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Understanding the attraction of virtual communities is crucial to organizations that want to tap into their enormous information potential. Existing literature theorizes that people join virtual communities to exchange information and/or social support. Theories of broader Internet use have indicated both entertainment and searching for friendship as motivational forces. This exploratory study empirically examines the importance of these reasons in assessing why people come to virtual communities by directly asking virtual community members why they joined. The responses to the open‐ended question “Why did you join?” were categorized based upon the reasons suggested in the literature. Across 27 communities in 5 different broad types, 569 different reasons from 399 people indicated that most sought either friendship or exchange of information, and a markedly lower percent sought social support or recreation. The reasons were significantly dependent on the grouping of the communities into types. In all the community types information exchange was the most popular reason for joining. Thereafter, however, the reason varied depending on community type. Social support was the second most popular reason for members in communities with health/wellness and professional/occupational topics, but friendship was the second most popular reason among members in communities dealing with personal interests/hobbies, pets, or recreation. These findings suggest that virtual community managers should emphasize not only the content but also encourage the friendship and social support aspects as well if they wish to increase the success of their virtual community.

Virtual communities provide an attractive place for organizations to mine information regarding customer perceptions, needs, and demographics; as well as to generate revenue through sales of products, services, information, and advertising. However, the community conversation provides information about only one type of community user, the poster. Information about the lurker, who never posts, is conspicuously absent from the obvious community data source, the postings. Lurkers may be a large portion of the user community and could provide key revenue sources and vital information, or they potentially could turn into posters. This research contrasts the differences in the underlying motivations of lurkers, infrequent posters, and posters in order to understand the resulting differences in their behavior. 518 users from 20 virtual communities were categorized into three groups based upon their posting behaviors: lurkers who never posted, infrequent posters who posted three or less times per month, and frequent posters. Results revealed that lurkers differed significantly from posters, especially in their willingness to give information and exchange social support. There was a gradual progression from lurker to poster regarding the desires to get knowledge and obtain shopping information. Implications about a possible psychological barrier regarding giving information and social support are discussed.

Special IssueOnline discussion groups have become an increasingly popular way to create social networks where individuals congregate electronically to share advice and ideas. In order to better understand sustainability, we propose that research needs to go beyond examining quantitative changes in the structural dynamics of online discussion groups (such as membership size and message volume) and include investigation of the social dynamics characterizing the underlying qualities of the interactions among members. We take a mixed-methods approach to provide qualitative and empirical support for our theory by investigating the dynamics of one successful online discussion group over a five-year period. Our data set includes all 150,267 messages posted to 27,743 threads by 9,042 unique individuals over a five year period in a group that is focused on sharing advice about a medical topic (back pain). We find support for our hypotheses that 1) shifts in the structural and social dynamics underlying resource availability lead to changes in communication activities, but in unexpected ways: Fewer members contributed significantly more message volume. In turn, 2) shifts in the structural and social dynamics underlying communication activities lead to changes in coping strategies: As message volume increased and became more social, members increased their efforts and were less likely to defect. Finally, 3) shifts in the structural and social dynamics underlying coping strategies lead to changes in attraction and retention: as individual efforts increased, more individuals were retained; however, fewer new members were attracted to join the group. Our main thesis is that each online discussion group is a product of its structural and social dynamics in combination, and the influence of these factors on sustainability is best understood when they are examined in relation to each other over time.

This study examines virtual community quality through sociolinguistics theory. According to sociolinguistics, in oral discourse men communicate to establish superior social standing, while women communicate with the undertone of rapport, compassion, and empathy. The study shows that these differences carry over to the asynchronous written environment of virtual communities and affect men's and women's respective perceptions of community quality. Women go to virtual communities to give and to get social support and have a more favorable assessment of the capability of others. This pattern generally holds even when comparing mostly single-gender communities and mixed-gender communities. However, a closer look at these differences reveals a more complex picture, with undertones in mixed-gender communities being less than in their respective mostly single-gender communities.

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Technical career paths have been implemented in Information Systems (IS) departments to address the career development needs of employees whose career aspirations are not met by the traditional managerial career path. Understanding how to meet the needs of the technically oriented IS employee is important to IS career planning and development. Much has been written in both academic and popular literature about what composes a successful technical career path. Equity theory has been used in much of the existing research on technical career paths. This literature suggests that a successful technical career path should provide equitable rewards to those of a managerial career path. The present research establishes scales for four "key success factors" - equitable compensation, career path status, decision making influence, and career planning tool availability --- and examines the relationship of perceived equity of these factors to job satisfaction. Job satisfaction is relevant to an organization because it has been shown to be related to motivation to stay in an organization and organizational commitment. IS personnel on a technical career path were surveyed with regard to their equity perceptions and job satisfaction. Scales for the perception of equity for all four success factors were established. Data analysis showed that only the perception of equity of career planning tool availability is related to job satisfaction for these employees. Implications for management and areas for further research are discussed.