Prior work has identified, in piecemeal fashion, desirable characteristics of virtual community businesses (VCBs) such as inimitable information assets, persistent handles fomenting trust, and an economic infrastructure. To date, researchers have lacked convenient settings to collect participant data to gain insight into VCB governance and success factors. In this work, we addressed this gap an...

This paper presented a literature review, a classification schema, and a research agenda for the virtual community studies. Thirty-six academic papers on virtual communities, published from 1996 to 2004, were reviewed. A classification of these studies, based on research similarities and patterns, resulted in five areas being identified--social perspective, business perspective, development iss...

Virtual communities have become increasingly popular in recent years. Despite significant growth in the number of virtual communities, few communities have been successful retaining members and motivating members to continue sharing knowledge. This study focuses on how knowledge-contributor characteristics impact the relationship between individuals’ community-involvement motivation and continu...

This paper discusses the development of virtual communities and especially e-learning communities. In particular, this paper is inspired by VirRAD European project, and presents the intermediate results that have raised from the definition of this virtual radiopharmacy community.

This paper examines the possibility of discovering 'hidden' (potential) Communities of Practice (CoPs) inside electronic networks, and then using this knowledge to nurture them into a fully developed Virtual Community of Practice (VCoP). Starting from the standpoint of the need to manage knowledge, it discusses several questions related to this subject: the characteristics of 'hidden' communiti...

One example is recent year’s development of virtual communities, which, by creating new or enhancing existing relationships between humans, actualize dimensions of social relationships previously not existing. Through the existence of virtual communities and other forms of experiential information technologies, conventional understandings of reality, communities, cultures, and representations a...

As the online and the offline world become increasingly intertwined the different concepts of social interaction have to be revisited in order to understand differences and similarities. This paper examines different concepts from the utopian view of the virtual community to the commodification of social relations in Wittel’s notion of network sociality. The purpose is to reveal the underlying ...

It has almost been a rule, whenever ASEAN Leaders gather in the resort town of Bali, Indonesia, there will be a major development to the regional organisation to watch out for. This year, the 19th ASEAN Summit will be held in Bali again. The clues for the hype this year are well reflected in Indonesia’s Chairmanship theme for ASEAN this year “ASEAN Community in a Global Community of Nations”, w...