Selecting an effective niche: an ecological view of the success of online communities
Selecting an effective niche: an ecological view of the success of online communities
复制标题
选择有效的利基：在线社区成功的生态观
DOI：
10.1145/2556288.2557348
复制
发表时间：
2014
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
R. Kraut
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Haiyi Zhu;Jilin Chen;Tara Matthews;Aditya Pal;Hernan Badenes;R. Kraut
在线社区提供各种重要功能，但许多都未能蓬勃发展。对社区成功的研究传统上集中于内部因素。相反，我们从生态学的角度来理解一个社区的成功如何受到其他社区的影响。我们通过四个维度来衡量一个社区与其他社区的关系-它的“利基”：主题重叠，共享成员，内容链接和共享的离线组织联系。我们采用了混合方法，结合了对9495个在线企业社区的定量分析和对社区成员的访谈。我们的研究结果表明，与其他社区的主题重叠太少或太多都会导致社区的活动受到影响。我们还表明，这一主要结果是温和的可预测的方式是否社区共享成员，链接到内容，或与其他社区共享一个组织的隶属关系。这些发现为社区的成功提供了新的见解，指导在线社区设计师如何有效地定位他们的社区。
Online communities serve various important functions, but many fail to thrive. Research on community success has traditionally focused on internal factors. In contrast, we take an ecological view to understand how the success of a community is influenced by other communities. We measured a community's relationship with other communities - its "niche" - through four dimensions: topic overlap, shared members, content linking, and shared offline organizational affiliation. We used a mixed-method approach, combining the quantitative analysis of 9495 online enterprise communities and interviews with community members. Our results show that too little or too much overlap in topic with other communities causes a community's activity to suffer. We also show that this main result is moderated in predictable ways by whether the community shares members with, links to content in, or shares an organizational affiliation with other communities. These findings provide new insight on community success, guiding online community designers on how to effectively position their community in relation to others.