Active Lurking: Enhancing the Value of In-House Online Communities Through the Related Practices Around the Online Communities

Abstract

In this paper we examine the possibility of evaluating the value of an online community in a company by focusing on the practices around the online community, which we call active lurking. We divided the practices into two types: independent practices that are completed within only an informal context, and connecting practices that have relationships with the formal organizational structure. We conducted a questionnaire for 2,584 participants in two types of online communities in a large manufacturing company, and semi-structured interviews of 102 participants. We concluded that our practice-based evaluation is useful for managers or designers of an online community to help them to understand, evaluate, and manage its practical impacts on their business activities before or after building it.

Keywords: on-line communities