Abstract
Online communities, which have become an integral part of the day-to-day life of people and organizations, exhibit much diversity in both size and activity level; some communities grow to a massive scale and thrive, whereas others remain small, and even wither. In spite of the important role of these proliferating communities, there is limited empirical evidence that identifies the dominant factors underlying their dynamics. Using data collected from seven large online platforms, we observe a universal relationship between online community size and its activity: First, three distinct activity regimes exist, one of low-activity and two of high-activity. Further, we find a sharp activity phase transition at a critical community size that marks the shift between the first and the second regime. Essentially, it is around this critical size that sustainable interactive communities emerge. Finally, above a higher characteristic size, community activity reaches and remains at a constant and high level to form the third regime. We propose that the sharp activity phase transition and the regime structure stem from the branching property of online interactions. Branching results in the emergence of multiplicative growth of the interactions above certain community sizes.
Highlights
Peer-to-peer group interactions are prevalent in online platforms
The marginal returns on contribution should be non-decreasing [5]. Other factors such as group context and social network structure [14] have been surveyed in the theoretical literature, but some studies [8] suggest that these effects are “second order.”
A more detailed definition is suggested in [21] and [22]: “An online community is a group of people, who come together for a purpose, online, and who are governed by norms and policies and supported by software.”
Summary
Peer-to-peer group interactions are prevalent in online platforms. People regularly participate in online groups and communities, interact with other members, and are affected by their peers [1,2,3,4]. A more detailed definition is suggested in [21] and [22]: “An online community is a group of people, who come together for a purpose, online, and who are governed by norms and policies and supported by software.” This definition includes weaker forms of interaction, such as interaction around specific tasks or content, which are a subject of investigation and interest in the literature. Throughout the paper, we assume that when a group of people congregates around a common theme (e.g., within a topical discussion forum or around a piece of online content), they form for this purpose an ad-hoc community that is separate from other communities on the platform. We detail the patterns observed in the relationship between community activity and community size
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