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.
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
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
It is interesting that fashionspot.com is only open by invitation, and that invitations are not only limited by number but also reviewed by the moderator. They must place a high priority on being able to trust each member and have the community feel safe. That also would explain why they don't let new members manipulate the reputation system until they have proven themselves trustworthy. However, I agree that it is weird that they don't show the reputation points publicly. That is a direct measurement of how much trust the community has in a particular user, and could identify roles within the community pretty easily. It seems like there isn't much of a point in expressing confidence (or lack thereof) in a particular user if nobody else can benefit from your experience.
ReplyDeleteI think your project idea sounds really interesting! I would love to see the results of how different cultures use social networking sites with similar features. Another thing I would be aware of is who the main audience is, and how that might affect their usage. For instance, Facebook and MySpace are fairly similar in function but they are used for different purposes because the main audience is not the same. Don't let something let that cloud your study.
The exclusivity of fashionspot.com intrigues me. If you did not have a friend on the site, how would you have gotten in? Can you petition to get in? I wonder then, if they make you explain why you want in or they make show credentials, it is like a job interview or worse, an audition?
ReplyDeleteYour project idea sounds very interesting. Exploring cultural differences in OC and Social networks seems like it would be a fun project.
Terrific post! It definitely is different when an OC only allows members to join by invitation. I agree with your comment that fashionspot has the ability to promote both bridging and bonding social capital, as described by Putnam. I am particularly interested in the “invite only” policy, which reminds me of Gmail, when it was first released. In this sense, it can keep random people out of an OC, but also excludes those who might be a contributor if they do not know any current members. In a sense, the lack of “outside” members joining may also help with the affective or bonding social aspects of the OC.
ReplyDeleteI found your analysis of Ebay to be rather interesting. I was not aware that they only show the past 12 months of activity. In this sense, it appears that reputation and social capital are lost every twelve months. In a sense, this could promote more active membership, as you need to stay active to maintain your reputation, as opposed to relying on a reputation that is several years old. However, this can hurt members who had many positive ratings and returned to continue to sell without a reputation.
Regarding your final project idea, I think that comparing who social computing sites would be interesting. Your project has the added value of possibly being culturally specific, which may play a role in your analysis. I am especially interested in your final question, as it considers culture and the features that are promoted. In this sense, culture impacting technology will be interesting to learn about. I am unsure what you are referring to when you discuss the different features. Are these technological or social features of the OCs? I think that it would be interesting to see how the technological features promote interactions. I am looking forward to hearing more about this project; very interesting!
Your project idea is really fantastic, I'm always interested in cross-cultural comparisons and analyses. There was a past reading in this course that brought up the point about Americans wanting/needing to feel unique as part of what motivates them to contribute. That's something I wondered about Asian cultures, if that applies to Asian users as well, since there's more of an emphasis on the community rather than the individual.
ReplyDeleteYes, it would be useful if ebay could look past 12 months! Also, I hadn't realized that sellers could not leave negative ratings for buyers... However, it's difficult these days for a buyer to have poor behavior, since very few sellers accept paper checks. Also I believe there's a time limit on when buyers can send their funds, so it's all on the seller to carry out their promise on the contract.
I think your final project idea is great! Different social networks are popular in different areas of the world. The social networks like Twitter and Facebook that we see as extremely popular may not be the major sites in other countries. Sites like Orkut aren't used a lot here, but it is very popular in Brazil. I am curious to see how cultural values reflect which sites become popular. Things like privacy values could rule out sites like Facebook in places where privacy is heavily valued for example.
ReplyDeletepretty much agreeing with others re your final project idea. social networks based on cultural different is interesting to follow. what makes it different or what makes them the same?
ReplyDeleteeven though Indonesia is nowhere near the US - in terms of location, language, culture, or lifestyle - but it is the 2nd largest user country of Facebook and Twitter. How do you consolidate that with the idea of culture/country specific SNS (Mixi, Cyworld, etc)? Some thoughts from me.
Everyone else has already said it, but your final project idea is really great. I'd love to see what you find out, and then it would also be interesting to maybe go further and attempt similar projects for other countries to see if the results are similar, or maybe depend on location or other factors (for example, would Asian countries like Korea, Japan, etc. have more similarities to each other than lets say a European country, and would either be more aligned with ore more different from US design and usage of social networks). There are so many fascinating aspects and questions to be asked.
ReplyDeleteAlso on a smaller scale this reminds me of the foreign language sub-forums in the Postcrossing forum... it would be really interesting to observe interaction there and see how it compares to the US-centric English-based main forum. And Korea should be especially interesting to observe, since the country has one of the highest ratio of internet users to total population (at least that's what my Korean history professor used to highlight) And aren't Koreans also very interesting in those "Second Life" type of online communities where users have a whole virtual life online?
