Research on lurking

I’m still thinking about the power of lurking. My interest was triggered by discussions about activating lurkers in on-line communities and by some of our research suggesting that for many people lurking and not active participation is enough to get what they need. Since then I’m on a trail :)

I found some research on lurking (thanks to the great work done at CPsquare – Let’s get more positive about the term ‘lurker’ (.pdf)). You can check my del.icio.us links on lurking or go directly to the papers by Blair Nonnecke and start reading from Silent participants: Getting to know lurkers better (.pdf).

I would blog it properly, but it’s a bit late, so you can enjoy it yourself. I’ll be back with my thoughts on it.

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2004/02/01.html#a1066; comments are here.

• Mama’s day: Legitimate peripheral participation
• Growing pains of virtual communities
• Community straddlers and innovation: asking right questions about communities of practice

Tagged as: communities, CPsquare, lurking