As online groups grow in number and type, understanding lurking is becoming increasingly important. Recent reports indicate that lurkers make up over 90 % of online groups, yet little is known about them. This paper presents a demographic study of lurking in email-based discussion lists (DLs) with an emphasis on health and software-support DLs. Four primary questions are examined. One, how prevalent is lurking, and do health and software-support DLs differ? Two, how do lurking levels vary as the definition is broadened from zero posts in 12 weeks to 3 or fewer posts in 12 weeks? Three, is there a relationship between lurking and the size of the DL, and four, is there a relationship between lurking and traffic level? When lurking is defined as no posts, the mean lurking level for all DLs is lower than the reported 90%. Health-support DLs have on average significantly fewer lurkers (46%) than software-support DLs (82%). Lurking varies widely ranging from 0 to 99%. The relationships between lurking, group size and traffic are also examined.

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This study reports the results of an online survey that generated 1188 responses from 375 online MSN communities. The survey examined the behavior and attitudes of participants who post (i.e., posters) and those who read but do not post (i.e., lurkers). The results of the analysis indicate that posters and lurkers go online for similar reasons. While lurkers did not publicly ask questions, they wanted answers to questions (62.1 % vs. 70.3 % for posters). However, lurkers were less enthusiastic about the benefits of community membership, with 41.8 % indicating they received less than the expected benefit. In contrast, 36.6 % of posters perceived a greater than expected benefit.

In email-based discussion lists (DLs), messages resident in archives, email clients and elsewhere are persistent. One way of examining persistent messages is through the eyes of lurkers. For participants in this study, persistent conversation is an inhibitor to participation, a mechanism for engendering participation, and something to be managed. Participants viewed persistent conversation, especially when it can be retrieved through search mechanisms at a later date, as a loss of security and privacy, and an impediment to public participation. Participants followed conversations to understand the practices and language of a DL. Strategies for reading and managing email were idiosyncratic and goal driven. Some participants were concerned about maintaining access to DL information for future use. Others, more concerned about being overloaded with too much email, focused on eliminating messages. Where possible, design implications are put forward.

The asymmetry of activity in virtual communities is of great interest. While participation in the activities of virtual communities is crucial for a community's survival and development, many people prefer lurking, that is passive attention over active participation. Lurking can be measured and perhaps affected by both dispositional and situational variables. This work investigates the concept of cultural capital as situational antecedent of lurking and de-lurking (the decision to start posting after a certain amount of lurking time). Cultural capital is defined as the knowledge that enables an individual to interpret various cultural codes. The main hypothesis states that a user's cultural capital affects her level of activity in a community and her decision to de-lurk and cease to exist in very active communities because of information overload. This hypothesis is analyzed by mathematically defining a social communication network (SCN) of activities in authenticated discussion forums. We validate this model by examining the SCN using data collected in a sample of 636 online forums in Open University in Israel and 2 work based communities from IBM. The hypotheses verified here make it clear that fostering receptive participation may be as important and constructive as encouraging active contributions in online communities.

While virtual communities become more and more dominant, little attention has been directed towards understanding the conditions for creating a successful community. Significant progress has been made in understanding the diffusion of collaborative tools in the workplace. We read stories about the extraordinary success of some communities, and about the harsh failure of others. This paper argues that lessons learnt from these stories should be analyzed using the theoretical foundations of Diffusion of Innovations theories, and systematized to create a set of guidelines for community creators to make their efforts more efficient. We begin by presenting a theoretical background for analyzing technology diffusion. We then analyze the stories of diffusion of ReachOut – a tool for peer support and community building developed in our Research Lab – in two different communities, using this theory. Finally, we propose a framework for planning for successful diffusion of collaborative tools, using our experiences with ReachOut.

In email-based discussion lists (DLs), messages resident in archives, email clients and elsewhere are persistent. One way of examining persistent messages is through the eyes of lurkers. For participants in this study, persistent conversation is an inhibitor to participation, a mechanism for engendering participation, and something to be managed. Participants viewed persistent conversation, especially when it can be retrieved through search mechanisms at a later date, as a loss of security and privacy, and an impediment to public participation. Participants followed conversations to understand the practices and language of a DL. Strategies for reading and managing email were idiosyncratic and goal driven. Some participants were concerned about maintaining access to DL information for future use. Others, more concerned about being overloaded with too much email, focused on eliminating messages. Where possible, design implications are put forward. 1.

Invisible members of online communities; those who access, but do not post material, have traditionally been conceived of as being inactive, peripheral, non-productive participants. The term lurker connotes a poorly understood, low-value and marginal role, characterised by a reluctance, or lack of readiness, to contribute. This paper argues that in today‟s complex, multimodal online communities, the lurker concept is too simplistic. Combining the concept of polycontextuality with boundary spanning theory, it proposes an alternative way of conceptualising invisible online roles. It reports on a study investigating knowledge transfer in online communities, where a subset of influential and active, yet „invisible ‟ online participants was discovered. These participants, follower-feeders, spanned the online-offline community boundary, acting as online followers and offline leaders. They communicated with