> 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.
ReplyDeleteI thought of a project topic that is based on comparisons of OCs between different languages at first as well! I eventually settled with a different one, but I agree, this is really interesting. I would love to know more about that's happening in the OCs where I cannot actually participate due to language barriers. And I believe many people are like me.
When I thought about this topic, I also included blogging sites. The ways people blog seem to be different from place to place as well. You could consider looking into blogging too. I know that blogging became popular in many places of the world much earlier than Facebook or Twitter. They might contain even more interesting comparison aspects.
I enjoyed your post, I also noticed the change in eBay's reputation policy and wondered why older ratings and transaction information were suddenly harder to find. I imagine that within eBay someone thought they could encourage continued participation by having older ratings drop off one's reputation, thus not allowing people to "rest on their laurels" from older transactions. Whether the reputation mechanism is tightly controlled such as in the fashionspot site or fairly open like in eBay, it seems to me that the most important factor is that the system be consistent, so that people are always playing by the same rules--eBay's changes seem to undermine that.
ReplyDeleteAs the previous commenters have said, your final project idea is both important and intriguing, and I think the element that has resonated most strongly is cultural comparison. You'll have to make some broad categorizations of types of content, behavior and interactions and see if you can find differences between participants and/or sites with different cultural norms. If you focus on this aspect of your project, an interesting question might be what happens to people who cross boundaries; for example, what happens if they bring what you observe as a Korean interaction style onto an American site, or the other way around?
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ReplyDelete@Andrea
ReplyDeleteYes, since the forum shows the number of posts of each member and they receive rewards, such as being elevated to a high level user, I don’t think the reputation system that doesn’t reflect members’ status is very useful. Also, if the reputation points were visible to everybody else, I would be more active in getting more reputation points to show my contribution to the forum. Thank you for your advice on my final project. Comparing different main audiences on social networking sites sounds great as I am going to talk about how Korean and American audiences behave differently, which leads to the different features of Korean and American social networking sites.
@mernie
It’s a good question! I don’t know when the joining process was changed, but you could enter the forum without having an invitation before. Currently, they also accept a person who doesn’t already know a member — they are put on the waiting list once they fill out an application. Although, the forum says that being on the waiting list doesn’t guarantee membership. On the application form, you need to provide your name, email address, age, gender, profession, your online activities (such as blogs, forums you have joined, etc.), your interests and reasons for requesting membership, which is not an easy process, but way better than an audition or job interview, as you mentioned.
@mbco
Thank you for sharing your experience with Gmail. I agree that prohibiting outside members from joining results in stronger bonds among members, but getting more new members may make the forum much livelier. In terms of the different features I would like to talk about in my final project, I mean technology features such as cyber money, which the Korean social networking site Me2day gives to users when they send a message or publish a post.
@Nana
Thank you for reminding me that there was a reading talk about what motivates Americans to contribute to online communities. I’ll check it out. Also, I agree with you that buyers rarely behave poorly as sellers control the methods of money transactions; but as sellers can’t leave negative comments, eBay should have a technology feature to protect them.
@Anthony
ReplyDeleteThank you for introducing Orkut, which is popular in Brazil. Indeed, privacy values differ depending on the country. I would also talk about Korean social networking sites commonly requiring personal identity numbers when joining while American social networking sites handle privacy carefully.
@Erenst
Thank you for your advice and for talking about Indonesia as an example. You said that Indonesians mostly use Facebook and Twitter, like Americans; however, Koreans use Twitter more than Me2day, but they don’t use Facebook more than Cyworld, and this led me to think about what features of Cyworld intrigue Koreans.
@Julia
Thank you for your suggestion. It would be interesting to find out whether Korea, Japan or China have more similarities than the US and European countries. I would like to talk about it if I have enough time. Second Life offers Japanese, French, Spanish, Italian, and German languages but not Korean, and I think the language barrier plays a big role in Second Life. Therefore, compared to the Japanese, not many Koreans have joined Second Life. However, since there is no virtual community similar to Second Life Koreans are becoming more interested in it.
@susu
Thank you for sharing your experience. Like you, I always have a hard time overcoming language barriers whenever I try new online communities that originate in foreign countries. Also, your suggestion to include blogging sites is helpful, and I will definitely check blogging sites too.
Hi Dr. Gazan,
I agree with you that systems should be consistent. I have found many blogs complaints about the policy change of eBay’s reputation systems and mostly sellers were not happy with it. Because eBay have changed their policies a lot, many users have left and moved to similar online auction or shopping sites. Personally, I prefer Amazon.com or smaller sites selling specific items. Also, thank you for your suggestions. I will definitely consider them.