which is conferred to online communities [Thorn, 87], [Karau, 01].

Concerning to [Beck, 07] the number of contributions in a discussion forum is not

proportional to the number of registrants and that the activity of large groups is below

average. In discussion forums with 3.000 or more registrants the number of

contributions and also their lengths gets smaller. The theory of information overloadis another approach that explains why a rising number of (potential) contributors is

not always helpful: Humans can only process a finite number of information.

Asynchronous communication such as in discussion forums is generally helpful, but

users come upon constraints if the threads are unmanageable. Additionally, mailing

lists attracts a lot of people, but a lot of them are lost because of an information

overload [Butler01].

We try to bring all these approaches and theories concerning the lifecycle of

online communities in one figure, knowing that the measures and scales are vague. As

it can be seen in the figure, a critical mass of registered users is needed to kick of

communication and collaboration. With a rising communication and collaboration the

effect of social loafing and/or information overload can lead to a point of stagnation

that means the number of additional contributions declines.

Figure 1: The life cycle of online communities concerning the number of registrantsand active community members as well as the phases of the group processes

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To sum up these theoretical approaches and the empirics and experiences

concerning online community initiating, we have a lot of explanations why

communities are not going to be successful overnight: In general, a bigger group of

interested and potential contributors is needed to arrive at the critical mass point,

additionally it always needs some time for the first phase of group phase, where the(potential) members can get some ideas about the communities and other members

(e.g. via member profiles).

4 Community building from the initiators perspective in an

overview

Online communities are initiated for a lot of different purposes and also the motives

for potential members to participate are diverse. The following figure gives an

overview about the community building from the initiators or managers perspective.We will give some general descriptions what aspects should be taken into account

within this process phase, starting with the general principle for community building:

let it grow. Nevertheless, because of the space limitations, this is just a condensed

description without detailed hints or method descriptions.

Figure 2: Community Building from the initiators perspective in an overview

4.1 The general principle: Let it grow!

Human behaviour cannot be directed and steered as cars. For online communities, no

construction manual can be developed; online communities have to be seen as organic

beings. The motto has to be let it grow as you will use it for plants [Clark, 98]:Plants should be fostered and cultivated, and there are also some existential needs, but

nevertheless there will be always a certain degree of uncertainness, of momentum.



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Additionally, this principle derives a participation of the community itself in the

process of community development as crucial and important.

4.2 Commitment on purpose and goal of the community

There are a number of persons and organisation that tries to develop an online

community for certain motives, for example to make a lot of money with

advertisement or to get an important community leader. Such motives cannot easily

be transferred to goals which attracts and motivates others. Purpose and goals of a

community have to be clearly defined, together with existing community members.

This goal could be written down as a declaration of intention [Kim, 01].

4.3 Investigate the needs of the target group

It is no easy task to investigate the needs of potential community members. Generally,

the motives for an active participation at online communities can be distinguished

between egoistic and altruistic motives [Kollock, 99]. Egoistic or self centred motives

are for example anticipated reciprocity, which means that members expect to get

something back from their participation; also bragging rights as well as a sense of

efficacy: Some users are just motivated by watching that their activities influences or

changes the community. Selfless, altruistic motives follow the idea of helping others

or the community itself. For community initiation, these motives of the target group

and other typical or expectable interests and background should be investigated.

Literature research, but also surveys can be helpful tools to get more information

about personal, professional or political interests, demographics, or behaviours.

4.4 Foster communication, collaboration and community

Visitors are eventually interested in a community: Nevertheless, staying and

participating is not a question of this general interest, but of relationships. The feeling

of being a part of a community is not developed arbitrarily, it can be supported

actively. Fostering of communication, collaboration and community is essential to

build a community. From our school time, we probably all remember blackboard duty

or rituals as the morning meeting, which are also pedagogical intervention to come to

community feeling. From our daily life, we also know a lot of rituals as the greetings

or celebration days which unify us with special groups. Such rituals can be translatedinto online communities: For example, a special greeting ritual for new members

could be elaborated.

Additional considerations should be done concerning the roles within

communities, especially the roles of leaders. Also private, that means non-public

spaces, can be essential for an intimate group feeling. To get some idea about the

others, also the member profiles are important. Netiquette, that means, rules of

communication and/or moderation should be developed. Last, but not least, a user

friendly interface is important.

4.5 Evaluation and Measurement of the Success

The above mentioned goals and purposes of initiators could serve as evaluation

variables of a communitys success evaluation. Nevertheless, the motives of the



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community initiators are not necessarily identically with the goals of the community

itself. As these goals can change about time, it is additionally difficult to answer, if a

community is successful. Success can be seen from the communitys or the initiators

perspective. Furthermore, it seems to be possible that the success of the community

can be seen as independent from the achievement of objectives, for example in thevariable of communitys healthiness. Positive references, members loyalty, a small

average time until a new member contributes actively, as well as the average time it

takes until a member gets an answer, can be seen as variables of healthiness

[Spreadloveproject, 08].

