| Online knowledge communities have become vital places for people to hunt for knowledge and share expertise. Most of newcomers would only participate in the online community for a very short amount of time. Very few newcomers will stay and become long-term contributors in online communities. In our study, we aim to examine the communication behaviors of newcomers in online knowledge communities. Particularly, we are interested in the behavioral differences between active newcomers and inactive newcomers. We use network-based behavioral measures to reveal users' interactions in online communities. We find that active newcomers have more mutual communication activities than inactive newcomers. In addition, inactive newcomers in both forums have more unidirectional connections than bidirectional connections. Our findings can help online community researchers and practitioners understand the factors that stimulate online knowledge-sharing participation and retain community users. |
Updated 02/23/2014