One aspect that I think is maybe missing from this model is the concept of equity, maybe social equity but that might be redundant. I think potentially reputation may accounts for some of the equity participants build in these social networks, but it doesn’t quite cover some of the key motivations in social networks. Think about yelp or myspace, the way you build equity in those networks is through collecting, collecting friends on myspace, collecting reviews and friends on yelp (sure reviews are contributions and they are part of your reputation). I think the way people build equity and reputation in social networks is what makes a community sustainable, it’s almost the equivalent to the concept of corporate culture or “the way we do things around here”. Analysis of corporate culture may provide a nice parallel when thinking about social networks and communities. Believe it or not the analysis of corporate culture is not as dry as it sounds and involves, heros, myths, stories, norms, and values.
I don’t know about you but i’ve worked at companies that believed they could “create culture” by telling the right stories, providing hero figures, instilling values etc. There are some that would say creating culture is not possible, but possibly you can influence it. Is Tom a heroic figure of myspace?
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