Predicting continuance in online communities: model development and empirical test

Popular interest in online communities has grown rapidly in recent years as a result of the widespread diffusion of Web 2.0 applications. However, the full values and potential of online communities cannot be realised without users' ongoing participation. Thus, this study aims at developing and empirically testing a research model to examine users' continuance intention to participate in an online community based on an extended information systems (IS) continuance model. Specifically, entertainment value and affective commitment are included in the IS continuance model and empirically examined in the context of online communities. A total of 240 returns collected from an online survey, which was conducted among users of a website bulletin board-based community in China, were analysed using partial least squares. The results reveal that users' continuance intention to participate in an online community is determined by both satisfaction and affective commitment. Satisfaction and affective commitment are, in turn, influenced by positive disconfirmations of purposive and entertainment values. The findings of this study contribute not only to theory building in online community continuance but also inform online community moderators in their effort to develop strategies for retaining their users.     

基于用户邻域和主题的新颖性Web社区推荐方法

社区推荐从海量社区中为用户过滤出有价值的社区,变得越来越重要.新颖性推荐逐渐得到关注,因为单纯追求准确度的推荐结果存在局限性.已有新颖性推荐方法不适用于社区推荐,因其无法处理Web社区特性,包括社区成员用户通过交互形成的关系网络以及社区主题.提出了一种新颖性社区推荐方法NovelRec,向用户推荐其有潜在兴趣但不知道的社区,旨在拓展用户视野和推动社区发展.NovelRec基于用户交互网络中的邻域关系,利用用户之间在主题上的关联,计算候选社区对用户的准确度;根据用户与社区在邻域和主题上的关联,提出一种用户社区距离度量方式,并利用该距离计算候选社区的新颖度.在此基础上,NovelRec最终进行新颖性社区推荐,并兼顾推荐结果的准确性.真实数据集上的对比实验结果表明,NovelRec方法在新颖性上优于现有方法,同时能够保证推荐结果的准确性.     

Virtual Support Communities and Psychological Well‐Being: The Role of Optimistic and Pessimistic Social Comparison Strategies

Do the beneficial or detrimental effects of CMC activity depend on the specific social comparison strategy individuals use? The present study aimed to answer this question by examining social comparison strategies, different measures of online activity within the community, and psychological well‐being of users of online breast cancer support communities. Results showed that the relationship between online activity (i.e., length of visits and frequency of posts) and psychological well‐being (i.e., breast cancer related concerns and depression) was determined by users' pessimistic social comparison strategy; downward identification influenced especially highly active users. Findings suggest that active CMC users should be careful not to become entrapped by negative social comparison processes.     

Optimal experience of Web activities

This paper reports on Web users' optimal flow experiences (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975b) in the Web environment. The concept of flow was employed to see if there were some positive aspects of Web experiences that could be linked to theory applied to other media and then incorporated into Web design to enhance its utility to users. The notions of the Web as a ‘multi-activity medium’ and a view of the Web as a ‘situated experience’ are proposed and verified in this study in order to demonstrate evidence of flow phenomena in the Web environment. Further, in order to overcome methodological hurdles inherent in previous studies, this study employed content analytic procedures to analyze open-ended questionnaires to directly elicit 304 Web users' perceived flow experiences on the Web. Results of this study provide baseline data on the existence of the flow phenomenon in the Web environment, such as factors and conditions associated with the flow experience, causes of Web users' perceived challenges and controls, and Web users' flow feelings and enjoyments. This study also establishes the groundwork for building a situational measuring instrument which may be used to identify Web users' flow experience for further exploration. We conclude that the concept of flow is a fruitful area for research that aims at improving Web design practice. The data suggest that additional research under more rigorous methodological conditions can further specify the factors and conditions associated with flow experiences on the Web.     

Using the Semantic Web for linking and reusing data across Web 2.0 communities

Large volumes of content (bookmarks, reviews, videos, etc.) are currently being created on the “Social Web”, i.e. on Web 2.0 community sites, and this content is being annotated and commented upon. The ability to view an individual's entire contribution to the Social Web would be an interesting and valuable service, particularly important as social networks are often being formed through created content and things that people have in common (“object-centred sociality”). SIOC is a Semantic Web research project that aims to describe online communities on the Social Web. This paper describes how SIOC and the Semantic Web can enable linking and reuse scenarios of data from Web 2.0 community sites, and introduces a SIOC Types module to further specify the type of content items and act as a “glue” between user posts and the content items created and annotated by users.     

