Who are the Influentials in Virtual Community? Opinion Leaders among Participants in Bulletin Board Systems

As the Internet users become more demographically heterogeneous, differences among individual Internet users have manifested, especially in terms of their abilities to utilize the Internet, casting threat on the egalitarian and democracy implications of the Internet. One of the differences identified by scholars is the distinguished opinion leadership among the participants in the bulletin board systems (BBS). Results from a sample of 246 BBS participants show that different participants varied in their influential abilities in the virtual community. Sixty-four of them were identified as online opinion leaders. Different from previous study, online opinion leaders were not concentrated in any demographic stratums except for people with master’s degree or above. This empirically supports the notion that Internet does empower the grass root efforts. Moreover, Internet connectedness index, time spent on BBS and BBS participation history, was found to be the main predictors of online opinion leadership. Implications of the findings were discussed.