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In this paper, it is argued that supporting technology influences the way interaction occurs in a virtual community. The empirical part of the study comprises interviews with visitors at LunarStorm, the most popular online community among young people in Sweden. The study highlights a specific feature within the software environment of LunarStorm and the empirical data show that this feature strongly influences community life. Based on these findings it is argued that there is a need for further studies that aim for increasing the knowledge about the role of the technology when designing for social interaction and community development.Biographical notes: Daniel Skog received his MSS (Master of Social Science) from Umeå University, Sweden in 1999. Since then he has been working as a Lecturer at Umeå University, teaching on technical and social aspects of information and communication technology. Daniel is currently a Doctoral candidate at the Department of Informatics at Umeå University and his research interests concern cyber culture, online interaction and virtual communities.

Research on digital platform evolution is largely focused on how platform-owners leverage boundary resources to facilitate and control contributions from external developers to extend the functional diversity and scope of a digital device. However, our knowledge of the digital platforms that carve out their existence exclusively in the service layer of industry architectures, i.e. without proprietary device connections, is limited. The concept of digital service platforms directs attention to such platforms, the role of end-users as value co-creators, and devices as requisite, but not necessarily proprietary, distribution mechanisms for service. Based on a longitudinal case study of Spotify, this paper contributes by demonstrating that digital service platform evolution is characterized by specific architectural conditions that rationalize the use of boundary resources for extending scale rather than scope, and for resourcing and controlling not only developers but also end-users as a means to strategically adjust the evolutionary process.

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Cluster evolution research suggests that maintaining an optimal technological heterogeneity that is exploitable by cluster actors is key to sustainable cluster development.This paper argues that exploring this optimal span and its influence on local synergy creation calls for understanding the interaction between cluster actions, local conditions for collaboration, and heterogeneity requirements over time. For this purpose, a longitudinal case study is conducted, tracing the development of a digital creative cluster that has experienced the initiation, rise, and decline of local technological heterogeneity exploitation. By applying institutional logics as a sensitizing device, the analysis explores how actors interact with local and theme structures in this process. Findings show how hub-firms draw on creative norms and technologies to produce situated heterogeneity requirements. These are assessed with colocation factors and accumulated experience of local collaboration to produce local organizing rationales that guides decisions to engage in local collaboration.

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Managing an online social network site is not an easy task. First, the software environment must be designed with tools that promote social interaction. Second, the social environment most be nurtured and protected with thoughtful and balanced rules that allow for freedom within limits. This paper reports from an ethnographic study of a Swedish social network site, and focuses on how the site managers try to deal with undesirable use patterns and behaviors among members, at the same time struggling with the unexpected social outcome of a software redesign. Adopting a disclosive ethics approach, the paper highlights some of the ethical challenges embedded in the process of managing the site, and discusses their implications.