The ties that bind: Social network principles in online communities

In a Web 2.0 environment, the online community is fundamental to the business model, and participants in the online community are often motivated and rewarded by abstract concepts of social capital. How networks of relationships in online communities are structured has important implications for how social capital may be generated, which is critical to both attract and govern the necessary user base to sustain the site. We examine a popular website, Slashdot, which uses a system by which users can declare relationships with other users, and also has an embedded reputation system to rank users called ‘Karma’. We test the relationship between user's Karma level and the social network structure, measured by structural holes, to evaluate the brokerage and closure theories of social capital development. We find that Slashdot users develop deep networks at lower levels of participation indicating value from closure and that participation intensity helps increase the returns. We conclude with some comments on mechanism design which would exploit these findings to optimize the social networks and potentially increase the opportunities for monetization.     

The effect of experience and socio-economic status on web searching performance: a South African perspective

The digital divide can be described in terms of two dimensions: access and usage. Many statistics exist to prove the existence of the gap with regard to access to information and communication technology, and specifically the Internet, in South Africa. In this study, the focus was on users' aptitude in searching for information on the World Wide Web once access had been obtained. It was found that experience of 20 browser sessions is not adequate to ensure that learners from lower socio-economic communities improve in their ability to obtain the correct information during web searches but learners from higher socio-economic communities may, depending on the level of difficulty of the task and the phase of search, benefit from this amount of experience. Web experience has no effect on users' efficiency in terms of the number of mouse clicks made although socio-economic status (SES) is a significant predictor of efficiency for users with no or limited experience. Although low-SES users make fewer clicks en route to an answer as they gain experience, it does not necessarily mean that they perform better in obtaining the correct information.     

LBSN中融合多维关系的社区发现方法

如何发现高质量的社区结构对于深刻研究和分析基于位置的社交网络（LBSN）这种新型复杂网络具有重要意义,然而,现有面向社交网络的社区发现方法都无法适用于具有多维异构关系的LBSN.为此,提出了一种基于联合聚类的用户社区发现方法Multi-BVD,该方法先给出了融合用户社交网络与地理位置标签网络中多模实体及其异构关系的社区划分目标函数,然后使用拉格朗日乘子法得到目标函数极小值的迭代更新规则,并运用块值矩阵分解技术来确定最优的社区划分结果.仿真实验结果表明,Multi-BVD方法能有效地发现LBSN中具有地理特征的用户社区结构,该社区结构在社交关系和地理兴趣标签上都有更优的内聚性,并能更紧密地体现用户社区与地理标签簇间的兴趣关联性.     

Recognizing users gender in social media using linguistic features

Web 2.0 and social media provide users with an opportunity to discuss and share opinions, as a result, a considerable amount of information will emerge which can be drawn upon to determine some demographic and behavioral features.This study is an attempt to predict gender, as a demographic feature, using linguistic features of data collected from the users' comments in the social media.For this purpose, a framework is proposed to predict the users' gender by counting the number of some given words including verbs, pronouns, articles, adjectives, adverbs, preposition and numbers. This framework, thereafter, was tested using the comments that readers of Los Angeles Times left and the model were observed to predict the gender with an accuracy of 66.66%. Security solution and e-marketing can use this framework respectively for authentication and niche marketing.     

Understanding user motivation for evaluating online content: a self-determination theory perspective

In a digital society, people have access to all kinds of electronic information as online users. They have also contributed various content for exchanging ideas in the online community, which has not only extended the traditional knowledge sharing channels, but has also led to concerns about content quality and reliability. The literature suggests that user involvement in collaboratively evaluating the quality of online content for an online community is likely to be an effective means to ease these concerns. However, the understanding of users' intentions to be willing to take part in evaluating online content is still limited. Based on self-determination theory, this study proposes a research model to understand the extrinsic motivation of the user intention. The research model was tested using data collected from 303 participants who were recruited from online communities. The results show that three types of extrinsic motivation, namely identified motivation, introjected motivation, and external motivation, play an important role in user intention of collaboratively evaluating online content. In addition, the research findings suggest that user satisfaction of the three basic psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness influences different types of extrinsic motivation.     

