Peer-to-Peer beyond File Sharing
IICS '02 Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Innovative Internet Computing Systems
Electronic Commerce Research
Managing viable virtual communities: an exploratory case study and explanatory model
International Journal of Web Based Communities
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This paper considers the theory of social capital and volunteerism in an online gaming community, the Internet Chess Club (ICC). We discuss how increased social capital provides broad classes of benefits to the participants of the network and suggest how volunteerism can be expected to increase the social capital of a network. We present survey data collected from 62 members of ICC to examine how different types of online volunteers are recruited and work in a successful virtual community. We show that ICC volunteers encourageand enable intenseinteraction for the benefit ofall the membership subgroups. That is, volunteers create social capital and serve as a key asset of the ICC business model; they strengthen both the ICC core business tenets and improve the software features it can offer to members, thereby providing the key to one virtual community's business success