Session 4: Social role, capital and trust

For this assignment, I have chosen fashionspot.com and eBay.com for a comparison of the communities’ social capital and trust mechanisms.

Fashionspot is a big international website for fashion, and it not only has its own contents, such as news about fashion and celebrities, but also a forum where users can share interests by posting and commenting on fashion. Because you can’t join the community without an invitation from a member, it is hard to enter the community to contribute. .

Luckily, I asked my friend, who is already member of fashionspot, to invite me so I could join and observe other members’ activities.

The second screen shot is an invitation email from fashionspot. Williams explains Putnam’s definition and the difference between bonding social capital and bridging social capital as follows: “Bridging may broaden social horizons or world views, or open up opportunities for information or new resources … bonding occurs when strongly tied individuals, such as family and close friends, provide emotional or substantive support for one another.” I think fashionspot has both bonding social capital, in that users get emotional support from close friends since they entered the forum by an invitation from a close friend, as well as bridging social capital, in that they can get new information about fashion from worldwide members. Members have a social role through starting new threads and leaving comments: “Discussion people typically connect to other discussion people. This social role is the source of most of the discussion content contributed to long threaded conversations” (Gleave et al., 2009). In addition, they contribute to the community by inviting friends to make fashionspot grow. However, there are strict rules about invitations, such as a limit to the number of invitations, so you can’t invite many people  in order to get a referral count, for which rewards are given. Also, the moderator reviews the  invitation to ascertain whether the person has made enough contributions to the site. This invitation and referral count shows how the mechanism of this online community works: People invite only friends and inviting a person you don’t know is not allowed, making the entire community one of friendship and trust. According to Ellison et al. (2007), social capital varies depending on the type of community: “Social capital has been linked to a variety of positive social outcomes, such as better public health … more efficient financial markets … form of useful information, personal relationships, or the capacity to organize groups.” I think fashionspot’s social capital are useful information and personal relationships, while eBay.com is more concerned with financial efficiency. 

Suggest Improvements for fashionspot
Unlike allkpop.com (which I introduced last week), when a member joins, his or her  reputation points, which are below the user’s profile or avatar and show how many contributions the user made to the forum, are invisible to other people. I trust other members based on their past activities, so this information is very helpful. I think the number of reputation points should be visible to anyone when they join the community because members don’t know the quality of other members’ contributions, for example, whether they have broken the community rules by posting for commercial purposes. In addition, you can give or take reputation points from other members, depending on your standing. Because I am a newbie and haven’t contributed enough posts and comments, I cannot participate in the reputation system yet. Therefore, I think the moderator should allow a newbie to also judge the quality of a post and comment on other people. 

According to Massa’s categories of online systems, fashionspot belongs to more than one online system: It can be classified as an opinions and activity site, because members share opinions, as well as a news sites and social/entertainment site, where people make new friends and share news. On the other hand, eBay.com is a well-known e-marketplace, where millions of members buy and sell items. It is dangerous to send money to a stranger, but the trust mechanism of eBay makes people comfortable using it. For example, unlike fashionspot’s trust mechanism, eBay’s mechanism is based on the feedback system, whereby buyers and sellers leave feedback for each other. According to Massa (2006), “Users are allowed to rate other users after every transaction … user profile page also shows the total number of positive, negative, and neutral ratings for different time past 12 months.” Therefore, this information, located below each member’s profile, gives users the confidence to trade with each other. In addition to confidence, eBay also gives rewards or limitations depend on the ratings: “Powersellers get fee discounts based on the 30 day DSR (Detailed Seller Rating) averages. If all four averages are at or above 4.9 for the entire billing period, they get a 20% discount on their fees … Sellers with a 30 day average DSR below 4.3 are placed on some sort of double-secret probation for 30 days. If the DSRs aren't raised above the specified level, the seller is prevented from selling on eBay” (Ebay Help page). 

Suggest Improvements for eBay

I think eBay should bring back the old feedback system, which shows past ratings older than 12 months. According to the 2008 eBay update on the feedback system, ratings older than 12 months are removed and no longer applied to the DSR, which I think is bad for a seller who has much positive feedback overall but negative feedback for the last 12 months.

Furthermore, sellers can no longer leave negative feedback for buyers because buyers are afraid of retaliation when they give negative ratings to sellers. However, I don’t think this system helps sellers when they have buyers who send a fraudulent check. Finally, detailed item information only appears for 90 days and the older transactions cannot be viewed by the buyer. I feel that the eBay moderator should provide as much transaction information as possible, for example, by extending the viewing time for the information to 12 months in order to strengthen the trust mechanism.

Final Project Idea

Through the readings and my personal experiences, I have found that there are similar social networks sites to Twitter and Facebook in Korea (Me2day and Cyworld). I would like to compare the features and characteristics of these online communities, based on the motivations of members joining these websites, social capital, trust mechanisms, etc. The possible questions are as follows: What are the unique features of each online community? How are the features different? Do the differences result from the differences between Korean culture and American culture? 

References

1.       Gleave, Eric, Howard T. Welser, Thomas M. Lento and Marc A. Smith (2009. A Conceptual and Operational Definition of ÔSocial RoleÕ in Online Community. Proceedings of the 42nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Waikoloa, HI, 5-8 January 2009.

2.       Williams, D. (2006).  On and Off the 'Net: Scales for Social Capital in an Online Era. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 11(2), article 11.
http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol11/issue2/williams.html

3.       Massa, Paolo (2006).  A Survey of Trust Use and Modeling in Current Real Systems. Trust in E-services: Technologies, Practices and Challenges. Idea Group.