Using the moving average rule in a dynamic web recommendation system

In this, the Information Age, most people are accustomed to gleaning information from the World Wide Web. To survive and prosper, a Web site has to constantly enliven its content while providing various and extensive information services to attract users. The Web Recommendation System, a personalized information filter, prompts users to visit a Web site and browse at a deeper level. In general, most of the recommendation systems use large browsing logs to identify and predict users' surfing habits. The process of pattern discovery is time-consuming, and the result is static. Such systems do not satisfy the end users' goal-oriented and dynamic demands. Accordingly, a pressing need for an adaptive recommendation system comes into play. This article proposes a novel Web recommendation system framework, based on the Moving Average Rule, which can respond to new navigation trends and dynamically adapts recommendations for users with suitable suggestions through hyperlinks. The framework provides Web site administrators with various methods to generate recommendations. It also responds to new Web trends, including Web pages that have been updated but have not yet been integrated into regular browsing patterns. Ultimately, this research enables Web sites with dynamic intelligence to effectively tailor users' needs. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Int Syst 22: 621–639, 2007.     

Exploring the effect of user engagement in online brand communities: Evidence from Twitter

Social media such as forums, blogs and microblogs has been increasingly used for public information sharing and opinions exchange nowadays. It has changed the way how online community interacts and somehow has led to a new trend of engagement for online retailers especially on microblogging websites such as Twitter. In this study, we investigated the impact of online retailers' engagement with the online brand communities on users' perception of brand image and service. Firstly, we analysed the overall sentiment trends of different brands and the patterns of engagement between companies and customers using the collected tweets posted on a popular social media platform, Twitter. Then, we studied how different types of engagements affect customer sentiments. Our analysis shows that engagement has an effect on sentiments that associate with brand image, perception and customer service of the online retailers. Our findings indicate that the level, length, type and attitude of retailers' engagement with social media users have a significant impact on their sentiments. Based on our results, we derived several important managerial and practical implications.     

一种空间上下文感知的提及目标推荐方法

作为一种新兴的社交媒体用户交互服务,提及机制(mention mechanism)正在用户在线交互和网络信息传播方面扮演着重要角色.对用户提及行为的研究能够揭示用户的隐式偏好与其显式行为之间的联系,为信息传播监控、商业智能、个性化推荐等应用提供新的数据支撑.当前,对用户提及机制的探索多集中在其信息传播属性上,缺少从普通用户角度对其用户交互属性的学习.通过对普通用户提及行为的分析和建模构建一个推荐系统,为给定的社交媒体消息生成目标用户推荐.通过对大型真实社交媒体数据集的分析发现,用户的提及行为受其提及活动的语义和空间上下文因素的联合影响.据此,提出一个联合概率生成模型JUMBM(joint user mention behavior model),模拟用户空间关联提及活动的生成过程.通过对用户语义和空间上下文感知的提及行为进行统一建模,JUMBM能够同时发掘用户的移动模式、地理区域依赖的语义兴趣及其对应目标用户的地理聚集模式.此外,提出一种混合剪枝算法,加快推荐系统对在线top-k查询的响应速度.在大型真实数据集上的实验结果表明,所提方法在推荐有效性和推荐效率方面均优于对比方法.     

Improving Web usability with the link lens

A number of factors may influence Web users' choice of which links to follow. These include assumptions about document quality and anticipated retrieval times. The present generation of World Wide Web browsers, however, provide only minimal support to assist users in making informed decisions. Web browser `link user interfaces' typically only display a document's Universal Resource Locator (URL), whilst a simple binary colour change in the URL's anchor is used to indicate its activation history. The question then is, how do users deal with the problem of having to make such decisions when the information at hand is insufficient? We have been conducting an investigation of how users make link selections.The results show users often are forced to fall back on heuristics and improvising strategies drawn from past experience. Based upon these results, we present a prototype of the `link lens', an enhanced link user interface designed to make such decisions easier and more productive for all users and help less experienced ones gain a better understanding of Web behaviour.     

