For this assignment, I’d like to start with something I read on a blog today - “Facebook is not really a website anymore”. So what is it? The link directed me to an article on Harvard Business Review and revealed the answer: “it's a vast, branded utility”, “like another World Wide Web, but with a profit motive.” These words sounds really like they are coming out of some kind of zealots, but are actually from quite a rational analytical article that is discussing the significance of Facebook nowadays. It’s been never so true that we are living in a time when people have the free to choose what they like, and significantly, many of them chose to be a member in the virtual world. This phenomenon can be interesting, since there are still so many debates on why the virtual environment is developing so fast, and attracting so many people. The word “profit” was used in the above view I cited, which of course means the motive that drives the founders of Facebook and any other social network sites, but since the users are not profiting (most of the case) from their online activities, what are their motivation of socialing online? Or as Riding and Gefen asked “Why did you join?” Since this question also links to one of my biggest concerns about social computing, I find it indeed interesting in the materials from this session.
In Why We Twitter: Understanding Microblogging Usage and Communities, by showing the datasets, characteristic properties and patterns of the users within Twitter, the authors concluded the main intentions of users’ as “Daily chatter”, “Conversations”, “Sharing information or URLs”, and “Reporting news”. And the main role characters on Twitter can be categorized as “Information Sources”, “Friends”, and “Information Seekers”. Therefore, Motivations can be made based on users’ intention or role. From those complex links in the figures of this article, we may feel that contributions-in-lack is not a problem here in this microblogging system, especially when the authors are using “overwhelmed” to describe users’ situation, but as a relevant article to this session, we can learn that other than the features of “fast” and “frequent”, it is the direct purposes (or intentions) of theirs that make the members contributed in a persisting way. Although it seems like that I am not in a position to judge too much about the activities happening on Twitter since I’m not a “twitterer” myself, I believe I’m starting to get to know the interesting part of this whole idea.
The article Motivating Content Contributions to Online Communities: Toward a More Comprehensive Theory explained several basic conceptions like participation levels in an online community (OC) and results from researches showing the reasons why people are participating in an OC (Maybe it’s because this is the first article I read in this session, I learned a lot from it). Then, by relying on a contribution model, the authors made 11 propositions of how an OC can attract more contributions. These propositions were either built on members personal characteristics, like fulfilling an inherent interests and achieving a sense of self efficacy; or built on environmental factors like making the utmost of usability of the OC and growing a sense of group identity and personal responsibility among the members; or are built on a kind of goal commitment between the members and community. In addition, the authors also showed a balance between the amount of members and the “quality + quantity“ of contribution, which they called a “Knowledge Sharing Dilemma”. From my own experience, I will agree with their points of view because there was a time when some friends and I created a blog to post our reviews of films together. And even I wasn’t an enthusiast of sharing my views with the public, I still tried to write as much and as frequent as I can. And because our target readers are basically the ones on campus, there were more comments than we expected coming everyday – I wondered whether they were really loyal movie fans or just had a sense of responsibility to comment because they might feel that they are special and indispensable to us, but it did make me realize the advantages of a relatively small size community, which is “warm” as those kind of small towns.
Then, in Using Social Psychology to Motivate Contributions to Online Communities, in order to test how the principles of social psychology can be applied to explain people’s activities in OCs, the authors did four experiments. Hypotheses were made first, with experimental results following behind either supporting or arguing. Among the four experiments, the applied social theories that can be approved in an OCs are:
1. Members intended to work harder by themselves than within a group. But they will also devote if their works and identities are achieving recognition by the group or its members.
2. Members will contribute more if they find their works are unique.
3. If there is an appropriate goal set, members tend to contribute more than no goals or “missions impossible”.
And theories that is surprisingly contrary with the reality in an OC or that is still remained unproved are:
1. Rather than generating more communication with the ones they are similar with, members will actually communicate more with the one they are “least similar”.
2. Highlighting the benefits of their contributions to either the member themselves or others will dampen them, but only when notifying these benefits to both sides will encourage the member to contribute more.
3. Extrinsic motivation might not work as well as intrinsic motivation, and may even damage the zeal of members with intrinsic motivation.
4. Although members tend to work harder with individual task, they will be more motivated for a group task with group identification.
In general, by summarizing these proved social psychology theory, it can be deduced that: a best motivating mode will be members contributing to a group task of “specific challenging goals” while they can feel their work is unique and indispensable for achieving the goals. Even social psychology theory may not explain every phenomenon in OCs, it could work “as a source of principles that can be a generally useful strategy” for the design of OCs. And speaking of those unproved theories, I’m afraid I have to rebut on the one that said extrinsic motivation might “reduces members intrinsic interest in contributing.” For me, if I was going to post on an OC, I will feel lucky if there are unexpected extrinsic rewards since I’m going to post anyway, and it might even encourage me to post more in the future.
For the rest two articles, I will discuss them with my OC observation while revealing the incorporate concepts I found within them. This community I chose is a Bulletin Board on a website named Makeupalley, which works both as a consumer-generated database and an online community. The database consists of information and reviews of cosmetics and skincare products, and other than some basic social network functions like “profiling” and adding members as “favorites”, there is a “SWAP” board that works as a free exchange market letting members to change their unwanted cosmetics or skincare products with others. Based on the data shown on the website, it has an amount of 1,226,314 active members.
