Membership life cycle for virtual communities

A membership life cycle for online communities was proposed by Amy Jo Kim (2000). It states that members of virtual communities begin their life in a community as visitors, or lurkers. After breaking through a barrier, people become novices and participate in community life. After contributing for a sustained period of time they become regulars. If they break through another barrier they become leaders, and once they have contributed to the community for some time they become elders. This life cycle can be applied to many virtual communities, most obviously to bulletin boards, but also to blogs and wiki-based communities like Wikipedia.

A similar model can be found in the works of Lave and Wenger, who illustrate a cycle of how users become incorporated into virtual communities using the principles of legitimate peripheral participation. They suggest five types of trajectories amongst a learning community:

Peripheral (i.e. Lurker) -An outside, unstructured participation

Inbound (i.e. Novice) - Newcomer is invested in the community and heading towards full participation

Insider (i.e. Regular) - Full committed community participant

Boundary (i.e. Leader) - A leader, sustains membership participation and brokers interactions

Outbound (i.e. Elder) - Process of leaving the community due to new relationships, new positions, new outlooks

 

The following shows the correlation between the learning trajectories and Web 2.0 community participation.

Learning trajectory  - online community participation

Example - YouTube

Peripheral (Lurker) - Observing the community and viewing content. Does not add to the community content or discussion. The user occasionally goes onto YouTube.com to check out a video that someone has directed them to.

Inbound (Novice) - Just beginning to engage the community. Starts to provide content. Tentatively interacts in a few discussions. The user comments on other users videos. Potentially posts a video of his or her own.

Insider (Regular) - Consistently adds to the community discussion and content. Interacts with other users. Regularly posts videos. Either videos they have found or made themselves. Makes a concerted effort to comment and rate other users' videos.

Boundary (Leader) - Recognized as a veteran participant. Connects with regulars to make higher concepts ideas. Community grants their opinion greater consideration. The user has become recognized as a contributor to watch. Possibly their videos are pod casts commenting on the state of YouTube and its community. The user would not consider watching another users videos without commenting on them. Will often correct a user in behavior the community considers inappropriate. Will reference other users videos in their comments as a way to cross link content.

Outbound (Elder) - Leaves the community for a variety of reasons. Interests have changed. Community has moved in a direction that he doesnt agree with. Lack of time. User got a new job that takes up too much time to maintain a constant presence in the community. The Deletionist versus Inclusionist Controversy in another such case within wiki-based communities.