Knowledge Sharing in Virtual Communities: A Study of Citizenship Behavior and Its Social-Relational Antecedents

A virtual community is a type of online structure that enables Internet users to communicate and collaborate. Users' knowledge contributions are critical to the viability and sustainability of virtual communities. This article studies virtual community members' knowledge sharing from the perspective of citizenship behavior defined as members' spontaneous contribution to the community without expectation of return or reciprocation. The social-relational antecedents of citizenship behavior are explored through an examination of how members' general attitude and desire for relationship building and maintaining, including attachment motivation, social support orientation, and disposition to trust influence their trusting beliefs and citizenship knowledge-sharing behavior. Hypotheses are developed and tested with survey data from Chinese and American users of virtual communities. In general, the results of data analyses support our research model. This article contributes empirically to virtual community research and has practical implications for virtual community development.     

The Relative Importance of Usability and Functionality Factors for E‐Health Web Sites

With the growing usage of the Internet, the demand for online health care information and advice as well as the number of health‐related Web sites are increasing. In case of online health information and advice, the user interface replaces face‐to‐face communication. To ensure that the users' needs are met, it is critical to balance functionality and usability in the design of the Web site. The present study seeks to identify the complex interrelationships among the various factors of usability and functionality concerning e‐health Web sites. Two Turkish e‐health Web sites were assessed for evaluation in this study. The findings show that the users of the health information Web sites give a higher priority to functionality and its factors, whereby the highest relative importance is on “services/facilities” and “personalization/categorization of information.” The most important usability factors related to the e‐health Web sites are “memorability” and “interaction.” © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Extracting significant Website Key Objects: A Semantic Web mining approach

Web mining has been traditionally used in different application domains in order to enhance the content that Web users are accessing. Likewise, Website administrators are interested in finding new approaches to improve their Website content according to their users' preferences. Furthermore, the Semantic Web has been considered as an alternative to represent Web content in a way which can be used by intelligent techniques to provide the organization, meaning, and definition of Web content. In this work, we define the Website Key Object Extraction problem, whose solution is based on a Semantic Web mining approach to extract from a given Website core ontology, new relations between objects according to their Web user interests. This methodology was applied to a real Website, whose results showed that the automatic extraction of Key Objects is highly competitive against traditional surveys applied to Web users.     

Evaluation of users' privacy concerns by checking of their WhatsApp status

WhatsApp Messenger is a popular instant messenger among Iranian users. The WhatsApp status feature provides the possibility of posting desired content without restrictions in terms of type with the capability of being managed by users. Status can be considered as a potential place to express users' feelings, opinions, and thoughts. However, special attention should be paid to the privacy of users and the information published in this manner because access to the content of a user's status by unauthorized friends and interpretations of the user's status content may violate his/her privacy. This study investigates the privacy issues associated with information shared through status. The data of this study were gathered via access to the status content of 4000 Iranian users and via telephone interviews conducted with 350 of them. In this study, a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods has been used to analyze the data. This study focuses on the extraction of patterns in users' status content, determination of their polarity, and examination of the factors affecting users' privacy concerns. During the research, 10 general themes were extracted from users' content. The results showed that user privacy concerns influenced the type of theme selected. In addition, the theme selected under different circumstances may include a type of feeling that, in this study, is called polarity. Polarity is affected by the users' privacy concerns. Moreover, the demographic characteristics of users (age and gender) have a significant relationship with the type of theme used and their privacy concerns.     

Exploring users' attitudes and intentions toward the web as a survey tool

The purpose of this study is to examine a conceptual model of individual perceptions toward the Web as a survey tool. The model discusses users' attitudes toward the Web integrating perceived self-efficacy, anxiety, usefulness, and liking to develop a new aspect of individual intention to use Web surveys. The results provide the evidence that the conceptual model is available for understanding users' perceptions to use Web surveys. In addition, perceived self-efficacy may foster a positive feeling toward the Web surveys. The speed of the Internet, number of survey questions, and friendly operating interface are all users' concerns when answering Web surveys. Furthermore, perceived usefulness and liking may increase an individual's positive attitudes toward using Web surveys.