Stuart Nicholson – A life-cycle perspective on online community success

The paper that I was assigned to read was “A life-cycle perspective on online community success” by Alicia Iriberri and Gondy Leroy. The piece reflects on a wide collection of research undertaken by a range of distinct disciplines between 1993 and 2007 which the authors refer to as “online community waves” (not to be confused with that of HCI waves). The waves of research that were carried out for web communities concentrated on a variety of topics which were the predominant contemporary areas of interest  at the time of carrying out the research; exploration of online communities was carried out from a point when the internet became available as a means for everyone to communicate. The research waves reflect the progression of internet technology available to the user and how people learnt to use it in different ways (e.g. blog, wikis, podcasts and videos) for a multitude of purposes. The underlying purpose of online communities was, as Howard Rheingold’s theory stated back in 1993, to allow people to “develop feelings of belonging and attachment” when interacting with others online. Other important aspects of online communities are also acknowledged within the paper such as the general benefits associated with online socialising and support groups as well as how online communities are differentiated from one another and how their “user count” ultimately represents their overall success.

The authors view the waves of research and the data generated as a platform upon which they base their life cycle perspective on. Five stages (inception, creation, growth, maturity and death) of an online community were identified within their slightly ambiguous diagram:

The stages are clearly outlined along with commonly associated success factors whichdetermine the health of an online community (i.e. is the online-community dying? Is it growing?). I believe that the authors have clearly demonstrated a fundamental understanding of how online communities function. My only criticism of the presented life cycle is that it is only focused on the online community and it’s members – at no point within the paper do the authors refer to any external events which may contribute to one or more of the life cycles’ stages. For example, the “death” of an online community is described as occurring when users find no use for it anymore and users are noted as “leaving the community” which is vague at best. It would be perfectly reasonable to assume users may leave because a new online community has been established, possibly offering greater technological scope for communicating or simply just a more appropriate user interface. An example would be the migration of Bebo users to Facebook in 2008.

This week I have chosen to look at “Selecting an Effective Niche: An Ecological View of the Success of Online Communities” available <here>. It explores how online communities attract users to try and become more successful (i.e. have more active users than the competitor communities). This paper explores the success factors of online communities and includes external factors.