4.       Ellison, N.B., C. Steinfield and C. Lampe (2007).  The Benefits of Facebook "Friends:" Social Capital and College Students' Use of Online Social Network Sites. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12(4). http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol12/issue4/ellison.html

5.       Fees 2008 Overview. http://pages.ebay.com/sell/update08/rewards/index.html?ov=004KO#4

Session 3: Motivation for Participation online communities

This week, I read some papers on the reasons why people participate in online communities. Java et al. explain 3 reasons why people join microblogs such as Twitter. These reasons are in order to 1) talk about their daily experiences 2) share information, interests or opinions 3) seek information. While Java et al. said that the most common reason for joining Twitter is to talk about daily routine, Tedjamulia et al. said the most common type of participant of online communities is a lurker who consumes information but rarely contributes. I think the difference may come from the different types of online communities or individuals. Based on my experience, I agree more with Tedjamulia because I joined Twitter not to tweet my daily life but to follow other users as an information seeker.

Tedjamulia et al. explain that people have both the intrinsic motivation of being interested in contributing and increasing the value of community by creating and sharing information and the extrinsic motivation of getting rewards offered by communities such as gifts and social recognition. The quote about extrinsic motivation, “Extrinsic rewards can increase a person's intrinsic motivation under some conditions” (Tedjamulia et al.), reminds me of my past experience of online game websites. I played online games by incorporating or competing with other users and then leveled up when I won the game. After winning many online battles, the game company gave gifts to users such as cyber money or items usable in game battles. Therefore, I kept participating in the online game to win and receive these kinds of rewards. Ridings and Gefen also talk about the intrinsic motivation of people wanting to have fun and contributing to communities. In addition to the above authors, Ling et al. explain intrinsic motivation by giving an example of a MovieLens member who rates movies to have fun as well as to help other people.

Schrock explains 3 psychological factors that lead to people having motivation for online community participation. The first factor is extroversion, which means the desire for socialization with others; “Extroverts may be more likely to be interested in activities that involve interacting and being around others, such as social network sites, writing on a blog, and sharing digital pictures”. Next is self disclosure which means revealing oneself to others. The last psychological factor is self–efficacy which can be defined as the belief that one is capable of performing in online communities to attain one’s goals such as getting information or other reasons.

In order to find out more specifically about the motivation for online community participation, I observed allkpop.com which provides its own content on Korean Music and a forum where you can discuss and share information on k-pop.

--What modes of participation are there?

Create user profiles or signatures or avatars.

Post topics and leave comments.

Add other members as friends who are noticeable and searchable.

Send an email or private message to another member.

Create and vote in polls.

Subscribe the site contents to RSS feeds and share contents via Facebook or Twitter.

--How is participation encouraged?

The number of posts appears below the user’s profile or avatar which shows how many contributions the user made to the forum.

“Recently Added Topics” and “Active content in the last 24 hours” are located on the main menu of the forum, so users can easily participate in new posts.

“Today's Top 20 Posters” and “Overall top posters” list members and sort them by number of posts in descending order.

A reputation System allows users to rate other members based on the quality of their posts or comments. 

The forum has markers to indicate the type of threads that are already read or not read by users, so users can see if there are new posts since their last visit.

--Which types of content draw the most responses?

General discussions of Kpop - 42 posts, 3204 responses

Discussions of individual artists - 20 posts, 1150 responses

Korean Movies and TV programs discussions - 10 posts, 335 responses

Celebrity photos - 9 posts, 302 responses

Celebrity gossip -25 posts, 842 responses

Through my observation, I was surprised that allkpop.com, which is such a large online community with about 200,000 joined members, is so easy to get information from. Allkpop also challenges the statement “when communities become too large and chaotic, members will find the amount of information overwhelming and harder to search” (Tedjamulia et al.). I think this is because the designer of allkpop.com created a user-friendly website with useful functions such as “Recently Added Topics” and advanced searches so people can search for information by users, dates of topic created, and etc. I was also surprised that allkpop users took care about reputation power and how many friends they have. They sent invitations by viewing other members’ profiles. In addition, many users revealed their emotions frankly and even talked about their problems in online communities, which reminds me of Ridings and Gefen’s statement that people want to get emotional support from other users by revealing themselves; “Friendships in virtual communities can provide additional benefits beyond that of information exchange and social support … Friendship in this context is about the value of being together, unlike social support that deals with seeking emotional help or helping others”.

In conclusion, the motivation for online community participation is a mixture of people wanting to talk about daily activities, find and share information, and get extrinsic rewards and emotional support.

References

Ridings, Catherine and David Gefen (2004). Virtual Community Attraction: Why People Hang Out Online. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 10(1).

Ling, K., G. Beenen, P. Ludford, X. Wang, K. Chang, X. Li, D. Cosley, D. Frankowski, L. Terveen, A.M. Rashid, P. Resnick and R. Kraut (2005). Using Social Psychology to Motivate Contributions to Online Communities. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 10(4), article 10.

Tedjamulia, Steven J.J., David R. Olsen, Douglas L. Dean, Conan C. Albrecht (2005). Motivating Content Contributions to Online Communities: Toward a More Comprehensive Theory. Proceedings of the 38th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

Schrock, Andrew (2009). Examining Social Media Usage: Technology Clusters and Social Network Site Membership. First Monday 14(1).

Java, Akshay, Xiaodan Song, Tim Finin and Belle Tseng (2007). Why We Twitter: Understanding the Microblogging Effect in User Intentions and Communities. Joint 9th WEBKDD and 1st SNA-KDD Workshop, 12 August 2007, San Jose, California.