Modes of Participation in Makeupalley:
Generate database content
Post content in Boards
Reply on others’ posts
Flag posts
Add posts to “favorites”
Add members to “favorites”
Send private messages
By providing the information and data of this online community, the question ‘why people come to online community’ rose in Virtual Community Attraction: Why People Hang Out Online is demonstrated. First, the members are looking for information or new friends; second, they are seeking for social support or recreation. And though the purpose of information exchange is taking up most of the part in motivating people’s online activities, the purpose of seeking for social supports and then friendships is – according to the article – taking up 1/3 of the amount. In Makeupalley’s Bulletin Board, we can see so many posts of purely social chatting or inquiry of personal concerns, even in those boards of Makeup or Skin Care, it is a proof that members are using OC seeking social support while looking for specific information. And the hyperlink of each member is also a good function that one can use to get access to that member, and build a potential friendship upon this activity.
The trends in Examining Social Media Usage: Technology Clusters and Social Network Site Membership can also be showed by the example above. “The characteristics of social technology users can be reflected in their online activities.” Although we have no idea about how members of Makeupalley feel about their computer self-efficacy, it can be seen that “extroverts and those willing to self-disclose” may like to share and contribute more. Especially when members can post their own photos in the “member centers”, it is an action that calls for more “open” characteristics, no matter in the real world or virtual world.
At last, as a regular member of several OCs, I want to share some experiences of my own other than these experimental or theoretical conclusions above. There are some moments that I feel some impulsions to participate in an online community just because of its “virtual-ness”. I guess it is more or less like a kind of social sense to integrate into a virtual society, which is a trend and seems to work as a really important role in future. And even these societies are not that “real”, and people are not getting substantial benefits (most of the time), they are indeed certain networks, or communities that we choose based on self-interests or self-cognition, hence make it more valuable.
Reference:
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/02/what_is_facebook_is_becoming.html
http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2242/2066
http://www.makeupalley.com/board/
Hi Nan,
ReplyDeleteI found your comment, "There are some moments that I feel some impulsions to participate in an online community just because of its “virtual-ness” " very interesting. Do you think people are more apt to participate because it is a virtual environment. I can see that being true in the make up site. It is easier to discuss issues like that online, as i imagine most people do go around talking make up all day. But I can also see where "virtual-ness" can inhibit communication. For issues where you don't want a record of what you are saying, perhaps face to face is better.
I also agreed with your comment about self cognition and choosing to be members of certain groups. If people think themselves rockstars, they will join a rockstar wannabe group.
Yes, Facebook is trying to change how we use the internet. Instead of one huge world wide web, there are indications that they want us to browse the www using their platform. And of course, that platform has profit as its foundation. Thus the introduction of 'like' buttons outside of FB realm, the roll out of FB email system, FB place, recent change in photo viewing to imitate the likes of Flickr, and many more.
ReplyDeleteTo add to Mernie's comment above, I think the barrier to enter (and exit) is low in virtual communities, thus people can join easily. The lure of anonymity and chance to reinvent oneself are also very attractive in encouraging participation.
Its true that the virtualness can inhibit 'real' communication, complete with body language and gesture. As we are talking about make up issues, perhaps the users would not go too deep into a conversation in the forum - they might continue one-on-one via email or other more private but still virtual arena.
Probably the aspect of the readings that fits least well with the readings and assignment is that of self-efficacy, which is hard or impossible to detect just by observing a community's posts. Your findings about the type and distribution of the posts on Makeupalley illustrates very well how people use the community's shared topic of interest just as a launching pad to discussion. The title of the site promises a community about makeup, but as your results showed, many more people are talking in the free-form cafe than discussing makeup itself.
ReplyDeleteI notice that when OCs post free-form cafe kind of places for their users, that more on-topic places can be neglected. This seems to be especially true if the "power users" flock to the free-form places and are able to post compelling content, regardless of said contents connection to the main topic of the OC itself.
ReplyDeleteI kind of thought the same thing Erenst said too about people maybe going more private with their interactions on the make-up forum. Perhaps because the forum deals with appearance, some users may be too shy to be as open with their discussions?
Great post!
Mernie, from my own experience, I think my answer to your question is yes, I do participate sometimes just because I'm in an online community, or in other words, it is the anonymity that encourage my participation, and anonymity might be one motivation of participation online, like what Erenst said.
ReplyDeleteOne other motivation of people participation online might be the fact that these kinds of communication of information accessing can go beyond the limitation of time and space. For instance, if I have a cooking problem at 2am, I probably would rather go ask online but not call my mom.
And speaking of the inhibition of "virtualness", I think it might hold back the steps of some newbies because of its relatively inconvenience comparing to real life communication. But once they became members and get familiar with the features of online community, these members would be able to tell the different points of emphases that these two types of "communities" provide.
GabrielW, there is the mode of private message working in makeupalley, which allows members to communicate privately, and yes, the fact that there is a big chance that people have to show their faces might stop them from posting.
ReplyDeleteAnd both you and Dr. Gazan mentioned the phenomenon of there are more members talking in the Cafe Board, which is very interesting. I think it's probably due to the reason that since the members had already build a sense of "community cognition" for makeupalley, they might want to extent their topic, especially when they consider their OC acquaintance as friends.