5 Recommendations for special application areas of community

building

When we started our work on the successful building of online communities werealised that recommendations of concepts of successful community building varies a

lot and came to the conclusion that the concrete applications and contexts should be

taken into account to give, at least exemplarily, advanced insights into good practice

for practitioners. Besides the above mentioned general principle and steps we did a

deeper look into the following six applications areas and derived recommendations

for these fields: online self-help groups or patient groups, online communities on

professional news-sites, communities of learners, customer communities for open

innovation, enterprise communities for knowledge management, and communities for

open source development. We try to select online communities with and without

commercial interest, open and closed communities, enterprise and privately driven

ones [Schaffert, 09].

The following table is an overview about target groups, important obstacles and

stumbling blocks as well as successful measures of three of this six application areas.

We derived it from literature, project analysis and interviews with experts within the

fields.



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community of

readers on a

professional news

site

community of

learners

community of

customers for open

innovation

target group readers such asjournalists or

contributors

learners customers

obstacles

and

stumbling

blocks

missing

moderation,

because news

potentially turn out

conflicts

the platform is

technologically not

up to date (e.g. for

upload of photos)

the Internet is

neither part of daily

life and work, nor

it is be seen as very

attractive by the

learners

unfitting compo-

sition of groups or

partners

research and

acquisition of lead

users is important

it could be proble-

matic if the public and

competitors are able to

follow the

communitys activity

successful

measures

attentive

moderation and

inclusion of users

in parts of the

platform, activities

and competitions

support of coopera-

tive learning with

fitting didacticalmeasures and set-

tings, also

reputations systems

established instru-

ments of innovation

measures, e.g. idea

competitions

a member only

community

special offers (costs,

events, test usage,

exclusive content)

Table 1: Online community building in three application areas

As this overview illustrates, the requirements of community building in the concrete

application areas vary a lot. Whereas privacy in self-help group or patient groups is

important to secure the private sphere of the members (they often tend to publish a lotof things there they usually would not tell their neighbours) the same procedure of

member only spaces is a possibility to rise exclusivity and attractiveness for

potential members of customer communities. Additionally, aspects such as user

friendliness can be seen as crucial for another new social networking platform, but

not for an online patient group for seldom diseases.

6 Discussion and future work

Our detailed research of successful community building in six applications areasillustrates the ambiguity and limited prevalence of a lot of general tips which we

have found in Weblog postings and also in literature. Analysing our own approach of

structuring and getting more information and recommendations from diverse sources



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we see it as fruitful; especially the selection of very diverse application areas. Despite

our first impression of confusing information we came to the conclusion that just very

little knowledge or clear advice for the first initial steps of community building exist.

With our study we hope to give some deeper insights. Nevertheless, the results are

just limited to the phase of community initialising and there is still a lack of moreresearch and (meta) analysis of recommendations for community management.

Within our project at the Salzburg NewMediaLab, this was only the first in a

serial of studies we will develop for practitioners in the field of online communities

and related technologies. The next report in our project will be about meta

information of and for online communities: Besides the contributions through content

creation or upload, for example photos, text or videos, users are also generating meta

information. This meta information is generated, either actively, for instance through

tags, or indirectly or subconsciously through user behaviours. This part of the study

focuses on new forms of generating meta information and how they can support

communities. Realisations will be discussed and research reports will be analysed,dealing for example with tagging behaviour in communities or common usage of tag

clouds. Building on a collection of these approaches, we will develop in another

report a collection of good practice of recommender systems and its various forms

used in communities: An overview of current realisations and experiences with such

recommender systems as a service for users and communities will be given. This

includes the description of technological concepts and realisations. Last, but not least

we will concentrate on systems which indicate engagement within a community or

serve as reputation system.

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and empirical investigation of its Determinants. Hamburg: Diplomica Verlag. 2007.

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resource-based model of online social structures. Information System Research, 12 (4), 346-362, 2001.

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Successful Email Listservers and Online Forums in Educational Settings. San Diego StateUniversity. 1998. http://www.noendpress.com/caleb/olc/3Principles_Online_Comm.pdf [2008-

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[Glaser, 67] Glaser, B. and Strauss, A.: The discovery of grounded theory. Chicago: Aldine.1967.

[Karau, 01] Karau, S. J. & Wiliams, K.D.: Understanding individual motivation in groups: The

Collective Effort Model. In: M.E. Turner (Hrsg.), Groups at work: Theory and Research. New

York: Lawrence Erlbaum, 113-141, 2001.

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Communities. Bonn: Galileo Press, 2001.

[Kollock, 99] Kollock, P.: The Economies of Online Cooperation: Gifts and Public Goods in

Cyberspace. In: M. Smith & P. Kollock (Ed.) Community in Cyberspace. London: Routledge,1999.



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[Palme, 95] Palme, J.: Electronic Mail. Norwood, USA: Artech House Telecommunications

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[Spreadloveproject, 08] Spreadloveproject: Community Measurements.

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[Stocker, 08] Stocker, A. & Tochtermann, K.: Communities und soziale Netzwerke. In: A.

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Fallstudien und Trends zum Einsatz von Social Software. Mnchen: Oldenbourg, 64-77, 2008.[Swenson, 08] Swenson, S.: The Online Community Lifecycle. 2008.http://shannonswenson.com/online-community-lifecycle [2008-09-07]

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